 My name is Simon Tran and I'm a ProPublica's Events Associate. Welcome to Documenting Hate 2021 from the Capital Riot to Anti-Asian Violence. Today's event is brought to you by the generous support of McKinsey & Company. For those new tests, ProPublica is a non-profit newsroom dedicated to investigative journalism. From 2016 to 2019, ProPublica oversaw a data project called Documenting Hate, which led a coalition of 180 newsrooms across the country aiming to address one of the most urgent and least understood corners of America's criminal justice system, hate crimes. We collected more than 6,000 reporting tips, thousands of pages on police reports on hate crimes, and produced over 230 stories. However, from the January insurrection on the US Capitol to the increase of anti-Asian violence, this past year has shown us that the need to track and address hate is more crucial than ever. For our conversation today, we're joined by three panelists, Artie Coley, who is the Executive Director of Asian American Advanced and Justice Asian Law Caucus, the first organization in the country to represent and promote the legal and civil rights of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Marshall Wong has coordinated anti-hate crime programs for the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations since 1999. He is the principal author of the agency's annual hate crime report and staffs a countywide coalition. The network against hate crime. And Damon Hewitt is a longtime civil rights lawyer, social justice strategist and coalition builder who serves as the acting president and executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Underlaw. Thank you to our panel for joining today. Also, this session is being recorded and a link to the video will be emailed tomorrow to everyone who registered. Our moderator today is ProPublica reporter AC Thompson. His work focuses on the criminal justice system, hate crimes and investigating extremist groups. He most recently worked on the frontline documentary American Insurrection, which examined how far right extremist groups have evolved in the wake of the 2017 Charlottesville Rally. AC, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Simon. I appreciate it and everyone should know I paid Simon to give me such a nice plug and a nice intro. You know, I'm so glad to have this group together and to have this conversation. It feels like a really crucial and important conversation to be having right now. The thing that sticks out to me is the federal government through the FBI has been collecting hate crime statistics for about three decades. But every time somebody takes a look closely at those statistics, they say information is erroneous. It's incomplete. It doesn't represent the full picture. I just want to throw it to all the panelists to to feel free to take a crack at this. What is going wrong here and what needs to change for us to get an accurate accounting of what's really happening. Marshall, I think you're talking but you're on mute. All right. Thank you. I think the most important thing is to address the fact that the fact that reporting to the FBI is voluntary and 85% of the law enforcement agencies around the country either don't report anything at all or say they have had no hate crimes reported in their jurisdictions. So I think that that is probably the biggest hole that has to be filled. Also, when it comes to the actions of individual law enforcement agencies. Usually there is no training available for officers past some brief introductory training in the academy. And I think that that's a very serious problem as well. I think that is not considered a high priority by most law enforcement agencies and, you know, there's always a struggle in terms of resources because anytime you pull officers off of what they're doing for training you have to hire others to fill in their shoes. And finally, I just wanted to say that one of the things that we've noted as far as gaps in the data is that institutions like prisons and jails juvenile detention facilities and schools frequently have hate crimes or widespread racial brawls that are not counted as hate crimes because the authorities in those cases prefer to handle those internally administratively and not call attention to racial tensions within their institutions. Yeah, I think I can add in a few more things which is when we talked to elderly particularly elderly Asian Americans. And that they're not comfortable speaking to the police. There's language barriers. There's trust issues. And the other piece of the equation is that a lot of what's happening are hate incidents so verbal harassment go back to your country, you know, they don't rise to the level of crime. It doesn't mean that people aren't harmed and traumatized they are. It feels like a verbal assault, but it's not a crime. And so, there's no way to capture that. What we've seen is advocacy groups, you know, we had a hate tracker actually starting in 2016 around the election, when there was a lot of anti China rhetoric. We started, you know, getting reports of incidents. And so have taken it in, you know, have taken responsibility for trying to track this information, because the government isn't getting access to it. And I think, you know, that's a question we need to ask, is it the right agencies that are collecting this data. Because if these are if these are not agencies that are trusted, then, you know, folks and they don't have cultural competency or language, you know, access, then people are not going to be reporting to these agencies. You see, I would add that I echo Marshall and Artie's comments. The trust issue is huge. We see that across communities. And I'm sure that is also, as they've said, really, very much the same for API communities as well. We're also, you know, trying to do with the blunt instrument, something that is a Herculean effort as Artie said, not every incident is a crime it feels criminal, you feel the violation, the personal humiliation and sometimes the physical injury or just the threat. Right, what that does to one psyche that having to be under threat, especially for elders. If you're a younger person