John,
This past weekend in southern California, a gunman opened fire on a crowd of people gathered at a ballroom after a Lunar New Year celebration, killing 11 and injuring nine others.
Monterey Park, where the shooting occurred, is a majority Chinese and Taiwanese community for whom the Lunar New Year is a time of celebration and family. This should have been a weekend of joy, but instead, senseless and preventable gun violence has shaken the city. My heart is with the victims and families of Monterey Park and the AAPI community.
Today, I’m writing to ask if you’ll please make a generous donation to the Pittsburgh chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA) to ensure that our AAPI community has the resources they need during this painful time. The OCA is a national civil rights advocacy and educational organization dedicated to advancing the social, political, and economic well-being of Americans of Asian and Pacific Islander descent.
Yesterday morning, we also heard news of another act of gun violence at two plant nurseries in California, making it the 37th mass shooting in the United States in 2023 alone.
Enough is enough. I am determined to work with my colleagues in Congress to pass bold gun-safety legislation, expanded background checks, and end protections for corporate gun manufacturers.
But gun violence cannot be addressed in isolation and must also be combated in our social service funding. Violence is rooted in poverty, in communities that have gone underfunded and ignored for too long. We need investments in our schools, after-school programs, and wraparound services. We need investments in jobs and higher wages, so people have a choice in shaping their future.
Together, we can fight the systemic inequities and root causes of mass shootings and prevent more tragedies like this from happening.
— Summer
