After being beaten, assaulted and hospitalized over the color of her skin, Los Angeles resident Azadeh Afsahi, who is of Iranian descent, has looked for ways to support other victims. As a psychotherapist and human rights advocate, helping communities of color know what to do when attacked — and feel safer overall — has been Afsahi’s personal mission.
Afsahi partnered with community groups while spreading awareness about anti-hate, and current affairs in the Middle East. She connected with L.A. nonprofit Through Peace to help translate and distribute new booklets in Farsi and Arabic, which teach victims and bystanders how to report hate crimes.
With the noticeable rise in hate crimes, Islamophobia, anti-Arab and antisemitic rhetoric since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, the pocket-sized booklets — aptly titled “How to Report a Hate Crime” — aim to help people quickly find resources if they experience or witness a hate crime or incident.
The pocket-sized booklets — first created in 2020 by Through Peace founder Esther Young Lim — have since been translated into Arabic, Farsi and Hebrew to reach more communities. New “How to Report a Hate Crime” translations in Arabic and Farsi were launched at a Dec. 7 event, hosted at World Mission University in L.A.
Lim, who serves as board chair for the L.A. District Attorney’s AAPI Advisory Board, said that the Farsi and Hebrew translations were already in the works. But it became “even more important” to have them finished – and to provide even more copies in Arabic and English.
The “simultaneous rise of anti-Muslim and antisemitic hate attacks in the U.S. have left me heartbroken,” Lim said before the event. “It’s heartwrenching to witness the suffering and fear these events have caused on all sides.”
The vision behind the “How to Report a Hate Crime” booklets began as a grassroots effort, a way for Lim to try and protect her Korean-American parents, with the
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