you want to protect them if you're an elder you want to protect the younger people as well. We need cross agency responses we need cross community responses as well. We spend at the lawyer's committee a lot of time training law enforcement on how to get ahead of these types of incidents because if we don't widen that circle of human concern beforehand. It's difficult to thread the needle afterwards and say well, now I'm hurt you must care. Now I'm hurt you must do something. And we're dealing with the justice system that's never going to make anyone whole. When you face that kind of atrocity and that injury. So we do need training for law enforcement I do agree with Marshall, we need to have that training ahead of time about how to stave off these kinds of incidents and how to be more responsive when they do happen as well. Okay, that's all, that's all super, super helpful. I just a quick follow up for you Damon. You made a great point that the justice system is never going to make people whole. And I think I think that's an unfortunate reality but it's a reality. What do you suggest the role of the justice system should be or the role of government in the community should be to help people feel a sense of security and wholeness again. Well, I would say it can just be a law enforcement response to certainly social services as well that should be made available for the impacted communities. I also think there needs to be some outreach to the communities of people who are causing the injury. Outreach not in terms of just support but outreach outreach in terms of education and accountability. It's all of this really stems from an other rising. Right. That happens in homes and their families in the neighborhoods that happens in schools. And I think any entity especially schools, systems of education K through 12. Those are prime places for socialization is so disappointing that so much of this is happening, not just on the east and west coast, but throughout the country but in places where we have fairly diverse schools. Are we really leveraging and taking advantage of the daily teachable moments of what it means to see your humanity and reflected in someone else's eyes is it, are we able to do that. And frankly, I think the more we're teaching to test the more we're focusing on bottom lines, the less socialization positive socialization, we're doing and also educating each other about each community's history. And this is also important history and current issues that communities are facing that actually helps broaden that circle of human concern and helps with empathy and connectivity and limits and mitigates at least the danger of otherwise. That's great. Just one quick thing. I mean, in addition to individual accountability, we have to look at our systems. And a couple of the major incidents that we've seen in New York and San Francisco, the perpetrators had significant mental health histories. And we have completely disinvested in mental health in our mental health system, and partially because it was abusive. It was a not a good system. So we let it go, but we didn't replace it with anything. As a result, if you have mental health problems, either you're in prison, or you're on the street. And so we have to take responsibility as a society to for the systems that we've created that are actually contributing to the harm. And that is a great observation somebody raised that with me yesterday they said you know in some of these cases I'm seeing it seems like the offenders who are being with the people who are being arrested, do not seem mentally well they seem to be in psychiatric crisis themselves. And that's a great that's a great point that you're making that our systems have broken down to the point where we don't have useful mental health treatment for many people jail ends up being their treatment. And that actually does not work because you see it at all. Yeah. Yeah, that the whole, you know complex prison industrial is our national response to poverty or national response to mental health issues and answer response to need. And I should also mention that sometimes people who suffer mental health crisis, find themselves on a different end of the stick so to speak with respect to law enforcement, find themselves injured kill. And we don't want to see that either for any community. That's right. That's right. Marshall, you've been doing this work in Los Angeles County for a long, long time for 22 years. What, what are the sort of patterns that you're seeing these days, as you help track hate crimes in the most populous county in America. Well the trends that we see year after year are pretty consistent about three quarters of hate crimes target for groups, the largest being African Americans. We've consistently seen African Americans who only represent about 9% of LA County's population, being about half of the victims of race racial hate crimes, terrible terrible over representation. One of the factors that has been driving the high number of anti black hate crimes for decades has been street gangs, they're associated with the Mexican mafia, which is the largest and most violent of the prison based gangs. And the Mexican mafia has been warring with black inmates for decades. They've given the green light for their street affiliates to try to basically conduct campaigns of ethnic cleansing trying to drive African Americans out of their neighborhoods. And fortunately, in 2019, which is the most recent complete deaths that we have is that we saw Latino and black crimes committed by gang members dropped from 47% to only 33%. So we're really anxious to see whether or not that that dip continues because it's been a huge contributing factor. The LA County may be home to about 50% of Latinos, but they only represent about a quarter of racial hate crime victims. We think that's a terrible undercount. And that's partly due that to increasing concerns that contacting law enforcement could put victims or other members of their households in jeopardy of being detected by ICE. But despite the relatively low numbers, which are not any insubstantial Latino victims are most likely of any racial group to be experiencing