K-pop star CL announced that she is teaming up with ride-sharing company Lyft to provide ride credits to individuals who feel unsafe due to the ongoing attacks against the Asian-American community in the US.
"There are so many layers of complex emotions when processing the rise of Asian hate crimes in the US,” said CL.
She added, “While there is still a lot of work to be done, I’m encouraged by how vocal and urgent the support from our allies has been. I’m excited to partner with Lyft this month to honor the AAPI community, and help provide a safe solution to those in my AAPI community who are most at risk. Please take care of one another.”
Amid the ongoing attacks on Asians in the US, the Lyft rides are important to help the AAPI community feel safe and to support the #StopAsianHate movement.
Ride credits will be distributed to non-profit organizations in different parts of the US like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. These non-profits - which include the National Asian Pacific Center on Aging (NAPCA), Asian-Americans for Community Involvement, Koreatown Youth and Community Center (KYCC) and Self Help for the Elderly - will be distributing the free and discounted rides directly to the communities they serve to ensure their community members can access the transportation.
"Racism, xenophobia, and hate have no place in our communities and for Lyft, that starts by ensuring AAPI riders feel comfortable using our services," said Joan Hanawi, Strategic Manager of Social Impact at Lyft. "It also means working with partners to identify ways to collaborate and offer support, which is why we're proud to be partnering with CL and nonprofits that serve the AAPI community to help provide access to transportation options."
This is part of the LyftUp program created to provide access to transportation in varying forms to communities in need during critical times.
According to the “Stop AAPI Hate National Report” in the US, there were 6,603 incident reports sent to Stop AAPI Hate from March 19, 2020 to March 31, 2021, with hate incidents reported to the center increasing from 3,795 to 6,603 during March 2021.
By type of discrimination, verbal harassment is No. 1 with 65.2 percent followed by shunning, or deliberate avoidance of AAPI, (18.1 percent), physical assault (12.6 percent), civil rights violations like workplace discrimination and refusal of service (10.3 percent), and online harassment (7.3 percent).
By ethnicity of respondents, the most affected are Chinese (43.7 percent) followed by Korean, 16.6 percent; Filipino, 8.8 percent; Vietnamese, 8.3 percent; Japanese, 7.8 percent; and Taiwanese, 6.1 percent.