Throughout 2020, multiple strangers came at Monthanus Ratanapakdee seemingly out of nowhere. An old man yelled at her in Golden Gate Park — something about a virus and going back to her country. When she discussed these incidents, her father would ask, “Is it really that bad?”
Her father, Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, was a lifelong Buddhist, the kind of person who embraced the world with open arms. During the coronavirus pandemic, he usually left the house before 8 a.m. and made it back before his grandsons started their Zoom classes.
This year, on the morning of Jan. 28, he headed out. A surveillance video captured what happened next. A tall figure suddenly darts across a street and slams into a much smaller one; the smaller figure crumples onto the pavement and doesn’t get back up.
Mr. Ratanapakdee's death helped awaken the nation to a rise in anti-Asian violence. For his grieving family, the reckoning hasn’t gone far enough.
This story was written by Jaeah Lee and recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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On January, twenty eight two thousand twenty one visa retainer parties,
out for his usual morning, walk vigil
eighty four from Thailand, but he moved to San Francisco
Me closer to his daughter and her family security,
camera footage showed visa pausing near someone's driveway suddenly
another much taller man ran toward him and slammed into the ground. Hard
visa died in the hospital two days later
my name's jail. We and I'm a contributor to the New York Times magazine. Like many people,
I first came across speeches story by watching the security camera footage it. When bar on social media that same week, there had been a cluster of
tax against asian elders and veto quickly became a cent
of the violence against Asian Americans that appeared to be on the rise when I finally spoke.
The beaches family. They kept coming back to why? Why did this happen to their father?
to someone they loved so much. The answer
didn't come easy
Actually, we learned that there were no known, explicit expressions of racism when Visa was up to the ground that morning, no obvious hateful slurs, no references to the krona virus or to China, and because the person
accused of killing these. I was a young black men.
racial tensions that have been simmering for decades, even.
With an asian american communities? Everyone agreed the violence needed to stop, but how to get there
in what justice would even look like. That's where things got complicated
so. Here is my story. Why was feature Retina party killed
read by Emily was Zeller. This was recorded by autumn.
Autumn is an app. You can download to listen to lots of audio stories from publications such as the New York Times, the new Yorker
very fair and the Atlantic for weeks month on us not than upon the urged her parents to. Please stay inside
and uneasiness had hung over her ever since a mob descended on the capital early. That month, though, really people had been acting crazy for a year throughout twenty twenty multiples,
injures had come at her, seemingly out of nowhere. That January,
an old man yelled at her in Golden Gate Park, something about a virus
I'm going back to her country. While she watched her sons, then ten and seven run in a playground in February to joggers women
yelled, something about germs at her older son, as he played on a dark with a friend in March. Just before the country went into lockdown
woman swung at month in us outside a hospital. She ducked the punch before running across the street in November,
Another old man spat in her direction as her sons. Road there scooters by the bay when month in us, talked about these incidents. How the outside world didn't feel safe anymore. Her father would ask: is it really that bad
a petite eighty four year old, with soft white hair we charge at an epoch. Tea was a lifelong Buddhist, the kind of person who
braced the world with open arms. One month in his head,
right, but the landlord or a stranger who crossed her. He would tell her to let it go to leave it to karma,
He often lightened the mood after she argued with her husband teasing
that his daughter talked too much month in us didn't always agree with her father, but she loved his spirit this January
Rachel was eager to regain his stamina. After a recent series of hard operations so that he could walk
then for longer distances. Walking was how he explored San Francisco when he fell
derived their from Thailand in two thousand
spend a year with mountainous, while she attended business, school and again in twenty team to help take care of her two sons
during the pandemic, which I usually left
before eight a m and made it back before his grandsons started. Their zoom classes,
on the morning of January twenty Eightth one month in us and the children were still asleep. He prepared to head out his wife suggested that he has
coffee. First, he told her. You wouldn't be gone for long whispering so as not to wake the kids, then
and a jacket genes and a white baseball cap. He slipped out of the apartment down to flights of stairs and enter the foggy morning
The neighbourhood of answer Vista talked on a hill top away from traffic was usually quiet on the corner, where we job paused in his steps, there's a view of the bay and the skyscrapers downtown, a surveillance, video captured what happened next. The footage is grainy and brief. A tall figure suddenly darts across the street and slams into a much smaller one, the smaller figure crumpled under the pavement and doesn't get back up the white baseball cap flutter
to the ground, like a leaf falling from a tree after her son zoom classes. On January, twenty Eightth mountainous begun to
about where her father was. Maybe he went to target a few blocks from their home where he liked to grab a coffee and browse the aisles
During the pandemic, she persuaded him to avoid shopping and stick to outdoor walks. She had even,
sweated him to leave his wallet at home, at least for another few weeks when he was scheduled for his second shot of the corona virus vaccine. She stepped out to check the front and the back of their building. The streets were quiet. When she came back in she noticed his tablet was gone. She tried calling it a strange voice, picked up her father had
and assaulted and taken to a hospital. A police officer said she heard him say severe trauma. The officer said she would have.
