Washington, DC – OCA, a national Asian Pacific American (APA) organization dedicated to ensuring social justice for Asian Pacific Americans, is pleased to announce the disbursement of five Hate Crime Initiative Conference Grants for 2007.  The five chapter awardees are OCA-Detroit, OCA- New York, OCA-Columbus, OCA-Greater Philadelphia, and OCA-Long Island.       

Hate crimes, also known as bias crimes, are criminal acts committed against people or property that are motivated by the offender’s bias against a race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, disability or national origin.  In a hate crime, the offender intentionally targets a victim because of their personal characteristics.  A hate incident is a non-criminal act where the perpetrator has the same motivations as a hate crime and should be treated as seriously as a criminal act.   

OCA is committed to educating the community about what constitutes a hate crime, how to prevent hate crimes, and how to respond if an incident occurs.  OCA has been and continues a strong and vocal advocate for all victims of hate crimes.  

OCA-Detroit, also known as Association of Chinese Americans and one of OCA’s founding chapters, will hold the Initiative Against Hate Crimes Conference on June 23, 2007, to memorialize the 25^th anniversary of the Vincent Chin murder at the Chinese Community Center in Madison Heights, Michigan.  

OCA- New York is working with Chinatown Youth Initiatives and South Asian Youth Action to hold an art competition on the theme of combating hate crimes that will culminate in a conference on August 2^nd, 2007 at Asian American Arts Centre showcasing high school students’ art.  

OCA-Columbus is also focusing on youth hate crime education in a conference in October.  They are working with a diverse set of partners including the City of Columbus Youth Group and Community Relations, Ohio Civil Rights Commissions, Somali Women & Children Center, Chinese Schools of Columbus and United Way. Each organization’s youth membership will create a hate crime education project for competition.  

OCA-Greater Philadelphia will be holding a day-long conference on October 13^th, 2007 for leaders in the APA community with workshops focused on law enforcement and community training. The conference will take place at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel.  

OCA-Long Island is participating in and planning a series of conferences as well as producing multi-media resources to impact educators and administration in local schools. The first conference will be the 15th Annual Conference on Prejudice Reduction on October 22, 2007 in Melville, New York. A second conference "Situating Hate/Stopping Hate" will be planned for Asian American Month in April 2008 at the Charles B. Wang Asian American Center at Stony Brook University.