Over the weekend, city after city sounded like this, this is Seattle.

In Minneapolis, protesters filled a local park.

In Pittsburgh, the actress Sandra O. got her to bullhorn and led the crowd in a chant.

All of these people were coming together to try to make sense of the shooting that took place last week in Atlanta, a shooting that left eight people dead, six of them, Asian women.

In Atlanta itself, newly elected Senators Raphael Warnock and John Assoff spoke to a crowd of hundreds at the Georgia State Capitol.

I want you to know that I love you, and when I say that, I don't mean that in any sentimental way, I love you, and justice is what love looks like in public, so we've got to just suggest this.

Lisa Hagen, who's been reporting on the shootings for W-A-B-E, the local public radio station, she says there's one way in which these protests sounded different than other protests she's covered.

You know, it's become sort of mainstream and normal after a horrific act of violence, especially in the black community, to say their name, to say out loud the people who've been taken from their communities, and in this case, apparently family members have asked for that not to happen.

Lisa is a private kind of grief for a lot of the family members, you're not seeing them show up in person to sort of mourn in front of news cameras, it's a different kind of reaction to this level of devastation.

Lisa doesn't know why the families made this request, so she says it could be because of where these women died in massage parlors that many equate with sex work.

This may not want strangers speculating about exactly what the victims' work was.

Lisa Hagen One was, in fact, a licensed massage therapist who'd been laid off during coronavirus, and we'd know that a lot of them were single mothers, who, you know, I'm an Asian American, and I know that Asian mothers are, they will work tirelessly for their family, and they will never, you know, talk about the sort of sacrifices that they're making.

And that's the narrative that seems to be emerging from a lot of the family members who are speaking out.

Lisa Hagen Yeah, I was struck by one woman whose son said their mom was so happy to have moved into a house, I think, but she was rarely there, because she would spend the night at her job, because she was working really hard.

Lisa Hagen Absolutely, I mean, in many cases, you know, these were college-aged kids who were being put through school by these incredibly hardworking women, so yeah, I think just the amount of dedication to family is something that really sticks out from hearing the stories of these, these women.

The story of what happened to eight people who were gunned down in and around massage parlors on the outskirts of Atlanta last week, can be understood as an expression of hate, aimed primarily at Asian people, primarily women, but it also seems to be a story about the dark side of religious fervor, a story about guns in America.

What I'm saying is, understanding the totality of this crime, it's delicate.

Lisa Hagen I think there's an incredible amount of threats to pull on in this story, which has made it, I think, a pretty treacherous story for a lot of journalists to cover, and you can't really get your arms around at all in one story, which inevitably sort of irritates one group or another who want to see the part of the story they're focused on covered.

Today on the show, how the state of Georgia responds to this tragedy is going to reveal how its officials understand exactly what happened on Tuesday, but will anything they do, be able to prevent this kind of violence moving forward, a Mary Harris, you're listening to what next, stick with us.

I wonder if we can start with the Asian American community in Georgia, their response, and the response you've seen over the last week of so many people having an outpouring of grief and wanting to name what's happened as a hate crime, as violence against Asian Americans.

These deaths, of course, came as there's been a surge in reports of anti-Asian crime around the country, and when I was getting ready to talk to you, I was struck by the fact that your public radio station has been reporting on growing anti-Asian sentiment in Georgia for months at this point, like I found a report from May where bronze plaques were turning up on buildings in Atlanta with the words Wuhan plague on them.

Yeah. I mean, I think this is a super complicated question. There is no doubt that researchers have been doing much more than I have on this to collect the stories of people who have been discriminated against or violently attacked all over the country, especially in large cities like ours.

...