call the hospital to find out more. The nurse who picked up
however, only had more questions. No one had been
well to identify, which are his pockets contained a quarter and a pair of keys. Mountainous gave the nurse her father's name,
His medical record number and his six prescriptions, which included a high dose of blood dinners for the past two years. Mountainous had started taking care of her parents more intensely.
after her mother was diagnosed with dementia and her father with three clogged arteries, as we shall recovered from
Cooperation mountainous had slept on the floor next to his bed, comforting him through the pain a few hours. After speaking with the nurse a doctor, called to ask permission to insert a catheter into a vein in his neck and drill a small hole into his skull to release pressure from bleeding mountainous agreed. Even as her worry turned to panic, can I see my father. She asked she told her husband, Eric Lawson,
who rushed home from the restaurant where he word last evening, LE couple stood at the doorway to her fathers room on the third floor, intensive care unit, a long thick to protruded from we chose head
intravenous lines, an electrode patches linked his body to a constellation of machines and bags of fluid mountainous
and to her father's side and held his hand. Part. Can you hear me she repeated a nurse, came in and explained that the surgeon hadn't been able to stop the bleeding which I had lost so much blood by then that
and if a second operation succeeded he would almost certainly lose his most basic functions for the rest of his life. At one point under rollin just hinted that if it were his father, he would most likely take him off life support. Mountainous, didn't hesitate. She wanted to keep him alive,
I'm fine, even if he's in a wheelchair or doesn't wake up, she said she never got to decide.
Two days after entering the hospital just before dawn, we John died in his sleep
Mountainous was alone in the room with her sister on face time. She watched him,
for several more hours his hand in hers.
so
we have to veto was pronounced dead. Mountainous phone rang a homicide, detector
gave his condolences and said they were planning to charge the attack as a murder. Why
You call me when my father just died. Mountainous wondered at first her mind thick with shock
learned small details about the suspect from her initial conversations with the police mail
nineteen years old, african american
but her mind, swirled with bigger questions. Where did the assault happen? What
Her father bleed out, like that.
how long did he lie outside before an ambulance arrived? What kind of person would do this? The next day, mountainous tried to retrace her father steps
She guessed he would have walked in clockwise loop from their building. She asked
suggested he take that route because it included an uphill stretch that would help him get some cardio when she
to the hill. She noticed
neighbor working in his garage and ask if he knew where the episode happened. The other day, the neighbour didn't appear to speak English, but he
did toward her and shouted right there. Mountainous look down a few steps away.
She noticed a dark staying at the end of a driveway? It looked like blood, but she wasn't sure.
Mountainous, sat on her bed that evening, with Eric and their eleven year old Son, Titus googling, her
others age and the Cross Street, where she found the stain if he had been murdered, mountainous asked
Why wasn't it on the news? A close friend also searching, send her to links that vaguely mentioned wheat jar, including an article published in Chinese by Katy
sat a local outlet serving a primarily chinese american audience. There were
several violent crimes in San Francisco. On Thursday, the article began most of the victims were asian around ten p m, a new search result.
locked up, a local, ABC News affiliate had posted footage from a surveillance camera mountainous. His body went numb. She shut the laptop and told Titus to leave the room.
She debated whether to show it to her mother, who had become more free
till after our recent stroke. Her
had been blaming karma for her father's death weakened by
his recent hard operations, which are often joke that life was getting too painful to bear
for a short while montanez half believed it to. When her mother saw the video she stiffened, she told me, go wash the blood right away, Montana says otherwise. Her mother believed we just saw couldn't leave the earth and start its journey towards the afterlife around midnight after Eric and the boys went to bed the two women drove to the corner with a buck.
gloves and a dish brush mountainous squatted and scrubbed as her mother poured a jug of water over the concrete, the headlights shining behind them, you're not doing it right. Her mother snapped at one point grabbing the brush, as mountainous poured the water. She felt her breath shorten bit by bit until she was gasping for air
months before the country went into lockdown Russell John, a professor evasion. Americans studies at San Francisco State University came down with a bad case of the flu. He had just.
on the dinner with a few relatives visiting from Beijing.
