Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with Meet your Girl Daniel Moody. Pre recording from the Home Bunker. Folks, I hope that you have enjoyed your holiday week. We are offered just one more day, but I'm very excited to welcome to wok F Daily for the very first time Varunnicor, who is the founding executive director of AAPI
Victory Alliance. And you know, in this conversation with Varun, I ask questions, you know, about how the AAPI community has been positioned in many ways through the lens of white supremacy as model minorities, and what does that mean, right, and how they better move past that distinction to link arms with other communities of color, the black community and other communities of color, And you know, I ask questions about what it is that we get wrong right about
this very diverse, very layered community. And on top of that, we get into a conversation which is just shilling right, But the last couple of headline mass shootings that we saw were actually at the hands of AAPI individuals, directed
towards people in their own communities. And Varun talks about a really startling new marketing campaign that the NRA has been doing directing their attention to this community which is very affluent but has had a very low gun purchasing rate, and how they have exploited, how the NRA has exploited these last shootings and the rise in anti Asian hate that we saw at the hands of the Trump administration and particularly during COVID has used this to try and
get new fucking members. And it's really wild and crazy, and so we talk about so very much in this conversation, and you know, it's one that we will continue to have on WOKF because I believe that we need to What does it look like right to really form a multi racial democracy, particularly at a time when white supremacy and white supremacy, domestic terrorists violence is at an all time high. What does it look like to link arms to elevate each other's stories successes as well as traumas,
and then how do we find solutions together? So I'm really excited, folks, to bring you this conversation with Varun Neicor, who is the founding executive director of AAPI Victory Alliance. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to ook F Daily for the very first time Varun Neicor, who is the founding executive director of the AAPI Victory Alliance as well
as the newly launched AAPI Think Tank. Varun, it's great to have you on WOKF and I want to start off with talking today about the fact that whenever we have had a whether it is a mass shooting, it is a stabbing, it is a push on the subway over the last couple of years, and that violence being directed towards a member of the AAPI community. We have news reports, we have headlines, we have coverage for what feels like a hot minute, and then we go about
our business in mainstream media. And so I want to get a sense from you how you feel about the coverage right of said violence against your community, and then also how do we continue to have the conversation regardless of specific acts that reached the headlines.
Yeah, and I appreciate you having me on, Daniel, Thank you so much. This is such a great opportunity to tell the larger story of what's happening in America to day, at least from the API perspective. You know, the coverage
is disheartening, I would say in many respects. Right, We've heard about shootings go on, you know, literally for decades, as gun ownership in the United States has increased, you know, manyfold, Right, I think there's six hundred million guns in the country or so, and so with I would say the nuance that's happening more recently is this concern legitimately over the numbers of mass shootings, which are now occurring about one
a day according to the Gun Violence Archives. And interestingly, right, I think there's another trend here that since Sandy Hook about ten years ago, a little bit more than ten years ago now, the number of ar style weapons, which are the assault weapons being utilized in these mass shootings,
has seen also an exponential rise since Sandy Hook. So folks are those with guns, they're not only utilizing these weapons, but they're utilizing these weapons because obviously they want to cause the most amount of mass destruction in the shortest period if possible. Right. So that's that's alarming. And so I think the statistic is roughly seventy five percent of the mass shooting incidents are now caused by assault weapons. Right.
So that's why a lot of folks, including our organization and many many others are calling for an assault weaponspan media has been it's sort of interesting, right, It's there's so many things going on in today's new cycle that we, yes, we hear about a mass shooting, there's a lot of heartbreak, and then we move on to either the next mass shooting or we move on to the next you know, incident, whether it's the overthrow putin in Russia this week, or
it's something about you know, Donald Trump's myriad of cases the next right. Then it's it's the desensitization. I would say, over all of this that alarms me. We are, on one hand, desensitized and on the other hand, I think
we are also we're concerned. Uh. And one one data point specifically is you know you're referring to and your second question was referring to the API community and how we're sort of seeing what I would call the back end of the of the of the tail of the rise and racist incidents against the ape community post pandemic.
