Since the coronavirus pandemic put the country on lockdown starting in March 2020, thousands of reports have been received nationwide of harassment and discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. These incidents range from microaggressions — dirty looks and mumbled curses — to violent attacks.

Former President Trump added fuel to the fire, calling COVID-19 “Chinese virus,” “China virus” and “kung flu.”

To combat both longstanding stereotypes and COVID-based hatred, West Hartford photographer Mike Keo, who is of Khmer descent, decided to do a portrait project of Asian Americans he knew. He called it #iamnotavirus.

“I wanted to increase visibility, tell the Asian American stories that are within our communities, not just stories of grief and hate crimes, stories of who we are as individuals,” Keo said. “We want to be seen and heard, beyond the context of what was happening at the time.”

Keo’s project touched a nerve with Asian Americans he encountered. The project bloomed and morphed into what is now a nationwide initiative to cast an affirming light on Asian Americans. Today it is staffed by volunteers, mainly students, from all over the country.

“There is a lot of hurt in the community, but attacks against Asian Americans aren’t new. They go way back. So it connected

with people and took off online,” Keo said. “I wanted to give Asian Americans a chance to say what they loved about themselves.”

As it states on Keo’s website, iamnotavirus.info: “Our campaign began with a simple question. If not a virus, then what are you?”

Keo’s organization recently marked its one-year anniversary. In that time, #iamnotavirus has created a podcast series, organized panel discussions and workshops, created a coloring book for kids and a mental wellness book for Asian American UConn students, and rallied behind SB678, the bill now in the state legislature to mandate Asian studies classes in Connecticut schools.

On March 18 at 5 p.m., Keo will participate in a virtual panel discussion, “Asians in America: Anti-Asian Violence & The Fight Against Invisibility,” presented by Asian and Asian American Studies Institute at UConn. It is open to the public. To register via WebEx, visit https://bit.ly/387LdgG.

The core activity behind #iamnotavirus is encouraging people to tell their stories. “Storytelling is a powerful tool,” Keo said.

Silent victimization

Steven Hernandez, executive director of the Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity & Opportunity of the Connecticut General Assembly, said his office has encouraged Asian American people for months to log onto its portal and report incidents of targeted discrimination. “We want to see if there is an actionable civil rights case for the state,” he said.

This effort to get stories formally recorded has not been easy, he said. This is due to both community attitudes and statements from national politicians that seemed to normalize racism, Hernandez said.

“We find a similar dynamic with Asian and Pacific Islanders as we do with the undocumented community. Silent victimization happens in communities that either have a cultural history of not making waves or a fear of authority, the belief that the authorities may not be there to help. Both dynamics are at play here,” Hernandez said.

“Also messaging was coming from the federal government about our marginalized communities,” he said, referring to Trump’s and other politicians’ coronavirus statements. “What we need to do now is to double down on our messaging that we are in this together and will not tolerate incidents of hate.”

According to Nicholas Turton of the national organization Stop AAPI Hate, “Between March 19, 2020 ... and Dec. 31, 2020, Stop AAPI Hate received 2,808 firsthand accounts of anti-Asian hate from 47 states and the District of Columbia.”

Fourteen of those came from Connecticut, Turton said. Reflecting Hernandez’s observation about silent victimization, many of the Connecticut complaints were anonymous. Most were verbal altercations, ranging from Asian Americans being called “coronavirus” to one report: “Two white males menacingly approached me and my toddler-aged son to tell me, among other things, to go back to ‘wherever the f— I came from.’ ”

These reports and statistics led to an executive order, signed by President Joe Biden on Jan. 26, that “condemns and denounces acts of racism, xenophobia and intolerance against AAPI communities.”

That executive order specifically references statements by political leaders referring to the coronavirus by its geographic origin: “Such statements have stoked unfounded fears and perpetuated stigma about Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and have contributed to increasing rates of bullying, harassment and hate crimes.”

Anecdotal stories

With or without formal documentation, anecdotal stories are well-known among Asian Americans in Connecticut. Those microaggressions or hostile actions are what fuel leaders’ efforts to stem the hatred and protect their community.

From Keo: “There was a story about an EMT, a first responder, getting verbally attacked inside a Stop & Shop in Middletown. She had her firefighter shirt on. This racist attacked her for being Asian American.”