violent hate crimes, 88% and of those crimes, the most common are aggravated assaults. Also, in 64% of the anti Latino crimes specific anti immigrant slurs are employed, which I think is a reflection of some of the xenophobia which has been gripping the US for some time. But crimes targeting gay men, lesbians and especially transgender victims have a much higher likelihood of being of a violent nature than of other motivations. And finally, we see in consistently that in religious motivated crimes they're anti Semitic, but they tend to be non violent crimes against property, as opposed to violent crimes against people. So those are some of the things that we've picked up year after year. Hey, thank you for that. And there's a couple points there that I want to circle back to in a little while because I think some of this is counterintuitive for people at a certain level. I wonder about this. After 911 we saw this huge surge in hate crimes and bias incidents that were directed, largely at the South Asian community, it was directed at Muslim Americans it was directed at people who are perceived to be Arabs or to be Muslims. And I wonder if there's anything that we can learn from that time period, and that surge in hatred and violence for this period that we're in now where we seem to be seeing this increase in attacks on the API community. Absolutely, you know I'm South Asian so I remember that time so clearly and particularly Sikh Americans were targeted immediately and unfortunately continue to be targeted. But so last year when I started hearing about incidents impacting the East Asian community, I was immediately brought back to post 911. And I contacted colleagues who are active at that time. And we agreed that what we needed to do is create an Asian American table, leaders table, where we brought together more than 100 Asian American leaders from across the country to start scenario planning and thinking about what, how would we respond. What kind of rapid response can we have when there are hate incidents. And I hate to tell you this, but literally a year more than a year ago, we did a scenario plan of, you know, a mass shooting. Well before Atlanta happened. Well before Indianapolis, we knew it was coming. I mean, in, we were informed by the history of this country. There's a long history of anti Asian racism whether it's the Chinese Exclusion Act Japanese American internment killing of Vincent Chin, and then post 911. And it frustrates me to know and that even though we knew it was coming we couldn't prevent it. But you know some of the key things that we learned from that time is first of all, we needed to be coordinated and aligned as community advocates, and victims needed, need a lot of support. They're immediately inundated by press by law enforcement victims families have, you know, lots of questions they don't even understand the criminal legal system. They're pulled into it and they don't even know what's a pretrial hearing what's this what's that. So we are we have to be there to support victims families. We also have to be very, you know, mindful of, of people being able to tell their own stories are communities being able to speak for ourselves. Rather than, you know, cops saying, Oh, the perpetrator had a bad day, you know, and other people saying, actually, there is race and gender at play here. And, you know, the fact that you can't see that is very problematic. And so, you know, all of that was in place. Actually, we put that in place before Atlanta, and which is why we were able to support and work with the local groups on the ground to make sure that people, you know, had communications training so that when you know the press is talking to them, they are able to engage, you know, to protect the families to set up the victims funds. So we learned a lot unfortunately from from post 911. The other lesson is that interpersonal violence is not the only kind of aggression that happens. When you have this kind of scapegoating, you also see state policies, right, for some Muslim communities were continue to be surveilled, continue to be targeted and discriminated against. And that is happening to Asian American communities and particularly Chinese Americans, the Department of Justice has a China initiative. They are targeting Chinese scientists for paperwork violations for, you know, collaboration with scientists in China for visa fraud, which you know is really not fraud at all, because, you know, they didn't disclose each and every other's interaction with the Chinese government. And so we see that, you know, this a similar pattern that Muslim Arab and Middle Eastern communities South Asian communities were facing post 911 impacting East Asian communities. So you feel like that's a real parallel between that time period and this time period now. Absolutely. And one of the other lessons learned from that time period is that I think for for, you know, Muslim and South Asian communities is that we couldn't fight back alone. We needed to do this work in solidarity with other communities of color. And that's the same lesson that we are trying to employ today, which is, we have to work with black and Latinx communities. Some of this violence is interracial violence. We've got to talk about that. We've got to address it together because we're all in this container of white supremacy. And so, you know, and part of the one of the tactics is to divide us. And so we have to work really hard to fight back against that. Right, right. Thank you. Hey, Damon, I want to ask you about the the scene in Congress. I know a couple years ago. There was the no hate bill that was introduced that was supposed to sort of update our approach to hate crimes. I know that the Emmett Till anti lynching bill has been introduced. It's been defeated as well. I know now both of those bills are back. What is happening in Congress and what do you think the prospects are for this legislation. Well, great question, you know, just yesterday I was glad to learn from our team that the no hate act which was incorporated into another piece of legislation has now passed we expect it to be signed into law tomorrow. Right. And