Of a viral outbreak and war on had started circulating in the international news media. My wife and I thought, could it be young- recalled a test
soon showed that they had each one in one: a common strain of influenza and their symptoms subsided within a week,
but John grew worry when a doktor asked him. If he had recently been China
again when he learned that his relatives had been marooned at a hotel near the airport. After being told they couldn't board their flight back home
knowing what happened with Sars
how Asians were going to get shunned harassed. He says, referring to the two thousand three outbreak I was just person
We sociologically alerted to racism junk set ups,
alerts for Asian, american and discrimination. The results confirmed his fears in the United States and elsewhere
Private schools ask their chinese international students not to return for the spring semester. Shopkeepers turned away, customers who appeared asian China, towns, emptied
In late January, twenty twenty
A man died outside a restaurant in Sydney after collapsing from a heart attack. No one helped him
Because they thought he had Covid Jung says
to reading about an asian american teenager in the loss, Angelus area, who was hospitalized in February? After being bullied about covert junk contacted colleagues at two advocacy groups in California, they asked the state attorney general's office to help them track what they believed to be a growing number of apis odds. They said they didn't have the capacity to tee.
racism junk says, so we created our own website, the California.
Attorney general's office, collect data on hate crimes in the state, but not other cases involving verbal harassment, for example, which often don't constitute crimes
Within one week of the website, start stop a hate received six hundred. Seventy three reports: a verbal and physical attacks.
As well as other forms of harassment like spitting, coughing, an online threats,
Submissions came from thirty one states and the District of Columbia with nearly half the rope
its originating in California in New York, even without much publicity
We have already received a strong response from the community who want their voices heard
John wrote in the groups first report: the number of submissions grew steadily throughout the year, reaching it
of two thousand eight hundred by the end of twenty twenty. Then the flood came two days after we child died. Eric created a gulf on me page to raise money for the funeral, which included a photo.
We and a description of his assailant derived from a mix of facts and rye emotion. At this
cable, nineteen year old thug that came to his neighborhood in a stolen vehicle and decided to prove how tough he was by brutalizing, a senior citizen Eric Road. Now that, MR we charge a ton, epoch D has died of his injuries. Prosecution for this murderous hate crime is the only path to justice.
Community safety, later as more information trickled in Eric changed, stolen vehicle to a car disabled by an earlier hit and run. He also replaced thug with adult male. After watching an episode of Swat, in which a blot pop explained the words racist undertones to his partner.
Eric, who grew up near San Jose, described himself ass, someone who never thought much about race during his upbringing. His mother is Mexican
he identifies as mixed race strangers off
so he is wide the next morning, Eric called the Tipp lines for several local news stations and left messages for reporters, inviting them to the whole of justice where he and mountainous were scheduled to meet with homicide detectives that afternoon. The couple too
their first interview with the Kittv reporter Evans Czarnecki near the courthouse steps. The segment ran.
we challenge photo and the headline family of
Eighty four year old, killed in S f, believe attack was racially motivated. Witches story joined a cluster of
ports about attacks on asian elders in for cities, Amanda win a prominent activist, shared
ask his report in a viral Instagram video along with two others, one about a sixty four
old vietnamese woman who was robbed in San Jose and another
about a sixty one year old, filipino man whose face was slashed with
Box cut her on the New York Subway. The main
stream. Media does not spotlight our stories enough when set into the camera.
urging her vast following to share the story and Tag CNN and MSNBC. We matter and racism is killing us
When a video emerged showing a ninety one year old, shoved to the ground in Chinatown in Oakland, California, the actors, Daniel Day
him and Daniel whew posted at twenty five thousand dollar reward for anyone who had more information on this aspect. Tweeting, remember Vincent Chin, who was beaten to death by two
men in Detroit and nineteen, eighty to others
Libraries joined in when I see photos
These asian elders, who have been attacked the actor, seem
you wrote and variety, I see
embodiment of my own parents, journey their dreams and their struggles
their sorrow and their unwavering optimism.
How many reach out upon a pot. These need to happen before you see anything at all.
