A virtual gathering of high-profile Asian American creators, including actress Olivia Munn, became the subject of their own discussion – after the meeting was “Zoom-bombed” with anti-Asian images.
Munn, the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, and Asian-American beauty brand Cocokind had gathered to discuss efforts to stop discrimination against the AAPI community. They wrote about the incident on their respective Instagram accounts.
“We were communing to celebrate, elevate and protect the AAPI community and we were subjected to a hate crime in real time,” Munn wrote Monday. “It was a cowardly and unconscionable act.”
Monday’s incident will be reported to the FBI, Cocokind and the NAPAWF wrote on Instagram.
“While it disrupted our conversation, we later resumed because these malicious acts will not stop the conversation,” both Cocokind and the NAPWF wrote. “We started our event with beautifully-spirited and powerful members of the AAPI community talking about our experiences and using our voices, and we will continue.”
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, racist attacks against Asian American and Pacific Islanders have steadily risen. From March 19, 2020 through September 2021, more than 10,000 hate incidents against AAPI people were reported, according to a report by Stop AAPI Hate.
Just this month, 40-year-old Michelle Go was pushed to her death in front of a Times Square subway train. Though the incident has not yet been labeled a hate crime, many advocates say the incident is still inseparable from the trend of the last two years.
“You can tell me all you want this is not related to me being Asian but when I look at pictures of Michelle Go and read the story I see myself in it,” Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of the NAPAWF, told CNN earlier this month.