From State Attorney General William Tong: “Early in the pandemic we had a complaint from Stamford from an Asian American woman who had been in the country 30 years. She was at a supermarket. A supermarket checkout clerk allegedly sprayed her with Lysol, in front of everybody.”

From State Sen. Saud Anwar, co-sponsor of SB 678: “Some people told us people made remarks in front of them, saying inappropriate things, ‘You’re causing the infestation to spread,’ something to that effect.”

From Jason Chang, director of the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute at UConn: “We have had students report that people will very clearly avoid getting in close proximity to them, these exaggerated kinds of behaviors, when they observe a person that appears to be Asian.”

From Alan Tan, co-chairperson of the state Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity and Opportunity: “About this time last year, an Asian American, a resident of Rocky Hill was jogging and minding her own business and was almost run off the road by someone who intentionally targeted her. Right after then, Trump made the comments about the China virus. We received several reports of people being targeted in hospital garages across the state.”

‘You sense it’

Miriam Yeung, chairwoman of Asian Pacific American Coalition of Connecticut, said microaggressions can be so subtle that they are unnoticed by anyone except the targeted person. But she said when they happen enough times, people learn to respect their instincts and know that the hostility is real.

“When you’re younger, you think, no that is not really happening. It must be in my imagination, or I’m just being too sensitive. But when it happens often enough, you realize, maybe it really was happening,” Yeung said. “Maybe some things were said under the breath and you don’t have proof, but there’s a feeling that it was uncomfortable and that you are embarrassed. You sense it. You learn to trust it.”

Instances of anti-Asian bias in Connecticut have not been as high-profile as those in New York, where a Filipino-American man was slashed on the subway; or San Francisco, where a Thai-American man was shoved to the ground and later died; or Midland, Texas, where a Vietnamese-American man and his two little sons were stabbed in a Sam’s Club.

Still, Tong said, incidents don’t have to happen in Connecticut to matter in Connecticut. “George Floyd didn’t happen in Connecticut, but what happened to him showed that Connecticut had to be ready to be protective of all of our citizens,” he said.

According to the most recent statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, about 5% of the state’s population is of Asian descent. These include people who identify as Japanese, Indian, Bangladeshi, Bhutanese, Burmese, Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Hmong, Indonesian, Korean, Laotian, Malaysian, Mongolian, Nepalese, Okinawan, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Taiwanese, Thai and Vietnamese.

Protecting the community

In protecting the community, one focus is mental wellness. Chang, Keo and Kelly Ha, campaign manager for #iamnotavirus, compiled “A Mental Wellness Activity Book for Asian Americans,” to expose Asian American UConn students to Asian poets and writers to help them reflect on their shared heritage.

The book has prompts for students to do their own writing: “Reflect on a time where you felt different from your peers,” “How did you internalize this incident during this time in your life?” “How has this impacted you today?” “How have your insecurities throughout life connected to your racial identity?”

Chang said Asian Americans are often encouraged to dismiss their experiences of racism, to keep their chin up and get past it. The activity book encourages the opposite.

“Asian Americans typically don’t have the language at their disposal to explain their own experience through the lens of racism,” he said. “The workbook is designed to help people understand themselves and to recognize that their stories fit into a larger narrative about the country and its past. It helps to activate people’s voices because hate crimes and incidents of discrimination are always undercounted.”

Other stories are told, through the #iamnotavirus podcast, about successful Asian Americans, such as Tong, journalist Kimmy Yam, Milwaukee judge Kristy Yang, poet Monica Sok, comedian Paul “PK” Kim, broadcast journalist Nydia Han and coffee entrepreneur Sahra Nguyen.

Keo has a story of his own. Even as an adult, he still remembers the pain of an incident that happened when his high school class was planning a trip to Chinatown.

“My friend said he didn’t want to go to Chinatown. The history teacher said, ‘You don’t have to eat the pigeons or rats in Chinatown.’ There was laughter from 40 students for 30 seconds, and it finally died down and everyone stared at me. I can’t tell you how lonely I felt at that moment,” he said.

“As I got older, what I thought was even more hurtful about her comment was she dismissed my own ideas about Chinatown. To me, it was not a strange place that smelled bad and where they ate pigeons. It wasn’t a joke. It was where I had dinners with my grandmother, where she shared stories with me about her youth,” he said.

Sharing stories is therapeutic, he said. “Accessing your stories is about self-care. A lot of time we don’t have space to unpack the traumas that happen to us. Putting stories in a new light helps healing to begin.”

Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne @courant.com.