NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — In response to the increase of attacks on Asian Americans in the city, two Lower Manhattan community spaces offered pepper spray giveaways the past two weekends which drew hundreds of people.
Yu and Me Books in Chinatown partnered with the non-profit advocacy group Soar Over Hate on March 13 to offer 200 free pepper sprays to “AAPI women and femmes.”
The line wrapped around the block, according to the bookstore’s owner Lucy Yu, with some women waiting hours to receive the safety device.
“I didn't expect there to be that big of a line,” Yu told NY1. “It's a really scary time. We're feeling super unsafe and scared and so this is something that was really needed.”
A week after Yu’s event, Shisi Huang held a similar one at Huang’s Lower East Side art space and book store, Bungee Space, where people came from all over to wait for a pepper spray.
“When I posted this [on Instagram], we got crazy feedback, like actually way beyond our expectations,” Huang told NY1. “This is because everybody’s scared.”
The New York State Department of Health allows adults who have not been convicted of a felony or assault to legally carry a pocket-sized pepper spray and many are turning to the safety device out of increased fear after several recent attacks on Asian women in the area.
The deaths of Michelle Go, who was pushed into the train tracks, Christina Yuna Lee, who was stabbed in her Chinatown apartment and the assault of a woman in Yonkers who punched 125 times while entering a building mark just three of the recent anti-Asian crimes this year alone.
In 2021, there were 133 anti-Asian incidents, a 343 percent increase from the year before where there were 30 incidents, according to NYPD data.
Mayor Eric Adams held a press conference Monday where he addressed the recent anti-Asian attacks, calling the lines for pepper spray “an indictment on our city,” adding that the rise in hate crimes “leads to the erosion that we have witnessed in this city and that is part of the overall approach to making this city not to be a city where people have to stand on line to get mace.”
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