now, here's the thing, everything will not change overnight. Right. This is federal legislation. It creates puts in place some of the things we've been talking about today, including what was law enforcement, but the uptake has to be there. The, the tenacity, the push from communities has to has to continue. And I think we expect, you know, to see what we're hopeful to see something of the same with the Emmett Till anti lynching act. It is just atrocious that in this country, which has a horrible documented history of anti black racism and lynching of black people in particular, that we've never had federal legislation that addresses that that just calls it exactly what it is. And that bans and outlaws sure murder is is illegal in every state under federal statutes sure racist hate violence is illegal under the Matthew Shepherd and James Bird legislation and other legislation as well but we need this anti lynching legislation. In some ways, it is symbolic AC and some ways is kind of a thermometer of where we are as a country and as a people what our values are. I think our laws are reflection of what our shared values and understandings are, but in many ways it's also functional. And I look forward to the provisions of the no hate act actually being implemented. But again, we have to stay vigilant to make sure that there is uptake at the local and state level. And here's, here's a thing to as I understand it and tell me if I'm right about this with the no hate act and part of that is is reporting that it's supposed to really strengthen and improve the reporting process does that sound right to you. Right, reporting and also training is are important facets as well and I think on the reporting side is really about not just the something happened is it recorded. You know right now we have incidents that are recorded as if they happened in some parallel universe, you know, what is a murder. But yeah, but who's actually active of races hate as well. Do we have recording systems reporting systems that can cognize both. It's a very basic thing, but you'd be surprised and part of this is because, again, we haven't brought in our aperture so to speak as a as a national respect to shared interest and understandings that a crime or the incident can be more than one thing they can be intersectional that it could be because this was an Asian American elder, like it's important to be able to track that and not just say oh it's anti Asian violence period. But I think you have to be able to track it as well. Similarly, what's what happens to black boys who are profiled in regard it was suspicion and viewed as older than a really are for no reason except for their race. We have to be able to track that what happens with black girls and being pushed out of school. We have to be able to track these things in an intersectional way so the data reporting system that's called for that legislation. There's an incentive I should say to encourage and assist law enforcement agencies to use that kind of data reporting so we can have better information. Then of course the test is, what do we do with that information. What does a local law enforcement agency do with it, and also what can communities do with it as well. One thing I will say about the reporting, no matter how good your reporting system, it will always lag in terms of lived experience. There's going to be a time lag from the time that you get good data between between the time something happens when you get the data. And so we also have to make room for that anecdotal for that kind of qualitative information and data collection that really is reflective of what's happening. All of the things that have been happening for the last several months in particular. There is some data available but since there's uniform data, you'll be waiting for some time for that. So that is a an important starting point, but it is not a destination. It's a basic thing that we've demanded that communities have demanded and I'm glad that we're making some inroads towards it. Right, right it can be a trigger for action but it's not. If you still need that action. You know, I've been tracking the white supremacist groups the anti government groups the militia groups for a bunch of years now. And as I was following the protest through 2020 and through the election and after the election was really interesting to me that there were kind of a couple different things that I was seeing and one was, it felt like the white supremacist had been kind of in the shadows again for a couple years they've been off, not so open not out at the protest so much. And then I'm seeing all these guys who are overt and a valid white nationalist at the stop the steel protest at the, you know overturn the election protest. I'm seeing guys who are Nazi skinheads who are kind of slightly rebranding themselves and, you know, just slightly distancing themselves from their, their Nazi past. Marshal in LA like how, how much of an impact do these sort of organized hate groups the ultra nationalist groups the extreme right groups, how much, how much of an effective do they have it in your jurisdiction. Well in 2019 crimes where there was evidence of white supremacist ideology grew 38%. But these were most commonly cases of swastikas or other hate symbols in graffiti. But now that included nearly half of the religious motivated crimes, but none of those included specific names of white supremacist groups. In the past, we've had reported crimes tied to organizations like Hammersmith nation, Nazi low riders, the pecker woods. So the white supremacist groups that claim to have a presence in Southern California might have an outdated website or appeal box but not actual active chapters as a matter of fact in recent years when some of those organizations have tried to have public rallies. They've had to import supporters from all over the state and sometimes crossing state lines to get 25 people standing together and they're always, you know, outnumbered 1020 times, maybe 100 times by counter protesters. We think that most of the white supremacists who are operating in Southern California. They're not formal members of organizations but