For Immediate Release
Monday, May 17, 2021
CONTACT:
Silvia Lew
Co-Chair, Media & Publicity Committee
Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association
communications@apalaweb.org
The Asian Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA) stands in solidarity with the Sikh community, who lost four of its members in a mass shooting on April 15 at a FedEx warehouse; of those that were lost are Amarjeet Johal (66), Amarjit Sekhon (48), Jaswinder Kaur (64), and Jaswinder Singh (68).
We acknowledge that the Sikh community has experienced xenophobia, bigotry, and violence, including being targets after 9/11 and the 2012 racist shooting in Oak Creek, WI at a Sikh house of worship. This act of violence within the Sikh community comes almost a month after the targeted mass shooting of Asian Americans in Atlanta, which continues to unearth deep seeded supremacist ideologies and state inaction that permeates the experiences of both Asian immigrants and Asian Americans in the United States. We acknowledge the collective trauma and historical invisibility of the Sikh community and stand in solidarity.
APALA strongly condemns these hate crimes and targeted attacks against the Sikh community. As always, we urge our library community to stand with us by publicly condemning anti-AAPI racism through visible actions in battling discrimination, xenophobia, and white supremacy.
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Founded in 1980, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. All donations to APALA are tax deductible and support our work for library services, programs, scholarships, awards, and grants related to library services benefiting Asian/Pacific Americans and Asian/Pacific American librarians.