Enough! Stop hate crime on Asian small business
My uncle's convenience store in Charlotte Transit Plaza got attacked yesterday.
I feel so upset, angry, helpless, and guilty for being able to afford to be safe and stay home. But not everyone can afford to do that. If you feel compelled, please contribute to not only help my uncle’s family get back on their feet, but also to show them that the world is with them, not against them. No one deserves this kind of racism and violence.
Video and description from my sister-in-law, Grace:
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Yesterday, a man came in with a metal bar and proceeded to smash my in-laws’ store to pieces - all the while spewing racial slurs and other verbally abusive things. Meanwhile, another comes in yelling over and over, “That’s what you get! That’s what you get!”
My husband’s parents get spit on, stolen from, threatened, and verbally AND physically attacked on a daily basis. Filing police reports are part of the daily routine at their store in the public transit. Things have gotten exponentially worse since the pandemic. Business is harder. People are angrier. Simply requesting customers to keep in compliance with the mask mandate frequently results in physical altercations.
My father in law has been hospitalized more than once. My mother in law hasn’t slept for more than 3 hours a night for the last few years, trying to keep this store afloat. She has worked through every holiday, every birthday... After the initial incident yesterday, a group of guys lined up at the doors, yelling over the broken glass, making all kinds of grotesque, sexual gestures at her while she and my father-in-law cleaned the mess left behind.
I mean. They just woke up and went to work - like every other day. What exactly was it that they “did” to deserve this? They work 13-15 hours a day, 7 days a week. They work every single day, even on Christmas. They say holidays are when people need them to be open the most - the bus driver who needs to stretch his legs and grab a coffee, the mom with 3 kids who needs an emergency pack of diapers, the homeless guy who just got some change to buy a meal...
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