ATLANTA — After every week of ache, worry and mourning, Georgia’s capital metropolis will host a downtown march and rally on Saturday to protest the killing of eight individuals, six of them girls of Asian descent, by a gunman who focused three Atlanta-area therapeutic massage companies.
The occasion, set for 1 p.m. in a park subsequent to the State Capitol, is being billed as a #StopAsianHate occasion that may permit individuals to “come collectively to grieve, heal and assist.” It comes a day after President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris visited with Asian-American group leaders in a metropolis that’s nonetheless reeling after the Tuesday assaults.
“We have been reminded, but once more, that the crises we face are many — that the foes we face are many,” Ms. Harris mentioned in a speech after the assembly on Friday.
She added: “Racism is actual in America and it has all the time been. Xenophobia is actual in America, and all the time has been. Sexism, too.”
Mr. Biden famous that the investigation into the assault was ongoing, and that he and Ms. Harris have been being “recurrently up to date” by Lawyer Normal Merrick B. Garland and Christopher A. Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“Regardless of the motivation, we all know this: Too many Asian-People have been strolling up and down the streets and worrying, waking up every morning the previous yr feeling their security and the protection of their family members are at stake,” Mr. Biden mentioned in his personal remarks.
The capturing suspect, Robert Aaron Lengthy, a 21-year-old white man, was captured by legislation enforcement in South Georgia on Tuesday night time, just a few hours after the assaults. The police mentioned he advised them he had not been motivated by racial animus, however reasonably by a intercourse habit, and that he selected targets on the therapeutic massage parlors to eradicate temptation. However the acts, which come after a wave of violence directed at Asian-People nationwide, have been considered by many as an act of racism.
Mr. Lengthy, from the Atlanta suburb of Woodstock, Ga., stays in custody and has been charged with eight counts of homicide and one rely of aggravated assault.
Mr. Lengthy, who was single, was a longtime member of a conservative Baptist church that prohibited intercourse exterior of marriage. He had checked right into a rehab clinic for self-described sexual habit however continued to wrestle. A person who was his roommate in a midway home from August 2019 till early 2020 mentioned that Mr. Lengthy admitted that he continued to go to therapeutic massage parlors for intercourse.
The Atlanta Police mentioned that Mr. Lengthy had been a buyer at two of the spas he later attacked, although it was not clear whether or not he sought something greater than a therapeutic massage on the two companies.