New York City Honors Asian-American Pacific Islanders With First-Ever AAPI Heritage Parade
New York City this weekend will have its first parade celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Culture and Heritage, Mayor Eric Adams and event organizers announced Wednesday.
The parade is scheduled for Sunday at 10:45 a.m. ET on Sixth Ave. from West 44th St. to West 55th St.
“We are proud to announce the New York City’s first annual Asian American and Pacific Islander Cultural and Heritage Parade and pay tribute to the generations of New Yorkers from the Asian and Pacific diaspora,” Adams said in a statement.
A parade for Japan Day is also scheduled on Saturday at 1 p.m. ET on Manhattan’s Central Park West.
The announcements for the parades come during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. New York City has never had any specifically scheduled parades to celebrate Asian Heritage during AAPI Heritage Month although being the second-largest AAPI population in the country.
The parades also come during the campaign of “Stop Asian Hate,” due to a rise of anti-Asian attacks during the pandemic.
“As we work to combat a spike in hate crimes, it is important to support and uplift our AAPI brothers and sisters,” Adams said.
Hate crime data published by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism showed that anti-Asian hate crime increased by 339% in 2021, NBC News reported in January.
"In these pandemic times and with Anti-Asian intolerance, division, and hatred on the rise, it is so important for all of us to come together to celebrate our collective humanity — in a rare historic parade — as it is about time that we march together with each other to show our solidarity," Wellington Chen, executive director of the Chinatown Business Improvement District, told CBS News.
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