The Bay Area on Saturday with paintbrushes and posters, roller skates and skateboards showed support for Asian communities who were the victims of an increasing number of hate crimes.
In San Francisco, several hundred people filled the upper level of Portsmouth Square in Chinatown for an art event in the community, designed to give Asian Americans and supporters a safe place to express their sadness and anger. Many in the crowd displayed handmade signs: “Respect everyone’s grandmother,” “Hate is a virus,” and “Asians belong.”
Others grabbed pots of bright watercolor paint and brushes and painted butterflies and messages of peace, concern and resistance on the plaza to counter the ugly violence that has erupted across the country and the Bay Area. The crowd toured on their toes around the freshly painted messages.
Corri Uyeda, 29, of San Francisco, painted a bright blue “Hapa Pride” and used the word for a person with a mixed Asian heritage. She said she attended the event because she has the need to stand up.
A Chinatown resident stands with the San Francisco Asian American and Pacific Islander community during a rally in Portsmouth Square in San Francisco.
Mike Kai Chen / Special to The Chronicle“I’m just sick of people being beaten in the streets like our grandparents,” Uyeda said. ‘If someone who’s been taught to grow up to keep a head, do not make noise, I’m tired of it. We need to start showing up for our people. ”
Uyeda recently joined a security patrol and neighborhood watch in Chinatown.
On top of a raised planter in a corner of the park, speakers encouraged the community to lean on each other and pay attention.
Sasanna Yee, one of the organizers, spoke about the pain she has suffered since her 89-year-old grandmother, Yik Oi Huang, was beaten in 2019 at Visitacion Valley Playground. She died in 2020 from her injuries, her family said.
“I always show up to be with the community for healing,” she said. “I know I can not handle this pain alone.”
Yee, who founded a group called Asians Belong, also launched a campaign to rename the park where her grandmother was attacked the Yik Oi Huang Peace and Friendship Park. A petition is at www.change.org/yikoihuang.
On January 28, in the Anza Vista neighborhood of San Francisco, an 84-year-old Thai man, Vicha Ratanapakdee, was on a morning walk when someone pushed him and he fell and hit his head on the sidewalk. He died two days later.
In Oakland’s Chinatown, about 80 people rolled to Madison Square Park later Saturday afternoon for solidarity against anti-Asian violence. A candlelight vigil was also planned for Pak Ho, 75, of Hong Kong, who died last week after being robbed and assaulted in Adams Point, north of Lake Merritt.
People shoot or bike during a rally to support Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Madison Square Park in Oakland.
Yalonda M. James / The ChronicleSimilar events are planned across the country and in other Bay Area cities, including El Cerrito, Daly City and Brisbane.
In Oakland, the racially diverse crowd marched through the streets in protest. Some wore T-shirts with the caption “Sk8 against hatred” or signs with the name Ho, Ratanapakdee and the eight victims of Atlanta who were shot dead on March 16. Six were of Asian descent.
“We have a great skating community here, and we wanted to do something,” said Ashley Silva, 29, a Filipino and Hawaiian, who helped plan the event. She and her friends chose skating to ‘cover more ground and get more attention’, she said.
As the group in Ninth Street looked down on the heart of Chinatown, drivers honked and pedestrians pumped their fists in the air and shouted for support.
The groups We Skate and Lake People Skate are planning a similar event in the San Hall City Hall on Sunday at 14:00
Anti-Asian violence is on the rise nationwide, encouraged by former President Donald Trump accusing the pandemic of the “China virus” and using other racist labels. Such attacks hit the Bay Area hard.
Ho’s murder has been preceded by a series of robberies and assaults in Oakland’s Chinatown since the beginning of the year. In San Francisco, three elderly Asian Americans were recently brutally assaulted in downtown. Danny Yu Chang, a 59-year-old travel agent from Vallejo, was walking down Market Street and Montgomery Street on Monday when he was hit from behind and hit unconscious and unable to see from his left eye. A day later, an 83-year-old Asian man is attacked in Seventh and Market streets. While the attacker fled, he assaulted a 75-year-old Asian American woman who was fighting back.
Michael Cabanatuan is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @ctuan