NEW YORK — Andrew Yang called for the NYPD Asian Hate Crime Task Force to be fully funded during a press conference Wednesday, in the wake of a mass shooting in Georgia and a steep uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes this year and last in New York.
“What started out as invisibility or a sense of foreignness has now become hatred, violence, assault [and] people feeling that we do not belong in our own country or in our own streets,” Yang, a leading mayoral candidate, told reporters during a hastily arranged press conference in Times Square.
Yang, the son of Taiwanese immigrants who would be the first mayor of Asian descent, said he has been “always accustomed to certain levels of racism," but said the wave of violence demanded an aggressive response.