they connect with each other through the internet. Now there are a couple of newer groups that are visible, like the proud boys and the rise above movement, and some have been arrested and convicted of crimes, but those crimes occurred in other jurisdictions, where they actually travel to try to attack and T fog counter protesters in Northern California, you know, some, you know, were convicted for being at Charlottesville. And so we do know that they are active in Southern California but that's not where their crimes have occurred. Can I just add that last spring, our office was tagged as were I think other businesses in Chinatown in San Francisco by the Patriot front, and they went and put their stickers all over they put it on our sign. And they are an offshoot I think of the group in from Charlottesville. And that happened, I believe in Seattle as well. And I want to second Marshall's point about social media. One of the things that we're seeing is these white supremacist groups are actually trying to put trying to court Asian Americans and divide Asian Americans from black communities in particular. And, you know, putting in messages, saying, you know, why did you support criminal justice reforms. You know, it's black people. It's the reason you're being harmed are black people. I mean, you know, really offensive messaging to our communities. You know, as if they care about our communities. But it's, yeah, it's it's pretty bad. That's, that's so interesting. So are you, you are seeing this on social media that the white supremacist groups are trying to recruit members of the Asian American community and sort of turn them against other communities of color. Yeah, recruitment in the sense of like, being a part of the group but trying to cause racial, you know, separation and dissension and blaming, you know, and, and so it's it's really problematic because they they're actually quite sharp and they're not just doing it in English forums. They're going to, you know, we chat and these other forums that are in language. There's like Korean language, there's, you know, try Chinese language media as well as other, you know, Asian language media. And so we see these messages, courting our communities, you know, trying to have people oppose social progress. AC, if I could, you know, it's this is part of a longstanding, you know, I would say tradition of ensuring that crime is that the race is criminalized and that crime is racialized right. And it's also reflected frankly, in terms of the narratives the negative narratives about access to institutions so for example on higher education at the lawyers community right now we're fighting alongside a API. Yeah, and other orgs at UT Austin and Texas at Harvard. There's an approach to try to get up to the Supreme Court right now with the new super conservative majority super majority conservatives, and also UNC Charlotte and Yale as well there's litigation on multiple fronts, and in pretty much every front the new tech is, well, this hurts Asians so Asians you should be outraged. Like, look what these black people are doing to you. And so, and you see the in game. It's all designed so that when Asian American API communities are attacked, who's going to come to support you. Who's going to come to your defense and that's why that kind of authentic solidarity that RT talked about a few minutes ago is so very important we have to resist these efforts to divide, while also addressing real issues between and across communities. So the really frightening websites that I saw early on during the pandemic, right after there were the first reports of anti Asian violence was one, which, which was labeled the second amendment as the best friend that Asian Americans ever had, and the photographs were during of Korean merchants on the rooftops of their stores during the la riots with rifles. And this was one of those things that I just feared was going to feed stereotypes about black criminality, and pose it in such a way that was going to alarm people and get them to see vigilantism was the answer and unfortunately we have seen gun sales going up in Asian American neighborhoods. I actually don't know whether or not the originators of that website could work. We're from outside of the community or just ultra conservative forces would from within. And that's, you know, Marshall that was one of the things I was going to circle back to and everybody's kind of touched it now with these sort of conversations that we need to have between different communities of color, and not purely between the white majority and communities of color that often there's these fault lines between our different communities that sort of get left out of the conversation. And I touched on that in different ways. I thought that was an important thing that I wanted to make sure we dealt with Simon is telling me that we have to wrap up my portion of the program and invite in the audience and let them have their say now. So if that's cool with everyone he's going to start throwing questions from the audience to us. If you appreciate this discussion. We have a lot of questions and we're trying to get to all of them. My first question from to the panelists is that, what are the viable pathways and next steps for accountability. You know we talked a little bit about the systemic kind of level talking about, you know, the anti hate laws that are being hopefully, you know, passed but what about on the individual level. I think context matters. And so I go back to what Damon was saying about, you know, schools, and actually right right before the pandemic started some of the hate incidents were at schools. And we are now that schools are going to be back in many schools are going back in person we I imagine that's going to continue in that kind of context I think some sort of restorative circles that a lot of you know that some schools are experimenting with is one way to address accountability, you know having a peer process of restorative justice process that goes to the heart of, you know, why this incident happened, what are the beliefs. I think what's hard is we don't want to contribute to a school to prison