Right now, it was sort of random acts of violence, if you will, and it's now turning into our people are being targeted by guns, right and so you've seen the extreme nature of the violence and the hate now starting to rear its ugly head. And it's unfortunately it's not only folks that are not Asian that are causing incidents, but it's also Asian Americans who are you know, responding to the marketing And I'd love to talk to you
about that more. But we're responding to the marketing by the NRA to our community, exploiting our fears, marketing guns to us. We are purchasing the guns. And now unfortunately in certain cases we're actually utilizing those guns, like we saw in Monterey Park and have Tom Bay earlier than year. Both of those mass shootings were Asian Americans.
Unfortunately, let's talk about that because you know, here's the thing about the n RA uh and there and their underhandedness and how and who they market to and when,
which is that the marketing is based on fear. Right, So, any community that is currently being targeted outside of the black community because they don't want the black community to have guns, but any other community that is being targeted, they then see a marketing opportunity, right, a marketing opportunity at the hands of the very thing that is killing
said members of the community. It's a it's it is a it's such a cecuitous and crazy uh web that they that they leave and it works, And I do I want to talk about those two shootings that happened that were at the hands of Asian Americans directed towards right the AAPI community, and how did you how do you grapple with that? Because you see, the media is
not very good at nuance. The media is not very good at really being able to part out and parcel and make sense of complicated issues that the media is very binary in their thinking, right, very A. Then we go to B very black and very white. So how do you talk about how do you think that we needed to have a better narrative around those kinds of incidents?
Well, you're I'll start with You're absolutely right. Mainstream media is really not We long for the days of long form media, right where you could actually have an intelligent conversation. We're devoid of intelligent conversations. You were moving from one emotion to the next emotion and uh, you know one hundred times in a thirty minute program, right, So uh, and so mainstream media is also sort of exploiting this.
They're furthering the the fear that we all fear feel rather you know, during this time, and that's why I think many of us have just turned off like nightly news. Who wants to watch that right before we go to bed? Right? And so you know, I would say in terms of this exploitation uh that the NRA is utilizing, they're not only utilizing obviously you know, to the uh TO and far the API community. Right, they look at whatever marketing
niche they can, right. They they're they're callousness. Callousness knows no bounds, their vileness knows no bounds. As well as they're racist. The racist elements of their programming no knows no bounce. So with that as an accepted baseline, you know, let's just say that, you know, the NRA saw gun sales decline in the twenty eighteen to twenty timeframe in the latter half of the Trumpet administration. Right, typically gun sales go down in Republican administrations, they go up in
democratic administrations for obvious reasons. But you know, the once again it's the exploit exploitation rather that Democrats are going to take away your guns, right, And so then they saw this sales decline, and then they did ethnographic marketing analyzes where they were like, okay, well, where can we sell guns? You know, their marketing showed, their analysis showed that essentially the API community was it was the lowest gun ownership community in the United States, and on a
per capita basis, we were also the wealthiest community. Wow, you know, why don't we mark it to Asians? They just started to market to Asians when the pandemic hit. And then of course the rhetoric that was spewed out of the last administration in Donald Trump's mouth just further the you know, the extreme pandemic. So that's the genesis of it all. But you know, the NRA kind of
took their marketing to another level. There's this Chinese American gentleman based in California who won a shooting competition and he was sort of really interesting. He was untrained, he was self taught. He wins this major shooting competition. The NRA grabs this gentleman and they decide to make him one of their national spokespeople. And of course the words that are coming out of this gentleman's mouth are every
Asian needs to own a gun. Not only is it our Second Amendment right, but also you know, just insert your you know NRA tach line here. You know, you're going to be more safe if you own a gun. You're going to keep your family safe. You know all this bs, you know, ad infinitem that we hear, you know, out of the nira's mouth every day. And and so what we saw in twenty twenty was a rise in
gun ownership sales. And the thing that concerns us as as a national organization is and I think reason statistics that we've just heard, I think it was out of the CDC, if I'm not mistaken, said that the vast majority of new gun owners are not trained. But you know, a lot of these folks have young kids in the house, and if you're not trained on safe storage. We know what happens when people own guns. By every measurable statistic and metric in the United States of America, one is
less safe. Soon sides rise, accidental death, accidental injury, intentional death, intimate partner violence. You know, just every measurable statistic is the wrong way. And I think that, you know, we need to do a better job as a community organization. And frankly, a lot of you know, I think we need to have you know, much like we saw smoking public service announcements and you know, tobacco and pollution. We need to have that for gun ownership in this country,
and the gun industry should pay for this. There should be a tax. There should be you know, required insurance on guns. If guns had an insurance requirement on them like every other, like major thing in this country, the cost of a gun would go up tremendously because the
liabilities alone on a person owning a gun. Folks would think twice, frankly if if they had to also buy corresponding insurance to buy a gun right to protect themselves and to protect the safety of the community in those around them.
