Written by Wayne Huang.
Image credit: Police Line Crime Scene by Tony Webster/ Wikimedia commons, license: CC BY-SA 4.0.
On May 15, 2022, a fatal shooting occurred at the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods, California. During a lunch reception, the gunman locked the doors and opened fire with approximately a hundred people present. The church has been recognised for its significant role in Taiwan’s democratisation and independence movements since the 1970s. It has led to the suspicion that this historical connection motivated the assailant to travel over a hundred miles from Las Vegas to target the church. The shooting resulted in six individuals being shot, including Dr John Cheng, who lost his life while attempting to disarm the gunman.
One year after the tragedy, I feel compelled to write to commemorate Dr Cheng and all the Taiwanese people, both within their homeland and abroad, who have lost their lives simply because they are Taiwanese. Living in a country plagued by distressing shootings, I also feel compelled to explore different avenues for fostering solidarity beyond the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) framework. While acknowledging the unparalleled impact of chattel slavery on Black lives, I contemplated the insights of antiblackness theorists when confronted with the Laguna Woods shooting. I align myself with anti-blackness theorists to think about gun violence and erased subjectivities. I see them as thinkers who shed light on the meaning of survival in the face of death, who reject the confines of liberal-progressive discourse. In this respect, we are in the same boat.
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