The team behind a new anti-racism education tool hopes it will spur people's confidence to speak out about racism, as Edmonton prepares for another convoy of trucks to descend on the city in protest of COVID-19 restrictions.
The Stop Race-Based Hate website, a collaboration with local marketing agency Kick Point, offers statements and responses to help articulate why something is racist, as well as suggestions of everyday actions one can take towards becoming anti-racist.
"We've been working on this for months and we were getting ready to launch it. Then the convoy stuff happened and it just reaffirmed the need for something like this," said Linda Hoang, who started the campaign along with Carmen Cheng and Jessie Cayabo.
Hoang has received racist and threatening messages after speaking out online about the "Freedom Convoy." Other racialized Edmontonians have also felt fear during the last three weeks of protests. Organizers of the movement itself have been linked to white nationalist and Islamophobic views by anti-hate experts, though some participants have tried to distance themselves from those views.
Hoang, Cheng, and Cayabo have been working on this file for much longer than the convoys have been going on. It was the Atlanta spa shootings, where six Asian women were killed, that prompted them to get together last March and talk about how they could join forces to fight racism.
"We were just so horrified and all of the pandemic anti-Asian sentiment had been building up. We ... really felt like we should do something," Hoang said.
"What we kept hearing was that people were generally unable to communicate why something was racist. The idea for this tool was ... to simplify the education a little bit (and) to help give you the words ... to speak out against racism."
City council will consider approving its own anti-racism strategy next week, in an effort to support local initiatives and combat systemic racism within the city and municipal government.
The initiative originated from a motion by Mayor Amarjeet Sohi. It includes recommendations to create an independent anti-racism body and a high-level anti-racism organization within city administration, as well as to provide funding for grassroots, BIPOC-led organizations.
Hoang said she was glad to see the city take a "positive first step" towards official anti-racism work.
"Racism is so ingrained in things like work culture and in schools and all of that stuff. The route that the anti-racism strategy took to try and target systemic racism is what we need to target if we actually ever want racism to end," she explained.
A sample of the resources available from Stop Race-Based Hate.
As she considers the impact Stop Race-Based Hate could have, Hoang is hopeful that the onus to do this labour won't always fall to the people experiencing racism themselves.
"It sucks that as a person of colour, if I want change, I have to take on this work. But the tool itself really is designed for people who want to be allies, because people of colour have been crying out about racism forever," she said, adding: "If we don't have allies ... who are talking about it, or doing the work as well, then nothing will change."
And Hoang pointed out that even though she's experienced immense hatred as an Asian woman, "it's nothing compared to Muslim, Black or Indigenous women."
While there's still a significant amount of work to be done, Hoang told Taproot that any progress is important at this point.
"When I see a truck with a Canadian flag, I start to feel so anxious and uncomfortable. I think my anxiety in general has spiked. A lot of the negative messages that I got were basically trying to silence me ... or scare me into not talking about racism," said Hoang, who has been sharing updates and education on her own social media as well.
But despite the toll it has taken, she's even more resolved to keep going. Hoang, Cheng, and Cayabo are working on establishing Stop Race-Based Hate as a non-profit, and plan to host anti-racism workshops and events in the future as well as adding more statements to the website.
"All of it has just made me feel like, I am going to speak out more against this because it's important and if you have a platform, you should."