You know, It's just it's always so fascinating to me because I talked to you know, gun reform advocates all the time, and the reality is is that if having a gun made you safer, than America would be the
safest country in the world. Right that we have more guns in the hands of people than we do people in this country, and it is, you know, it's it's like two or three guns per person, you know how how it maps out, and it's just it's ridiculous and even just listening to you because this is the first time that I've heard the piece about the insurance is that, my god, you know, it is just like we we just have a free for all, a free for all
in this country of Mayhem. You don't need to be trained, you barely need to have a license, you don't need to have insurance, but you can buy as many guns as you want, and no one says anything or does anything about it. And then we have, you know, thoughts and prayers that are sent down every time that there is a shooting.
You know.
One of the other tactics that your organization is looking at is going after the banks, going after the banks that support gun manufacturers. Can you speak to that and why you think that that is a good tactic?
Yeah? And so I want to give kudos to an organization called Guns Down America, which several years ago, I think it was twenty eighteen or so, it came out with a report card. I want to say, one of the first folks in the GDP movement, the gun violence prevention movement to do this. And so what they did was they rated banks on several factors, you know, but the long and short of it was, you know, do they invest in the gun industry, do they bank, do they allow the NRA to bank with them? Are they
transparent about gun violence in America? Are they transparent about their ESG policies and their principles right related to guns and gun violence? And so they came up with this report card. It's on a website called is Your Bankloaded dot com And so you will see there's I want to say about four f rated banks, and Wells Fargo is one of them. And so what we did was
we took their analysis and we worked with them. And the reason we sort of picked on Wells Fargo is we knew that being a West Coast bank that started originally in California and frankly even bragged about and to this day still brags about the fact that during the Chinese Exclusion Act in the late eighteen hundreds they still let Chinese Americans bank with Wells far Go uh and that you know, they're good on this related APIs and good on that. We wanted to sort of call out
their hypocrisy of it all. And so what we did was we started a campaign about two months ago where we protested Wells Fargo because folks don't really realize that Wells Fargo is the bank of choice for the NRA, and when they were called to testify in Congress several years ago, all they would say in response, uh, in terms of you know, financing the gun industry and the NRA is oh, our relationship hasn't decline. But since that time several years ago, they have not set a peep,
They've not said a word. There's nothing in their annual reports in relation to guns or the NRA that's toxic of a customer. The gun industry and the NRA are And so what we decided to do is almost borrowing from you know, Jesse Jackson back in the days of the Rainbow Push Coalition, which if your listeners might recall, was a time when a lot of Fortune five hundred companies and companies in America were just not being very
good to the black community. Right. There was few if any blackboard members, there was few if any black in C suites, in higher even in middle management. And so what they did was they started protesting and boycotting these banks. And we said, you know, I hadn't seen too much of that in America as of late. It kind of happens, and it doesn't happen, but as a tactic. It's sort of lost favorability for one reason. And I started, you know, noodling around this issue, and I said, wow, you know,
Asian Americans are the wealthiest community in this country. How do we use the power, the social power, the social capital of that wealth. We're not using it at all. Right, It's basically we're about it. We don't like to brag about it. We're not very for the most outside of weddings. I joke, we don't really brag about our house. We have the big, elaborate weddings, but outside of that, one
would never know. And I started to say, you know, we need to start using this as a wedge with banks and say, look, if you don't start changing your corporate policies, if you don't stop defunding the NRA and the gun industry, the same industry and the same organization that are taking our paychecks and our deposits and our investments and then investing it in an industry that's marketing to us. We're purchasing more guns, other people are purchasing
more guns, and then they're killing our community. Right, So you can see how this vicious circle starts with assets, It starts with money, and that's what we're really trying to disrupt.
