In a line that snaked down the block, hundreds of New Yorkers waited anxiously last weekend to get their hands on the cans of pepper spray.
Michelle Alyssa Tran, the founder of “Soar Over Hate,” a New York City-based nonprofit dedicated to fighting anti-Asian hatred, tweeted Sunday a video of the organization’s pepper spray giveaway at “Yu & Me Books” in Chinatown. As seen in the video, hundreds of people, mostly Asian women, waited in a line that lined the block.
“I hope this illustrates the daily fears that many experience,” Tran wrote. “We have ~1000 . handed out [pepper] sprays for women who looked like me who wanted to feel a little safer.”
The event comes less than a week after a man in Yonkers, New York, made headlines for punching the face of an elderly 67-year-old Asian woman 125 times† Tammel Esco, 42, was charged with attempted murder and a hate crime. The victim suffered brain haemorrhages, fractures to the face and lacerations to the head and face.
Evelyn Yang, wife of former presidential candidate and politician Andrew Yang, also tweeted about the long line, posting a video captioned: “This is the clearest sign that people are living in fear.”
As Korean-American actor Daniel Dae Kim noted in his retweet of Evelyn Yang’s post, buying pepper spray is illegal in New York state in many cases. while it is legal to carry “defense sprays”, pepper spray cannot be shipped, posted, or ordered to any city in New York. Instead, it must be purchased from a licensed seller such as a “fully licensed firearms dealer or pharmacist.” Even then, each resident must be at least 18 years old and limited to two pocket-sized vans per transaction.
While it’s not always clear whether an attack is racially motivated, it’s clear that many Asian Americans, especially Asian American women, live in fear. The video of the long queue for pepper spray reflects the fear many are experiencing in the present day, when anti-Asian hate crimes regularly make headlines.
Featured image via Evelyn Yang
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