As the lunar new year approached in February, hundreds of people went out to protest. The attacks stories like we Chas inspired some to start neighbourhood,
patrol groups to accompany elders on their walks to and from home scanned the streets for a suspicious activity and in some cases, call the police to intervene.
college students, high schoolers and middle schoolers, organised or attended rallies in their home towns owners of gun stores report
more asian customers than ever before, then on March sixteenth
a white gunman in the Atlanta area, drove to several businesses and shot eight people to death. It was the deadliest
Shooting in the country and more than a year, six of the victims to women of chinese descent for women of Korean descend worked at the businesses targeted by the gunman.
unequivocal sign for many of those watching that he had acted out of hatred, massage any and racism.
Twitter and elsewhere asian hammer
and lit up their feeds within out pouring of grief and rage. Less than twenty four hours later, a spokesman for the Cherokee County Sheriff reduced the rampage to the
a sex attic having a really bad day, Lenin,
revealed that the same spokesmen reportedly promoted tee shirts, calling the curve
the virus in imported virus from China. Lou rage boiled over in March,
says stop API hate received roughly two thousand eight hundred reports about the same
Amber he received an all of twenty twenty
We don't know how to attribute this rise in reporting. He told me he believes that the attack
on the elderly and the Atlanta shootings led more people to file reports, but he also suspects that the new
his reflecting animus that only deepened during locked down. It's been a year.
Pent up anger and frustration directed toward Asians. He says: there's been a half million deaths. People are grieving
I think a lot of that grief and anger and scapegoating continues to be directed towards Asians. New images have continued to surface on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. Some assailants have yelled slurs while throwing a punch or a slashing at their victims with a knife.
Others have injured or killed people without saying a word. These stories have prompted continuous news
average and social media obsession and beneath it all their looks at it.
To understand what is driving the attacks and how exactly race is playing a role.
The day after a mountainous and Eric's, first tv appearance, San Francisco district attorney charged Anton Watson, the
Nineteen year old, accused of shoving, we choose to death with murder, an elder abuse Watson. The court documents state had been cited for reckless driving, speeding and failure to stop at a stop sign in the hours before the attack
One witness at the scene told officers that he saw a blackmail. Eighteen, thirty years old approach
stand over an elderly man lying on the ground. Another witness said he heard a voice yelling. Why are you looking at me why you looking at me and then a crushing sound Watson pleaded
guilty has public defender slim on no Wabi challenged the murder charge, arguing
Watson did not intend to kill which are no I'll be described.
incident as an impulsive and motivated assault that resulted from
mental health breakdown of a teenager. He told me
Watson lost his job and support structure during the pandemic. In addition,
who attending college classes and working at fat eggs. He had previously gone to therapy and taken medication at Watson's bail. Hearing. No Bobby said he recognized the racial overtones of the case, but added this
False narrative that this is a targeted attack on the asian community or an elderly man is misleading and prejudicial. He asked
court toward her and neuro psychological evaluation and proposed releasing Watson,
the home confinement where his family could look after him, along with requiring therapy and counselling, so that Watson wouldn't become another statistic in the criminal justice world
Mountainous and Eric had been busy arranging her fathers funeral, while fielding phone calls and messages from family friends and strangers of victims advocate assigned by the district attorney's office, helped the couple apply.
for state reimbursement further cremation, the funeral and other expenses donations flooded into their go fuck me page and a blue past.
Our goal of ten thousand dollars within days may
London Breed and speaker. Nancy Pelosi offered condolences this
for it was overwhelming an odd someone had been falsely.
claiming to reporters that he was wages. Sun and spoke on behalf of the
only about what would happen to his remains another person
claiming to be we chose Sun had set up a fundraiser in his name last week on February forth, the couple spoke with San Francisco district attorney chase a burden on a call, a form
public defender Moody was part of a new wave of progressive prosecutors who entered office the year before with the promise of reform and Eric voted for him. Now they wanted action. We were like. Is this a crime he was like? I can't talk about this Eric says.
It was just the way that he answered the question that made me feel like you, didn't really care about our emotions about what we were asking about: good dean who couldn't discuss the particulars
The case understood where Eric and mountainous we're coming from any time a family suffers a violent crime, a homicide in particular. There is questions. Moody's told me: why did this happen? How could it
prevented. Often the natural human responses to want someone to blame for the pain that your experiencing he added, although our system is pretty effective at processing cases and punishing, were
effective at providing the kinds of answers to families in pain and need to feel a sense of closure or to be able
the move on with their lives after suffering often unthinkable harm most states. Forty eight, as well as the District of Columbia, have
addressing hate crimes that are motivated by victims, race, religion or
sexual orientation among other by these laws,
at time to an underlying sentence in California. They can extend this.
hence by three years, but in practice
proving bias is difficult, especially
and there is no explicit expression of it after
interviewing prosecutors across more than thirty states of Laana iceberg, allow professor at Florida State University found that district attorney
offices often avoid adding hate crime charges, even and perhaps especially when they
I'm is particularly horrific.
