Inspiration
This project is inspired by the historical racism against Asian communities, the increase of Asian hate crimes since the beginning of COVID-19, and the recent surge in violence against the AAPI community such as the Atlantic shooting. We are creating a platform #StandWithAsians in order to help Asians and Pacific Islanders to share their stories, vocalize their needs, and together speak against racism and violence targeting Asians. We are also creating this platform to call for all people to stand with Asians and fight against discrimination.
Key Features
News
We offer related and up-to-date news, tweets, and petitions regarding stopping Asian hate. We also show data visualizations on discrimination against Asians to warn of the seriousness of the issue.
Gallery
Users can upload images representing their culture. Admin will review the images and the approved images will be displayed on the webpage.
Forum
Users can post their stories or share their cultures in the forum. Other users can respond to the forum posts in the discussion section.
Resources
We provide information on events for #StopAsianHates as well as a COVID information map. There are also links for users to get Mental and Health Support from Asian communities and organizations. There is also emergency report information.
Technical Details
Webpage Implementation with ReactJS, CSS, ExpressJS, Twit, and Python.
Extract Related News
The news is extracted from https://newsapi.org/, which we displayed related news to Stop Asian Hate movements. For tweets, we take advantage of the Twitter API and Twit package.
Data Storage with Google Firebase
The image gallery and discussion forum both utilize firebase to implement data storage. We used storage to store files such as images, which generates a download url for the gallery to access the image file. The url is stored in the firestore for access. The text-based information in the forum is also stored in a firestore.
Challenges we ran into
Some challenges we ran into were the manipulation of Google Firebase and the connection between frontend and backend in News. We initially aimed to create a serverless app with Firebase. However, when we tried to use the Twitter API, it only worked in a NodeJS environment. To solve this, we implemented an ExpressJS server to create a custom API. What’s more, since none of us have design backgrounds, we also spent a lot of time on CSS design to make it concise and clear.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of the fact that we completed the development of a website, as we used our skill to (hopefully) make an impact on a social issue.
What we learned
For some of us, this is the first time we use reactJS for web development. We enjoy the process of learning by doing.
This is the first time we use firebase for data storage. We learned about how to write code with reactJS to store, access, and modify data in firebase. We also used Firebase to host the website.
What's next for #StandWithAsians
We created #StandWithAsians to share the most recent progress of the #StopAsianHate movement and to encourage people to share their stories. Needless to say, the website means nothing if nobody posts on it. The next step for #StandWithAsians is to maintain a more comfortable environment for people to share and express, to collect and provide helpful resources that engage people to the Asian community, and to eventually make an impact on the social issue of racism and hate toward the Asian people.
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