ATLANTA — President Biden denounced what he described as a “crisis in anti-Asian violence” on Friday as he flew into a city reeling from a deadly shooting spree.
A 21-year-old man has been charged with murdering eight people, including six women of Asian descent, in and around Atlanta on Tuesday night, triggering anxiety among a community already on edge amid rising levels of harassment and violence during the coronavirus pandemic.
The killings saw plans for Biden’s visit hastily revamped. Instead of events to publicize his $1.9 trillion spending bill, as part of his “Help is Here” tour, he and Vice President Kamala Harris met leaders from the Asian American community to hear concerns and offer support.
Biden used a planned address at Emory University to condemn anti-Asian violence and take a thinly veiled dig at his predecessor, former President Donald Trump.
“Hate and violence often hide in plain sight,” he said. “It’s often met with silence. But that has to change because our silence is complicity. We cannot be complicit. We have to speak out, we have to act.”
BIDEN STUMBLES UP STEPS OF AIR FORCE ONE
Investigators say the suspect suggested he was motivated by a sex addiction and wanted to remove any temptation by attacking massage parlors. Other reports suggest he may have targeted sites he had visited as a customer, wanting them to no longer exist.
But political leaders and civil rights campaigners say the issue is more complicated and that anti-Asian sentiment may have played a part. Stop AAPI Hate said it had recorded almost 3,800 incidents directed at Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the past year.
Speaking after hearing the concerns of Asian Americans in a private meeting, Biden described it as a year of “living in fear.”
“Whatever the motivation, we know this: Too many Asian Americans have been walking up and down streets and worrying, waking up each morning in the past year, feeling their safety and the safety of their loved ones [is] at stake,” he said. “They’ve been attacked, blamed, scapegoated, and harassed. They have been verbally assaulted, physically assaulted, killed.”
The reason was clear, he said, in what appeared to be a shot at Trump’s frequent habit of referring to COVID-19 as the “China flu” or “Kung flu.”
“We’re learning again what we’ve always known: Words have consequences,” he said. “It’s the coronavirus. Full stop.”
Both he and Harris used the term “crisis” to refer to the apparent surge in violence.
“While we do not yet know motive, as I said last week, we condemn in the strongest possible terms the ongoing crisis of gender-based and anti-Asian violence that has long plagued our nation,” said the president in a statement released as he traveled.
Bianca Jyotishi, the organizing manager for the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum Georgia, issued her own statement saying she appreciated Biden’s trip to Atlanta, which was arranged around a visit to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters to thank employees there for their work on the pandemic.
“Asian American women have been the targets of racialized misogyny long before the backlash to COVID-19 and we need a response that tackles the systemic racism and white supremacy that continues to plague our nation,” she said.
Sens Ossof and Warnock and an amped up student crowd going bonkers at Emory College after Biden speech pic.twitter.com/Cx3prAFuYq
— Rob Crilly (@robcrilly) March 19, 2021
The Peach State is also a key political battleground. Biden won narrowly in the presidential race, and when Democrats flipped two Senate seats in January, it gave the party control of the upper chamber. Although some of the political events were ditched, Biden still met Georgia voting rights campaigner Stacey Abrams, front-runner to be his party’s 2022 candidate for governor.
Crowds of students erupted with whoops when she arrived at Emory University for the meeting.
Georgia is already the epicenter of the country’s tussles over voting rights. Georgia Republicans want to tighten rules with laws that would limit weekend early voting and add ID requirements for absentee ballots.
The day began with an early scare for the president. Weeks after breaking a bone in his foot, he stumbled badly as he climbed the steps to Air Force One ahead of his departure from a blustery Joint Base Andrews.
Twice he had to grab the handrail to save himself from toppling over completely.
“It’s very windy outside,” said principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre aboard Air Force One when asked about the stumble. “He is doing 100% fine.”
His first stop was a visit to CDC headquarters, where he and the vice president were briefing on the latest developments in the COVID-19 pandemic and thanked scientists for their efforts.
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“We owe you a gigantic debt of gratitude, and we will for a long, long, long time,” he said.
