After being beaten, assaulted and hospitalized over the color of her skin, Los Angeles resident Azadeh Afsahi, who is of Iranian descent, has looked for ways to support other victims. As a psychotherapist and human rights advocate, helping communities of color know what to do when attacked — and feel safer overall — has been Afsahi’s personal mission.
Afsahi partnered with community groups while spreading awareness about anti-hate, and current affairs in the Middle East. She connected with L.A. nonprofit Through Peace to help translate and distribute new booklets in Farsi and Arabic, which teach victims and bystanders how to report hate crimes.
With the noticeable rise in hate crimes, Islamophobia, anti-Arab and antisemitic rhetoric since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, the pocket-sized booklets — aptly titled “How to Report a Hate Crime” — aim to help people quickly find resources if they experience or witness a hate crime or incident.
The pocket-sized booklets — first created in 2020 by Through Peace founder Esther Young Lim — have since been translated into Arabic, Farsi and Hebrew to reach more communities. New “How to Report a Hate Crime” translations in Arabic and Farsi were launched at a Dec. 7 event, hosted at World Mission University in L.A.
Lim, who serves as board chair for the L.A. District Attorney’s AAPI Advisory Board, said that the Farsi and Hebrew translations were already in the works. But it became “even more important” to have them finished – and to provide even more copies in Arabic and English.
The “simultaneous rise of anti-Muslim and antisemitic hate attacks in the U.S. have left me heartbroken,” Lim said before the event. “It’s heartwrenching to witness the suffering and fear these events have caused on all sides.”
The vision behind the “How to Report a Hate Crime” booklets began as a grassroots effort, a way for Lim to try and protect her Korean-American parents, with the surge in anti-Asian hate and rhetoric during the coronavirus pandemic and after.
A report by Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition that since March 2020 has tracked acts of hate against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders nationwide, found that nearly half of all AAPIs nationwide have experienced discrimination based on race or ethnicity – yet only 1 in 5 reported it.
Lim, who is from Monterey Park, said she created the booklets to inform Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and other communities on how to report hate crimes in California and nationwide.
They include tips on preventing and identifying hate crimes versus hate incidents; information on victim compensation; statewide rules broken down in simplified language; and what to do before, during and after an attack.
Hate crimes are at a 21-year high in Los Angeles County, according to the annual report by the L.A. County Commission on Human Relations. The report found that reported hate crimes in the region increased by 18% in 2022, rising from 790 to 929 – the highest since the 1,031 the commission recorded in 2001.
Growing local and national tensions from the ongoing Mideast war have led to more hate crimes and attacks being reported across different groups — including Muslim, Arab, Palestinian and Jewish communities.
Some local examples include a fight that broke out at the L.A. Museum of Tolerance, an antisemitic attack on an elderly Jewish man in Beverly Hills, and the death of a Jewish man in Thousand Oaks, after a confrontation during competing pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations, authorities said.
In other states, news of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy who was stabbed to death in his suburban Chicago home; and the Vermont shooting of three Palestinian college students who were seriously injured, made national headlines. Both attacks are being investigated as hate crimes.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim-American civil rights and advocacy organization, released new national civil rights data in early December. From Oct. 7 to Dec. 2, CAIR received a total of 2,171 requests for help and reports of bias nationwide — a 172% increase over a similar two-month period in 2022.
Lim linked it to a “trickle-down effect.”
“Whatever is happening in the Middle East is trickling down to other areas of the world where people now see – just like COVID – another reason (they) should be attacking this minority group,” she said.
She recalled feeling scared from growing anti-Asian hate and xenophobia during the pandemic, and does not want that feeling to be felt by other communities.
Afsahi, who is helping Lim translate and distribute the hate crime booklets nationwide, called on diverse communities to “come together and stand against hate.”
She called the project “a beautiful thing… closing the bridge and really showing the world that we are way more alike than different.”
Since its first launch, over 120,000 “How to Report a Hate Crime” booklets have been distributed to nonprofits, universities, cities, churches and others across Southern California and states like Illinois, Maine and New York. They are translated in languages including Spanish, Albanian, Chinese, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Portuguese, Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese.
Many of Lim’s friends had been asking for copies for their Jewish and Palestinian parents, she said.
The booklets are accessible using big-printed letters, making it it easier for people to read when under stress and pressure, Lim said.
Lim said the booklets also include resources on mental health support, and a tool-kit of useful phrases victims can say or point to when seeking help from bystanders. That’s why she made them easy to carry around.
“It’s so important for people to know about their rights, because it solidifies their feelings of humanity (and) their own purpose of living,” she said. “It confirms, ‘Yes, I don’t think that the way I am being treated, because of the color of my skin or my perceived nationality or religion… it’s not right that I’m being treated this way’.”
The booklets also inform people of laws that protect them, which both Lim and Afsahi say can be helpful for immigrants and the elderly.
Though Lim has limited funds for distribtuon, she tries to make the “How to Report a Hate Crime” booklets accessible to groups and individuals through free digital downloads on her website.
“The great thing about this community effort is I don’t have to do all the distribution myself. The community members already do that for me because it’s part of their own initiative, and their own mission to protect their own,” Lim said. “They know their communities best.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles distributed booklets and resources to synagogues in Southern California in November.
Lim said that making sure members of any community can protect themselves is what’s most important with this effort – which she has tried to do since the beginning. After graduating with a public health degree from Cal State Northridge, and working for 12 years in the fashion industry, Lim quit her job in February to focus on creating the booklets, starting her nonprofit, and serving marginalized communities.
She is working on getting a wider distribution reach for the booklets through partnerships in other regions and states.
Through Peace, which began its work in May, is hosting local interactive hate crime safety workshops for immigrants and elders. During a November event in Monterey Park, Lim emphasized the importance of reporting a hate crime – even if English is not one’s first language. She emphasized that the booklets are for all marginalized communities, not just the AAPI community.
“I hope we find peace soon, I really do,” she said. “I really don’t know how else to help practically except in this manner – the way I can.”
Staff reporters Emily Holshouser, Allyson Vergara contributed to this report.
