Standing up, Fighting Back

When I was 14, I went to my first Black Lives Matter protest. In the six years since, I’ve been to many demonstrations for many causes, yelling, meeting people, and photographing. I love doing this. When I took these photos in 2021, I felt two things for the first time. One was the feeling that the issue at hand most directly threatened me, and the other was realizing that the people present came to support and defend me against the creeping shadow of violence – by the general public and by the police – against Asians who live in the United States. These pictures, taken over the course of several protests, are some of my experience of a time that has become not only nationally historic, but personally so.