I mean, I think that it's a I mean, it's a brilliant tactic, right because I think that when we often see these crises unfold, we think about the NRA, we think about the gun manufacturers, but we don't think about all of the funding that goes on behind closed doors. We don't think about where these organizations, where these groups are putting their money, and who is holding it. And I think that it is really important to find other tactics and other avenues to get the job done right,
which is to protect as many people as possible. No one is saying, oh, take I mean, I say it to take people's guns away, because I don't see what, you know, what good they do? To be honest, and you know, had the founding fathers of this nation had you know, a magic eight ball that could have showed them what was going to happen, I doubt that they would have said, you know what, we should all still
have the right to bear arms. I think they probably would have amended the Constitution or never put it in there in the first place, you know, for one of the other the other issues that I would love to tackle with with just the few minutes that we have is that, you know, the API community is a community that has been looked at, or at least portrayed by wide Americans as the model right as you you know, the term model minority, as a way to create a
wedge between other communities of color, namely the black community, right. And so I want you to speak to what it looks like or how you move outside of that narrative that was placed on your community and work in collaboration with other with other racialized minorities uh in this country to really create a true multi race democracy, which is what we want.
Yeah, I'll give you one but one tangible example that I think is going to be the most illustrative. Given that here we are Tuesday, June twenty seventh, the Supreme Court will end their session in about forty eight hours or so. We're waiting on a number of rulings, but I would say one of the highest profile rulings we're waiting on is is what the Supreme Court is going to say on possibly striking down affirmative action in college missions. Right.
And so we are just in the process now of you know, preparing our statements and I will say this that if it wasn't for affirmative action, and I would say this multi racial democracy that relied frankly on affirmative action to ensure true diversity in you know colleges, right,
it is. It is created multi generational wealth for black, Brown, Indigenous and API communities, even the communities within the API, you know umbrella that are are not as prominent and high profile and certainly not money Southeast Asian communities, West Asian communities, Pacific Islander communities, et cetera. Right, they don't have the wealth that typical Chinese, Indian, Korean, Vietnamese might have. Right, and so we need to stand together on this issue.
We assume the worst is going to come out of the Supreme Court. Why because a lot of bad things have come out right a year ago a little bit more, we got the unfortunate Dopts decision, right, so we know that. But this is an opportunity, I think for this Supreme Court ruling that we're all waiting on right now, This is an opportunity for once again for all of us to stay and arms locked and say we cannot move forward as a nation. I cannot prosper as an Indian American.
I cannot prosper as an Asian American API if all people don't prosper, but particularly if people of color don't prosper in this nation. Those who are less I looked at this up the other day. Those that are less than twenty one years of age in this nation are already living in a majority minority you know ecosystem, right, And every year that goes by this country, you know, accelerates towards this new country, right, And if it only works for white people, you know, it's not good enough.
It's it's not good enough, and we cannot prosper as a nation. We can't have now we grow our GDP, we can't lower the black unemployment rate even more, we can't lower the Hispanic unemployment rate even more. If we're not all you know, together on this one specific issue. But I think this issue sort of tells a lot about sort of, you know, how this nation is going to exist going forward, If we're going to be successful
or we're not going to be successful. Assuming that this this case is, you know, doesn't go our way, I think we'll, well, we'll have to figure out, I would say, a better way. I don't hear a lot, and maybe I'm just not in the right circles. I don't hear a lot or see a lot in terms of you know, us in the API community talking to you know, black orgs and and Latino orgs and indigenous works, you know, about how we're going to move forward on affirmative action,
perhaps on some other issues. You know, we have seen a lot more racial solidarity, I would say since George Floyd, but I think it's kind of simmered, and maybe this will be, you know, another opportunity for us to join hands again.
Varu Nicour, thank you so much for making the time for wok F. Thank you for the work that you were doing. I think that this was a very illuminating conversation. Before you go, please tell people how they can you know, connect with your organization, how they can connect with you.
Our two main channels, of course, our website API Victory Alliance dot com and Action API Action is our Twitter handle, and of course then you can get connected to our Instagram reels as well.
Okay, wonderful, Thank you so much.
Appreciate you, Thank you, Daniel, appreciate your your voice and you uplifting this great conversation. Today.
That is it for me today. Dear friends on wok f as always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.