pipeline. And what we've learned and what we've just talked about is, you know, when you're in prison, you're get you get separated by rates, and it reinforces any racial bias that you might come in with. It's not getting to the root of it. And so I think that's the challenge we see a lot of gaps with our current system around rehabilitation and addressing, you know, how do we walk people back from from their racial biases. And so that's, you know, that's something I think many Asian American advocates are struggling with, you know, we're working on ending massive incarceration. Do we want to reinforce this existing system. Now I would also underscore what Artie said about education and to add to what I mentioned earlier, students are going back to college campuses as well. And it's critical that in these, there's so many contested spaces you know my alma mater, LSU Louisiana State University gave us alumni like Donna Brazil but also David Duke. Right. And so, you know, when you have, when you have those kind of of, I will even call them polar opposites but different types of voices. You know, you know, on a college campus, you have to be able to navigate that space so at the lawyers community we're actually developing tools we've done develop some in the past but developing more tools for college campuses to use. I also think it's important for higher leadership to step in. I want to give a big shout out to Kevin Warren, the commissioner of the big 10 athletic conference for the work that they've done with their anti racism coalition throughout that conference to really help students and navigate these contested spaces, and also move from thought leadership and connection to action on those individual college campuses we need to see more of that, especially as campuses are repopulated this fall. My next question is, you know, folks are kind of curious, who, you know, may deal with, or be threatened by hate crimes themselves. And so, folks were wondering, you know, what do people do if they see hate, or if they witness or they experience you know, I'm just curious if there are any alternatives or any ways in which people and tools in which people can use during these in these situations. Yeah, my organization, advancing justice Asian Law Caucus is regularly as well as our partners at other advancing justice organizations across the country are holding bystander intervention trainings. And I think it's a great way they're open to the community there's no cost. You know, folks want to get trained on how to safely and comfortably intervene. You know, if you're witnessing a hate incident. And it, you know, obviously context matters, but there are, you know, different options, whether you, you know, go for help or whether you intervene at the moment, and that you people can learn about. I will tell you that, given that you know over 65% of what's reported is verbal assault. People feel very traumatized it happens in public, like at a cafe park. Somebody tells them, you know calls them like the sea word go back to your country. And, and what's doubly traumatizing is that they are surrounded by people, and no one does anything. No one intervenes no one stands up for them no one documents it I mean it's, it's really bad. And so, I understand it as a bystander you might be frozen, you might, you know, you might not know how to react. So, thinking, if folks do you want to get trained it's a great way to learn how to, how to. This wonderful training we shared it with our staff, a couple of months ago, along with you know, just other examples of what individuals have done but it's also important to learn from when there is in action. It's important to know when people stand by and allow things to happen and don't even express concern or comfort thereafter, but on the resource front I didn't want to mention that at the lawyers committee. We've organized our work on stopping hate into what we call the James Bird Junior Center to stop hate, and we actually have a hotline that the details of which we make available to community partners, and a couple of different ones. The hotline is 18449 no hate 18449 no hate and the numbers 18449664283. We encourage people to call as important to document that's human rights 101 the document was happening so people stories can be heard, and also we can direct them to resources and assistance as well. I mentioned that in the midst of all this tragedy and anxiety there have been some very, very moving examples of how people have stepped in and intervened in Orange County recently there was an elderly Korean couple 79 and 80 years old, who were punched and knocked to ground. And the other people who were exercising in the park immediately surrounded him and held him until law enforcement arrived. Turned out that two weeks previously he had harassed another Asian woman and, you know, had made it a habit of doing that in that park. There was a Chinese immigrant family also in Orange County, who were the recipients of all kinds of harassment, including, you know, youth neighborhood youth bringing their doorbells in the middle of the night to like wake wake them up. And the neighbors got together and they put up with lawn chairs in front of their house and they took shifts. And staying doing patrols throughout the night to make sure that the family felt safe. So until until it ended and so I think people have really stepped up when when they've been able to in some cases. Thank you. You know, we're focusing more on California today but obviously hate crimes and hate groups is present across the country and so what what are what is happening across the country. Damon you know you are in DC right so you're thinking more nationally as well. But we're just kind of curious about what is being done that can hold states with high presences of hate crimes and hate groups accountable across the country. I think the accountability accountability cannot be only at the state level of state government. A lot of, you know, this is interpersonal as well. I do think that the state, so to speak, in a broader sense local county federal state has a special role to make sure that all of us are protected are protected