She wrote in the Atlantic this year. This is in part because the
and and already faces a long prison sentence and also because, as one prosecutor put it
it's impossible to know. What's in someone's heart, the Bureau of Justice statistic,
reported in June, that federal prosecutors declined to pursue hate crime charges in about four out of every five cases, from two thousand five to twenty nineteen, citing insufficient evidence. If Watson is convicted of murder, he could face twenty five
here's to life in state prison being found guilty of a hate crime would not extend such a sentence significantly, but
designation, has always symbolized more to victims and their families. The difference between calling out prejudice and denying it one month after the Atlanta shootings
a white gunman killed eight people at a Fedex facility and Indianapolis four of the victims were seek prom
calls to examine whether the gunman was motivated by bias, investigators,
if he had some one hundred people and reviewed one hundred seventy five thousand computer files, some of which indicated that the gunman had visited white supremacist websites in July. However, the F b I concluded that the gunman who killed himself after the show,
I had not acted out of bias or a desire to advance and ideology, but suffered for
mental illness and had committed suicidal murder, the seat coalition and advocacy group published a statement
asking the bureau to clarify how and why it ruled out bias. As a motive
Low law enforcement has said this. Investigation is over for all
The families who lost loved ones, the survivors this
community in any one else, impacted by hate violence. These coins
genes will remain forever. The covert nineteen hate crimes ACT, passed with by partisans
bored and signed into law by President Biden in May
Primarily aims to improve crime reporting and data collection, while it does not change the legal definition of a hate crime. The legislation commits funds too fast
track federal reviews of hate crime investigations and approves grants for local law enforcement agencies. It also in
It is those agencies to raise awareness about the impact of hate crimes and the services available to victims. The law was
celebrated for recognising the need to better track violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, but it also drew criticism for effect
Lee endorsing more policing
the time when law enforcement faced intense scrutiny as well as for failing to address the root causes of racism or crime. Public say
he is a lot bigger than the ability to arrest and prosecute. Someone says Tunisia, Collins, who runs the advocacy group Californians for safety and justice through her organization Collins, who lost two brothers to homicide.
the last decade, assists victims of crime and lobbies to increase support services provided by the state one of the biggest flaws of hate crime laws she says, is their focus on punishment.
There may be a logic behind that. The question is: does it prevent things like this from happening again? She continued, regardless of the laws, intend how its receipt
Does this is disingenuous because, where using the same tools to fix the problem, it's like continuing to use
Grew driver when you need to use a saw. The weeks went on.
and mountainous and Erika sank deeper into their grief as their suspicions mounted toward homicide investigators who never seemed able to give a straight answer toward the district attorney. Who seemed to put his interests before theirs.
And toward Antoine Watson, about whom they knew little beyond the gaping hole he left in their lives. The court system which they thought would deliver swift justice was confoundedly slow by then
body had told reporters that there was no evidence from the police suggesting that we chose death was motivate
by racial animus. In the absence of any sense of resolution, the couple began searching for clues on their own. Several people suggested that there was more to the video that went viral,
which prompted mountainous to walk around the block, to knock on neighbours, doors and ask if they would share their security camera footage. Only one agreed
the video was taken from the same angle as the clip that everyone saw. Only this footage was longer monotonous.
we now see her father enter the frame as he climbed up the hill into a corner where he would have continued strayed. Instead, he paused for a
meant and turned right as though, whatever caught
I made him decide to change course after the attack
as her father lay on the ground. A couple d:
Having buys stopped to place a blanket on him ass. She replayed the footage.
Again and again mountainous kept coming back to the same conclusion. He didn't take anything from my father, not even the tablet she says. I got everything back the housekeeper, even the quarter, Eric fixated on the foot it too
That's when I was like this is more than some kind of accident or robbery or assault. This is a hate crime in April MA
innocent Eric attended, a rally opposite City Hall, where a hundred or so people
they're gonna Sandy Plaza for speeches and martial arts demonstrations.
Several young people carried signs with an illustration of a seventy five year old chinese woman, who, a few weeks earlier was punished by a white man, and then
back by whacking him with a wooden board,
mountainous and Eric posed for photos and signed a petition to recall Chase Abou Dean, as people stopped to greet them with elbow bumps and condolences
A young man in a gas mask Anna Bulletproof Vest said he had fled
from New York City. After seeing the video Eric complemented his vest and said he
about wearing his. He ordered one after we chose death along with a few cans of pepper spray and security cameras. He installed around their apartment.
