President Joe Biden slammed the 'ugly poison' of racism that's 'plagued' the United States and then signed the anti-Asian hate crime bill at the White House Thursday.
He called the bipartisan passage of the legislation 'maybe the first break, the first significant break, in a moment in our history that has to be turned around.'
And looked delighted when he first approached the podium with Vice President Kamala Harris to see a mask-less, not socially distant crowd, adhering to the new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advice that allows vaccinated people to gather mask-less indoors.
Before Biden and Harris arrived, audience members were seen mingling, shaking hands and squeezing together for group photos.
The White House invited 68 people to the ceremony, including one Republican lawmaker, Sen. Susan Collins, as well as family members of Heather Heyer, the young activist run over by a white supremacist in Charlottesville, and Khalid Jabara, a Lebanese immigrant who was shot by his neighbor.
President Joe Biden signs the COVID-19 Hate Crims Act into law surrounded by members of Congress who, for the first time in his administration, were allowed into the White House in a mask-less large group
President Joe Biden speaks before signing the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act into law Thursday at the White House
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi takes a photo with other signing ceremony attendees at the White House's first indoor, mask-less event - marking the passage of an anti-Asian hate crimes bill
President Joe Biden addresses a mostly mask-less crowd at the White House Thursday - a first for his administration
Sen. Mazie Hirono (center) hugs President Joe Biden (right) at a signing ceremony for the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act
A mask-less House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (right) arrives at the White House's East Room ceremony where the president will sign an anti-Asian hate crimes bill into law that passed the House earlier this week
Attorney General Merrick Garland (right) chats with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (left) before the president and vice president delivered remarks Thursday. The event was the White House's first indoor ceremony sans masks
Sen. Susan Collins (right), the only Republican invited to the event, chats with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (right)
Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, arrives at the White House for a signing ceremony Thursday. The newly elected senator met with the president and vice president after a trio of Atlanta shootings targeted Asian-owned businesses and Asian women
'I believe with every fiber in my being that there are simple, core values and beliefs that should bring us together as Americans. One of them is standing together against hate. Against racism. The ugly poison that has long haunted and plagued our nation,' Biden told the crowd. 'You've taken that first step. It's an important step.'
The bill, formally known as the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act emboldens the Department of Justice to go after perpetrators of hate crimes.
In her opening remarks, Harris said the running total of hate crimes against Asians in the U.S. was 6,600 - and that's likely an under-reporting.
'I'm talking about a 61-year-old man getting kicked in the head, two elderly women being stabbed while waiting for the bus. Eight people in Atlanta getting shot on a Tuesday night,' Harris said.
Biden and Harris had traveled to Atlanta together in the aftermath of the shootings - where Asian women made up the bulk of the victims - meeting with Asian-American leaders on the ground.
'We heard about too many Asian-Americans have been waking up each morning this past year to genuinely, genuinely fearing for their safety,' Biden said was his take-away from the meeting.
'Moms and dads when they let their kids out the door to go to school were attacked, blamed, scapegoated, harassed during this pandemic,' Biden continued. 'Grandparents afraid to leave their homes even to get vaccinated for fear of being attacked. Small business owners targeted and gunned down. Students worried about two things: COVID-19 and being bullied.'
Biden also pointed out a discouraging statistic - that Asian women were twice as likely to be victims as Asian men.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Attorney General Merrick Garland are seen sitting front row at the White House Thursday for a signing ceremony with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris
President Joe Biden smiles as he walks into the East Room for his first event after masking and social distancing guidelines were relaxed
An amendment folded into the bill was named for Jabara and Heyer.
Biden briefly asked their family members to stand, noting that the two were murdered on the same day, one year apart.
'Instead of sharing the dreams they had for their children, both families share profound grief and have shown incredible courage to turn their pain into purpose,' Biden said of the family members attending the East Room ceremony.
Family members of Heather Heyer (pictured) attended the East Room ceremony Thursday. Heyer was killed in August 2017 after a white supremacist drove his car through a Charlottesville crowd of counter-protesters including Heyer
Heyer was run over by James Alex Fields Jr. (pictured), who associates said was a neo-Nazi and white supremacist
He said it took 'enormous courage' for them to come to the White House.
'When you have to show up at something memorializing your family, it's like you got the news 10 seconds ago,' Biden said, adding that he was pulling from his own experiences with grief.