and serve as they say a law enforcement. So I think that's that's part of the obligation, but also that affirmative obligation to be able to understand these, these tensions I mean we're coming out of the census count there'll be some questions about the numbers but we'll get a rough sense of what has been significant growth and populations and what has been growth and populations. And as well there's battles about redistricting and drawing district lines. There's also going to be some of these tensions this is not rocket science we have all the information we need if we listen to young people if we listen to parents. If we listen to educators we can see what his fault lies are so if the questions about how to hold state governments accountable. I think that's a really small part of the picture, but gubernatorial leadership will be great. So leadership of state legislators whether they be a super majority Republican as so many states are, or whether they be by split leadership in a bicameral legislature Democrat Republican, or other parties I think it's important to everyone see this as their issue this is not an Asian issue this is not a black issue this is our issue as a nation so certainly would love to see more leadership forthcoming at the state level. And I will just add that, you know at this Asian American leaders table we've got folks from Texas, Ohio, Wisconsin, you know, hate is happening definitely all over the country. And it's actually much harder in communities where there are advocacy groups there aren't, you know, resources for community and representation really matters in that moment. And Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial minority in this country. By 2050 we're going to be 10% of the population. And I think people are realizing that. And you see this growth in the South, you see it in the Midwest, you see it in key regions. And part of what we've been doing is actually supporting local partners on both voter protection, voting access. It's interesting, because we need people who come from our communities in local and state government, because if we don't have that, we won't be seen as a community. Thank you for that. We'll be getting a lot of questions about. We talked a little bit about this but about the insurrection in January and so we see I definitely wanted to come to you I know we have some questions. I'm curious about what you have to say in your reporting but can you talk a little bit more about the work that you were doing during for your documentary but then also the trends and things that you realized since you know, a few years back when the Charlottesville rally happened. So I touched on this a little bit earlier when I was blabbing on and on, but you know it was interesting to me to see if you look back to my mind, Charlottesville is the apex of the modern over white supremacist movement. That's 2017 and then after that a lot of people in that movement, kind of go back into the holes from Wednesday came they leave the movement they perhaps adopt terrorist tactics and then we see this wave of terror action after that with synagogue shootings with the shootings in El Paso with the Christ church shooting. But there was another group of people that said hey, what we should do is rebrand and we should get rid of the overt Nazi imagery, we should get rid of the obviously racist sloganeering. We should do something that's a little bit came down. So, for example, the group that RT was talking about Patriot Front. They had been a group that was in Charlottesville. It was their member. They were called at that time, Vanguard America was their member James Fields who killed Heather higher who drove his car into the crowd. After Charlottesville, the group is part of this bigger discussion that says hey, it's all about optics it's all about how people look at us branding. So we're going to use American icons we're going to use the flag we're going to use the American eagle we're going to use an appeal to patriotism and we're going to push for basically the same agenda, but it's going to be slightly less. Obviously racist and I think that was what we've seen in the last couple years and that was a lot of the people who were at the Capitol on January 6. Well, I would just add that the alignment of some of those elements AC with a prior presidential campaign and administration I think was telling of the kind of real politics they were involved in right like well women I get everything we want but we'll get a champion of sorts in the White House was the effort and just in terms of the rebranding. Some of this is recent vintage some of it may not be really new at all I mean, we've been making America great again for a long time, you know, David Duke in the 70s in the 80s and and former President Trump and probably even if you go way before that so I think what you're saying I agree with you like there's been the efforts to rebrand and recycle. Right the rhetoric are very intentional and are designed to play to the psyches to divide communities along those fault lines that Arthur was talking about. And the same ones we hear today what we heard 50 years ago 30 years ago, and we'll probably be hearing them again. Right, because the stuff isn't going away. I'd like to think that as America grows and changes and demographic shift that does some work for us but it won't do all of the work. We have to, you know, stay vigilant and stay alert. I think the fact that polls show that 40% of white Americans are very anxious about the demographic changes. Really underscores why immigration has been seized upon by a lot of white nationalists as a hot button issue and possibly the most polarizing one in America today. I think that the mainstreaming of white nationalism and address in publicly getting involved in public policy matters around that, you know, is a strategic one on their part and tapping into that fear that whites are being replaced. I think that there's only one going to be one way to stop that which is to close down the borders, and to reject dreamers and to break up families and to stop chain migration and on and on and on and that's part of the mainstreaming of their