UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge Develops Online Anti-Racism Hub Focusing on Asian Americans

A new website known as the Movement Hub was developed by the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge (CNK) to serve as a centralized platform to amplify on-the-ground activism and organizing by Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The website offers resources for and by AAPI organizations to promote cross-racial unity. “It’s our hope that this site will be a useful tool to raise awareness on the intersectional issues impacting the AAPI community and other communities of color,” said Paul Ong, UCLA Luskin research professor and CNK director.

The hub’s resources, developed by CNK Senior Researcher Silvia R. Gonzalez in conjunction with the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund, will facilitate connections between people’s experiences and data. For example, the hub allows people to report hate crimes against AAPI people and find resources to help victims. From March to early August of 2020, more than 2,500 hate crimes against AAPI people were reported to Stop AAPI Hate, which tracks and responds to incidents of hate, violence, harassment, discrimination, shunning and child bullying involving AAPI people.

“Anti-Asian rhetoric in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to violence and hate crimes against our communities, repeating historical racist and xenophobic patterns,” said Bo Thao-Urabe, senior program strategist at the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund, which provided $2 million toward an anti-racism response network in 20 states. “We have to find ways to participate in the global uprising for justice and radical transformation. Our anti-racism response network and the Movement Hub are resources to help AAPI organizations do that.”