NY state Sen. John Liu calls out racist office voicemail amid spike in anti-Asian attacks

The Bobster

Senior News Editor since 2004

NY state Sen. John Liu calls out racist office voicemail amid spike in anti-Asian attacks​



By
Zach Williams


August 1, 2022 8:40pm
Updated









New York State Senator John Liu shares explicit voicemail from voter












A Taiwanese-American state lawmaker said Monday he was targeted by a racist verbal attack amid an ongoing surge in anti-Asian hate crimes across the five boroughs.
“John, you lost my vote, you f—ing ch–k piece of sh–,” an unknown man says to state Sen. John Liu in a hate-filled voicemail left at his Queens district office over the weekend.
“You lost my whole family’s vote. You’re losing thousands of votes you fucking A**hole. Go back f—ing China where you belong you fucking useless piece of sh– ,” the bigot continued, according to a recording Liu posted to his Twitter account Monday afternoon.
“Another day at the office,” Liu says in the video.
The racist tirade comes as hate crimes continue surging in New York City, with NYPD stats show a 12.6% increase as of mid-July.
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Asian Americans have been the target of a growing number of high-profile incidents, including violent mid-July attacks against a 76-year-old man in Manhattan and a 22 year-old man in Queens.


NYPD records show reported hates crimes against Asians increased from just three in 2019 to 30 in the following year and 133 in 2021.


Liu, a former City Council member who became the first Asian-American person ever elected city comptroller, told The Post that racist tirades are hardly new in his experience as an elected official.

Sen. John LiuState Sen. John Liu received the racist voicemail at his Queens district office. AP/Hans Pennink
“There were many times when doing door-to-door campaigning for the first time, I get the door slammed in my face and heard the person yell: ‘You think I’d ever vote a f—ing ch–k? In more recent years, including when I was going door-to-door running for state Senate, it would be a little bit less explicit,” he said in an interview Monday.


Other elected officials with East Asian roots like Rep. Grace Meng (D-Queens) and Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou (D-Manhattan) have said they have experienced similar experiences of anti-Asian bigotry as elected officials.


Liu said the hate-filled voice mail that greeted him when he came to work Monday nonetheless stuck out among the handful of bigoted incidents he typically has to endure each year.


“These last couple of years, I’ve personally urged Asian Americans and anyone who has faced bigotry to not let it go unnoticed and to call it out. And I had to do the same, especially when it was so explicit like this,” he added.
 
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