message, which actually attracts a broader breadth of support than the minute men, you know, carrying arms on the border. Thank you. We have a few more minutes left and so let's answer two more questions. The second last question is, what is the toughest reporting decision you have to make in terms of classifying something of a hate crime. What data evidence do you use to form this decision and anyone can answer that one. Well, I think the decision isn't ours. Well, Marshall, maybe you should. I'll let you go ahead. Well, following 911. There were a few cases which just caused tremendous anxiety and panic among Muslims, people of Middle Eastern and South Asian background. I remember in one. There was a Palestinian door to door salesman who was found shot to death. Near his vehicle, his wallet was taken, and it was widely assumed since this occurred right after 911 that this was a hate crime. As it turned out, as the investigation proceeded, it did turn out to be gang members who had witnessed him doing his rounds and knew when to inspect him, and they tried to car jack him. And when he didn't give up his keys, one of them panic shot him, which was not the plan. And then they ran in different directions and fled the scene without taking anything. And so, I mean, I think that there are a number of crimes, particularly, you know, during that, that difficult period, which were, which caused tremendous tremendous fear. And they, they turned out not to be, and there's some other cases that were similar to that which have never been solved, you know, and we don't know, you know, what the, what the actual motivation was for some of, for some of the homicides. Yeah, I would just like to underscore that point, which is, we don't always know the motivation, but we know the impact, the impact on our communities like after Atlanta. We work with a lot of low wage workers who work in nail salons and in other care industries. They were afraid to walk out their door. And so, you know, that's, that's the piece that I think we also need to focus on is, you know, how do we provide a level of safety for our communities when they these are, you know, these these harms are so public. Thank you. My final question is, what are the most effective strategies you've seen used to counter hate, whether organized groups or use. Yeah, organize groups. So, I think there are a number of different strategies. Definitely one, a community coming together to say that we're not going to tolerate this is important. And so, you know, public affirmations of care individual affirmations of care, you know, people reaching out to each other. That's, you know, important, because we have to set our values as a community and as a society. And if people are breaking those values they have to have consequences for that. And so, you know, that's one of the key things. I think if you're trying to get at, you know, deep rooted hate. It's a long journey of, of, you know, working with people and their trauma. I mean, I think there are some groups that work with, you know, former white supremacists or neo Nazis, where they talk about how these people, you know, a child is not born hate is taught. And, you know, they grew up in environments that were taught hate plus you have all this messaging, you know, whether it's anti blackness anti Asian messaging it's around. And so that gets absorbed by people. And so, you know, having a long process of how a person delving deep into their background and acknowledging the harm and restorative justice practices do this, but it requires a deep commitment. And I don't know that we've committed to that kind of those kinds of systems, like we should read we need to, you know, we're looking at where hate happens look at our prison system. And so, you know, I think those are some of the things that we need to address. The number one issue is multicultural education, and not just the introduction of heroes and contributions by different, you know, racial and ethnic groups, and religious groups to this country but also delving into in an age appropriate way through out K through 12 about dealing with difficult chapters of American history and the history of systemic racism and inner ethnic group conflict. I think that it's shocking that at now, requiring in California and certain state systems that a single ethnic studies requirement classes required, you know, for graduation. I mean, I think that that's far too little. And I think that as a part time professor of ethnic studies and always amazed at how ill prepared students are freshmen and sophomores for being culturally literate to be able to talk with people who are different from themselves for being able to empathize because they had no preparation in their K through 12 education and I think that that's pivotal and that's not a short answer, but I think that long range that's, you know, foundational. I would agree with Artie and Marshall, I would just say, really this is about truth telling that as long as the information is accurate is great there's so much misinformation intentional disinformation out there today. Just simply laying the truth before folks doesn't do all the work, but it has to be a foundation otherwise, we have, you know, people young and elder arguing over things that they each think are facts which are made that actually be true at all. So I think starting with the foundation of truth and understanding our history is important to figure out how we can move forward. Well, that's our time for today. Thank you so much to our panelists, Artie Coley to David Hewitt and Marshall for this excellent conversation and our moderator AC Thompson. Thank you for this excellent discussion about hate groups. I'd like to thank our special, especially thank you to McKinsey and Company for their support and thank you to our audience for joining us today and for your thoughtful questions. Again, this event will be recorded so you'll receive us tomorrow with the full video of today's event and so be on the lookout for that. We'll also post it on our YouTube channel. And from all of us, Propolka, thank you for joining us. Have a great rest of your day and see you next time.