The campaign against violent attacks on Asian elders erupted Sunday onto Columbus Avenue, where a raucous drum corps and protesters’ chants of “Fight Asian hate” distracted outdoor brunches and disrupted the flow of double-decker tour buses.
“We don’t need your donations. We don’t need your social media posts,” said Hudson Liao, founder of Asians are Strong, at a Washington Square rally in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. “We need you to get out and get active. We need to occupy Columbus Avenue.”
And for a time early Sunday afternoon, as many as 200 marchers did that, loudly wending their way along six blocks of Columbus, with a police escort, to Portsmouth Square in Chinatown. Traffic stopped so the marchers in the street could pass through.
Sunday’s march and rally came one week after a robbery and viscous attack on a 70-year-old woman by four juveniles who invaded her senior living center, police said. A video of the attack obtained by KGO shows the four attacking the woman in an elevator, one kicking her in the head. A few days later, Gregory Chew, a former San Francisco commission member in his 70s, was knocked to the ground and punched in the face.
“These two events inspired us to organize this march,” said Charles Jung of the Asian Justice Movement, “but it takes place in the context of 2½ years of attacks on Asians, and a whole lot of inaction.”
Charles Jung, of Asian Justice Movement, speaks at the Defend Asian Elders rally at Washington Square Park in San Francisco.
Jungho Kim/Special to The ChronicleThe Asian Justice Movement is demanding that within 10 days San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott set a date for a town hall meeting in Chinatown specifically to deal with attacks on Chinese elders living in low income housing and to offer plans to provide police security at these locations.
Jung, a San Francisco attorney, said that the building where the woman was attacked and robbed lacked security.
Scott did not attend Sunday’s rally or march, but he was represented by Lt. Mark Moreno of the city’s Central Station, who had seen video of the attack on the woman in the senior center.
“Just the brazenness of it was despicable,” said Moreno, who declined to classify it as a hate crime, though he said that is plausible. “These people who commit these crimes are looking for someone who won’t fight back.” No arrests have been made, police said Sunday, and several detectives are working the case.
Sunday’s rally followed a similar, larger rally by the Asian Justice Movement held Jan. 30 across town in Anza Heights, the site of a particularly brutal incident in which Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, was blindsided on a street corner and hit with such force that his injuries killed him.
That attack was captured by security camera, and Antoine Watson, 19, has been charged with homicide. But it has not been classified officially as a hate crime, which rankled some of those at the rally. Since then “awareness has been built,” Jung said. “But now is the time for action and holding our leaders accountable.”
San Francisco Police Commissioner Keven Benedicto joins volunteer leader Christina Chen at the Defend Asian Elders rally at Washington Square Park in San Francisco.
Jungho Kim/Special to The ChronicleAccording to San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey, hate crimes directed at Asians increased sixfold in 2021, and there is no indication that it has diminished in 2022. Dorsey said the senseless violence against Asians reminds him of when 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was beaten to death and left to die by the side of a road in Laramie, Wyo., because he was gay. That crime, in 1998, ultimately led to hate crime legislation on both the state and federal level.
“When Matthew Shepard died, I felt that it could have been me or one of my friends,” said Dorsey, who has heard the same fear around the anti-Asian incidents, especially after the senior center attack.
“Young people in the Asian community say ‘that could have been my grandma,’” he said.
Jade Tu, 26, has been to enough of these rallies that she arrived carrying her own bullhorn.
“We want to make it loud and clear what is happening to our community,’’ said Tu, a native San Franciscan who grew up in the Sunset and said she has always noticed some hostility toward Asians.
“But because of COVID, there has been a narrative that the Chinese spread the virus,” she said in reference to former President Donald Trump’s emphasis and racist language around the origins of the virus in China. “It pushed the hate over the edge.”
And it pushed Tu and out into Columbus Avenue, her trigger finger activating the bullhorn: “Fight Asian hate. Fight Asian hate.”
Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SamWhitingSF
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'Fight Asian hate' marchers take to S.F. streets in passionate call for justice - San Francisco Chronicle
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