'I really mean it when I say thank you, thank you for being here, it takes a lot of courage,' Biden said.
Biden said, 'Grief is universal.'
'But so is hope, so is love. It sounds corny but it really is, it really is. And hope and love can be contagious,' he said.
'We're the United States of America. We're a good and decent people. We're unique among all nations, that we are uniquely a product of a document - not an ethnicity, not a religion, not a geography, a document. Think about this, I'm being literal.'
'Every time we're silent. Every time we let hate flourish, we make a lie of who we are as a nation,' Biden said, his voice growing louder. 'I mean it literally. We cannot let the very foundation of this country be eaten away like it has been, in other moments of our history and happening again.'
Unlike other times Biden has brought up the uptick in hate crimes, he didn't take aim at former President Donald Trump.
Instead he cheered that the legislation had been bipartisan.
'I also want to thank the leader from the state of Kentucky for letting it go forward, it's important,' Biden said in reference to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who didn't filibuster the bill. McConnell also voted for it.
Earlier this week, the House passed the anti-discrimination bill with a bipartisan vote of 364 for the bill and 62 against.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it a 'momentous day,' as her Democratic caucus voted for the legislation en masse. The votes against the bill came from 62 House Republicans.
The House followed the Senate's passage, which only attracted one no vote, from Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, who became a household name after objecting to Electoral College results on the day of the January 6 MAGA riot.
More than just a statement against anti-Asian hate, the bill directs the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services to issue new guidance on the rise in violence against Asians amid the coronavirus pandemic.
House Speaker wore a facemask that read #StopAsianHate to a press conference in advance of passage of the bill Tuesday afternoon
The House passed the anti-Asian hate crime bill with a bipartisan vote of 364-62 Tuesday afternoon
Sen. Josh Hawley was the only no vote when the Senate passed the bill. On Tuesday, he was joined by 62 House Republicans
The bill expedites the DOJ's review of anti-Asian hate crimes. It also assigns an official to be in charge of the task.
The House's vote is the latest move the federal government has made to reverse what President Joe Biden considers to be the misdeeds of the last administration, placing some blame on former President Donald Trump for labeling COVID-19 the 'China virus' and 'Kung flu.'
'It's the coronavirus. Full stop,' Biden said last month when giving a speech in Atlanta after meeting with Asian-American community leaders in the wake of the series of spa shootings where Asian women were predominantly targeted.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki has also pointed a finger at the former occupant.
'I think there's no question that some of the damaging rhetoric that we saw during the prior administration blaming - calling COVID the Wuhan virus or other things, led to perceptions of the Asian-American community that are inaccurate, unfair, have raised threatening, has elevated threats against Asian-Americans and we're seeing that around the country,' Psaki said in a March briefing.
Trump has continued to use the term 'China virus' in statements since leaving office.
Biden made moves just days after his sweaing-in to stop usage of those terms by signing an executive order titled 'Memorandum Condemning and Combating Racism, Xenophobia, and Intolerance Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States' on day No. 6 of his presidency.
'The Federal Government must recognize that it has played a role in furthering these xenophobic sentiments through the actions of political leaders, including references to the COVID-19 pandemic by the geographic location of its origin,' the order said.
'Such statements have stoked unfounded fears and perpetuated stigma about Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and have contributed to increasing rates of bullying, harassment, and hate crimes against AAPI persons,' it continued.
In late March, Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered a review of how the Justice Department can best deploy its resources to combat hate crimes against Asian-Americans.
At the same time, the Biden administration said $49.5 million from COVID-19 relief funds would go toward community programs to help victims.
Last month, Japanse Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga made the surge of hate crimes in the U.S. an international concern, telling reporters that he had brought up the issue with Biden during their in-person bilateral meeting.
'President Biden's comment [that] discriminations or violences cannot [be] allowed and that he firmly opposes was extremely encouraging for me and I have renewed my confidence in American democracy once again,' the Japanese leader added, through his English translator.
The group Stop AAPI Hate - the acronym that stand for Asian-American and Pacific Islander - released a report in March that said there were 3,795 incidents reported to the group between March 19, 2020 and the end of February 2021.
One concern is that hate crimes are actually underreported.
A piece of the bill is that the DOJ will coordinate with local law enforcement and community groups and share information about hate crime reporting.
No comments:
Post a Comment