I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Thursday, March 18th.

And as we've been discussing, the nation is reckoning with anti-Asian hate crimes yet again

after a 21-year-old white male was charged

with fatally shooting eight people at spas in the Atlanta area on Tuesday night. Six of the

women who were killed were of Asian descent. While the exact motive of the killer remains unknown, investigators say it's too early

to tell. Crimes against Asian Americans have been on the rise since the beginning of the pandemic,

as we all know, according to Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit, which tracks hate crimes against

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

That's what AAPI stands for, for those you don't know.

Asian Americans reported being targeted at least 500 times in the first two months of this year.

The total number of complaints amounted to 3,795 over the past year, and that's just what gets reported.

Joining me now to discuss this, and we're going to open up the phones for Asian American listeners

to talk about what you're feeling, what you're experiencing, how you need to change your

behavior or wish others would change

theirs. We'll open the phones in a second with Jew Han, deputy director of the Asian American

Federation. Welcome to WNYC. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me, Brian.

Jew, in the case of the Georgia killings first, investigators have not ruled it out as a hate

crime.

The suspect, however, told the police he was driven not by racism, but by, quote, sexual

addiction and that the spas were something, quote, that he shouldn't be doing.

Six of the victims, as we said, were of Asian descent, seven were women.

Can you center Asian American women in this story?

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