GA Lawyers, AAPI Leaders Open Fundraiser For Spa Shooting Victims

ATLANTA, GA — Local stakeholders launched two GoFundMe campaigns to offer financial assistance to the Atlanta spa shooting victims' families, as well as to raise money for other AAPI crime victims and bias prevention.

Georgia lawyers and Asian American Pacific Islander leaders banded together with the National Compassion Fund to launch the National AAPI Violence Prevention & Response Initiative, which kickstarted the two first-of-their-kind funds, per a Friday news release.

NCF’s administrative expenses will be covered by a corporate donation from GoFundMe, guaranteeing that 100 percent of donations will go directly to victims’ families, survivors and traumatized witnesses.

Donations can be allocated to the Atlanta 3/16 Survivors Fund, the first fund in the nation where funds go to the full victim base, or to the national AAPI Crime Victims and Education Fund. All donations are tax deductible.

“NCF passes 100 [percent] of donations to victims and injured and traumatized survivors using an established vetting process and its years of experience,” said Jeffrey Dion, executive director of NCF.

NCF has administered relief funds for 14 mass casualty crimes, the release said — including the 2012 movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado; the 2008 mass shooting at Northern Illinois University; the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida; and the 2017 Las Vegas concert shooting.

“We see time and time again that money is being raised in the names and using the faces of our loved ones, and money does not end up with those families. So that is why the National Compassion Fund is so important, they will get the funds directly to the victims, and they do honor donor intent because donors have no idea where their money is going,” said Caren Teves, a member of the VictimsFirst.org network, whose son Alex saved his girlfriend before being shot in the head and killed in the Aurora theater shooting.

Almost 3,800 hate incidents against AAPIs were reported to Stop AAPI Hate's reporting center nationwide between March 19, 2020 and Feb. 28, 2021. That's why Georgia AAPI leaders decided to add a fund for assisting other crime victims and the AAPI community nationally, as part of the initiative with NCF.

During a press conference Friday, BJay Pak, initiative co-chair and previously the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, recalled a time when an Asian business owner and robbery victim was targeted based on Asian stereotypes. He said she was targeted on the stereotype that Asians operated with primarily cash and they would not fight back.

Although the incident did not meet the statutory definition of a federal hate crime, the crime was racially and bias-motivated, he said.

“She survived the shooting, but lost her ability to work. Though our office prosecuted the shooter, there were limited options to assist her when she became indigent,” Pak, now a partner at Alston & Bird LLP, said. “It just highlighted the need for an initiative such as the one we are launching today to support these Asian-American victims of race and bias-related crimes, and to educate and to combat negative stereotypes of Asian-Americans."

NCF, a subsidiary of the National Center for Victims of Crime, will collect and distribute the Atlanta 3/16 Survivors Fund.

The GAPABA Law Foundation (GLF), the nonprofit arm of the Georgia Asian Pacific American Bar Association (or GAPABA), will receive and hold the AAPI Crime Victims and Education Fund until the GLF Board of Directors selects a fund administrator.

The AAPI Crime Victims and Education Fund will be available on a nationwide basis, until exhausted, to support other AAPI victims of crime nationwide as well as education and awareness initiatives to reduce violence against the AAPI community.

“From this tragedy and the events in the last year, we have a greater calling to create something that will positively impact the community. For individuals and corporations searching for a trustworthy, tax-deductible and practical way to assist, this is it,” said Sara Hamilton, president of Korean American Bar Association of Georgia, lawyer at Thompson Hine LLP and co-chair of the initiative.