The guardian
Nearly $ 800,000 raised for two elderly Asians attacked in San Francisco
The video of an injured and crying Xiao Zhen Xie standing on a street corner asking thousands of people to share messages and donate to San Francisco has increased in attacks on Asian elders in recent weeks. Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images The GoFundMe pages for two elderly, Asian victims of assault in San Francisco have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors around the world since the U.S. killed the Atlanta shooting that killed eight people, including six Asians. women. A day after the shooting in Atlanta, Xiao Zhen Xie, 75, was standing at an intersection in San Francisco waiting to cross the street when a white man ran toward her and punched her. In a video of the incident, Xie points to the wooden plank with which she hit him back. Footage of her sobbing, holding a cold suit up to her bleeding eye while police apprehended her attacker, hit a raw nerve as the country led to a surge of anti-Asian attacks. “My mother feels dizzy, and very scared, and traumatized – and very hurt,” Dong-Mei Li, Xie’s daughter, told KPIX on Thursday. “The right eye can still see nothing and is still bleeding, and we have something to record the bleeding,” she said. The fundraising page set up by Xie’s grandson, John Chen, raised more than $ 649,000 and has been the most visited fundraiser on GoFundMe for the past 24 hours, a spokesman for the organizing platform said. More than 22,500 people in 50 U.S. states and 55 countries contributed. Thousands shared messages of sympathy and support. “No great-grandmother has to go through this kind of hatred,” said one donor. “I cry every time I think of her and your family. I wish her a strong and speedy recovery, “said another. Police say Steven Jenkins, 39, is responsible for the assault on Xie, as well as the assault on 83-year-old Ngoc Pham, a Vietnamese American man who was shopping at the local farmers market when he was attacked. Police said they are still investigating both assaults. Pham is in the hospital and has a nose fracture and neck injuries, according to the GoFundMe page set up by the San Francisco Community Youth Center to help him pay for medical bills. Pham “has always had a positive outlook on life because he survived 17 years in a Vietnamese concentration camp”, says his page. So far, donors have contributed more than $ 137,600. The group Stop AAPI Hate reported that since March last year, nearly 3,800 reports of anti-Asian incidents have been reported in the country – although many more are unlikely to have been reported, they said. Anti-Asian rhetoric, fueled by Donald Trump and the far-right’s insistence on using offensive, stigmatizing language to describe the coronavirus, has helped provoke violence, lawyers in the Bay Area have reported several reports of attacks on Asian Elders in San Francisco and Oakland said the community was shaken. Earlier this year, an 84-year-old immigrant from Thailand, Vicha Ratanapakdee, was killed in San Francisco after being hit on the ground. Pak Ho, a 75-year-old Hong Kong man, died in Oakland this week after being assaulted and robbed. Xie’s grandson Chen said the family was overwhelmed by the support they received. And Chen shared a message from Xie, translated from Cantonese: “She hopes that the younger generation of Asian Americans can all stand up for each other, and hope that they can stay for the elderly.”