Authorities are investigating as a hate crime an incident in which a man in Diamond Bar on Sunday disrupted a protest against anti-Asian racism by driving a group of protesters through while shouting insults over China.
Video posted on Instagram saw a black Honda Civic stop at a stoplight on Grand Avenue and Diamond Bar Boulevard when about a dozen protesters crossed the street.
The driver then pulled through an opening between the protesters and made a turn while shouting, “F – China!”
Another video showed the man, described by the Sheriff’s Department as a white man in his 50s, standing outside his car, waving his hand and repeating the repetition. .
The sheriff’s department is investigating the incident as a hate crime, sheriff Alex Villanueva wrote on Twitter on Monday night.
Dozens of people gathered at Diamond Bar on Sunday with colorful signs with slogans such as “Stop Asian Hate” and “End the Violence Against Asians.” The protest was one of several in Southern California in the aftermath of the shooting by a white man last week in the spas in Atlanta, where eight people were killed, including six Asian women.
Orange County resident Lowell Renold, 25, said protesters filled every corner of the Diamond Bar intersection. Renold stands with a sign that says, “Los Angeles County stands united against hatred,” and sings, “No justice, no peace.”
Although not an Asian, Renold said he attended the rally to say, “Enough is enough” for white supremacy, hatred and disorder.
Most motorists tested in support of the protesters.
“There was just so much love and support in the air,” Renold said.
He did not witness the incident in which the Honda Civic driver was involved, but said it was’ really discouraging and sad that someone would make racist comments during a rally against racism.
“I do not understand how you can look at something like that and feel angry and feel that you are being attacked,” he said.
The protest also drew attention to a spate of other attacks against Asian Americans that escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic, and some people blamed them for the virus due to its origin in China.
A report by the advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate has documented thousands of racist verbal and physical attacks on Asian Americans since the closure of the coronavirus began last March.
On Thursday, a woman from Daly City became another victim in a series of violent attacks on Asian seniors in the Bay.
A security camera captured a person who ran after the elderly woman, hit her on the ground and grabbed her belongings before running away.
In the aftermath of the incident, Daly City residents organized a Stop Asian Hate protest on Sunday.
Meanwhile, more than a dozen leaders and members of the community in Los Angeles’ Asian and Pacific Islands gathered Monday afternoon for a media conference in Koreatown to expose anti-Asian violence and encourage residents to report hate incidents. Some held signs with the words, “Stop AAPI Hate” and “No Place for Hate.”
“We must all raise our voices,” Peter Kang, president of the Korean American Chamber of Commerce in LA, told Radio Korea’s headquarters. ‘Everyone should remember that all life matters …. Black, Asian, Latino, white – we all live here together. ”
Blake Chow, deputy head of the Los Angeles Police Department, said that since the shooting in Georgia, the department has increased patrols in neighborhoods with many Asian businesses, such as Koreatown and Chinatown, and stressed that the LAPD is experiencing both hate crimes and hate incidents. , dophou. which does not rise to the level of a crime.
John Lee, a Korean American city councilor representing the northwestern pieces of the San Fernando Valley, said he, while growing up, would ask if he was ethnic, American because he felt he had to emphasize that he belonged to both nationalities .
The Asian American experience, he said, is to “constantly feel like an outsider.”
“We can not allow this attempt to go to waste,” he said of the Asian community’s work to highlight anti-Asian violence. “We can and will no longer be silent.”
City News Service contributed to this report.