The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) will host an educational outreach workshop series to address hate, discrimination and violence toward the Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI) community. This AAPI initiative is in direct response to the increasing violence toward the AAPI community which has continued to escalate since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a May 2021, report by the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum and Stop AAPI Hate, Asian American and Pacific Islanders and girls are prime targets of hate and discrimination against the AAPI community. The recent shootings across several Atlanta spas that claimed the lives of eight people, including six Asian American women, came on the heels of a staggering increase in hate incidents targeting the AAPI community. Hate incidents, which include both hate crimes and incidents of violence or discrimination, against AAPIs rose sharply over the past year, with over 6,600 reports collected by Stop AAPI Hate between March 2020 and March 2021. In particular, AAPI women and girls report these hate incidents 2.2 times as often as AAPI men; and AAPI non-binary people have also reported experiencing heightened incidents of hate. In Texas, AAPI Stop Hate reports that Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese are the most heavily targeted ethnicities within the AAPI community for hate bias and discrimination, and that Texas ranks fourth in the number of hate and bias incidents – behind California, New York and Washington.
"We cannot ignore the dangers that so many in our community face," said Civil Rights Officer Carol Johnson. "The City of Austin is committed to ensuring safety and equality for all its residents."
This workshop series will educate participants on civil rights investigations and is geared toward reducing the negative impacts of hate biases toward the AAPI community in Austin. The Office of Civil Rights and the Austin Police Department will provide education on how to identify civil rights violations; how to respond to hate bias and discrimination; and how to report civil rights violations when they occur. This community partnership is one of many ways the Office of Civil Rights will continue to focus on empowering communities to combat discrimination and hate biases wherever they occur.
Register for free virtual events: - Thursday September 16, 2021 6:00PM – 8:00PM
- Saturday October 9, 2021 2:00PM – 4:00PM
Workshops will be available in Chinese Mandarin, Vietnamese and Korean. If you have a language of choice outside of these provided translations, please list your preferred language on the registration form. | 