He was also on awaiting was to become a registered gun owner. The rallies had become a place where the cup,
Could not only feel less alone in their grief, but also seek answers. They couldn't seemed again elsewhere. After we child died. Eric says he saw so many videos, video after video of attacks in the news I was like there is something going on here
after the first few rallies, they attended Eric casually surveyed attendees.
king, whether they had ever been spit on nor pushed, and what the rays of the perpetrator was everybody I talked to set. It was from a black person. He told me
No, it's not a scientific, polar whatever. The responses confirmed
thought in his mind all the same. The data, though incomplete, show that,
crimes against Asian Americans were more likely to be committed by non white offenders than those against Hispanics or African Americans, but the
overwhelming majority of hate crime perpetrators are white. In several primetime interview,
including on Nightline and CNN. Eric went on to suggest that we chose done
was not a random outlier, but a result of one race targeting another. His comments, tugged at a bigger
messier debate about race that had been building around the attacks.
in the Bay area, where Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders make up a quarter of the population. Stories like we chose sparked at least
two opposing narratives one was that
was a pattern of black perpetrators and asian victims that the pattern was a symptom of it.
Jim dating back decades. Another was that such
pattern was not only falls, but that the belief in it was a racist misperception. These conversations, sir,
as to the memory of black Americans, killed senselessly by asian perpetrators to Latasha Harlin's the
teenager carrying two dollars and a bottle of orange juice shot to death by a court
An american shopkeeper and ninety ninety one, a Kai Girly,
unarmed young father shot to death in a dark stairwell by a chinese american police officer and twenty fourteen and these memories the sense of injustice that still lingered in them overlapped with other histories still.
For Sarah one, a community organizer who has been helping victims of violence in San Francisco. The debate brought back memories from twenty ten when Hunt
its gathered outside city Hall, to protect a series of similar reports among
most alarming, where the stories of a fifty seven year, old asian woman who was pushed off a railway platform on the tracks and and
eighty three year old asian man who died from a injury after being assaulted by a group of boys. In each case, this aspects were black ones, group community,
sent. Her responded by opening a new office in baby. You hunters point where the attacks occurred when one first set up her branch there
the baby was in the midst of a drastic demographic shift that was occurring throughout the region, marked by an inn
observations and an exodus of black residence. At one point,
one group may emerge because they ve got greater population, and another group feels pushed out feels like they don't have a voice anymore,
The Reverend a Cecil Williams, told the New York Times in an article about the twenty ten protest in recent years. The asian percentage of the baby is population has been
five times as large as it was in nineteen eighty, while the black share has shrunk by more than half
though, half of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the Bay area are low or very low income, as defined by the depart
and of housing in urban development. A quarter live in high income, households,
They are often seen as beneficiaries of rising inequality. The trust building really took us ten years. One says yet. Today I still face.
people from the black community who will come into our office on a weekly basis, saying
We only care about our people that we just take their resources, it still there, but we don't want to give up.
because, unless everybody safe and that community nobody is listen, Lacoste who runs a city program called be magic and works with
One group told me that undoing misperceptions between communities had no quick fix them.
debates among black residence about what contributed to the shortage of affordable housing Lacoste says, but tension also took subtler more pervasive forms
the kind she could feel most recently at a neighborhood beauty supply store. When an asian clerk followed her ass, she shocked.
Solidarity is what it should be. She says it's
every day, little micro aggressions and little nuances. That's harder to tackle two fully appreciate the challenges that one in Lacoste phase
Requires understanding the forces that have shaped that neighbourhood and many others over decades, red lining and employment discrimination.
The long shadow of multiple tech booms, the burden of street violence, inadequate mental health care.
surging homelessness, though police response to all of it. These shifts weren't always visible, but they were there beneath the influx or accidents beneath the mistrust and grievances. Beneath what each person, black or asian, took away from the image
of attacks flooding the news even inside the anti asian hate movement. Every expression of grief and resolution differed in March,
A man waving allusion, flag, told a small crowded, a protest in San Matteo California that we each hour
and at him of his grandparents who collected cans to get by,
was why he decided to go on the front lines and Patrol Chinatown in Oakland that same month, at a protest for Angelo Cato.
A Filipino American Navy, veteran killed by police officers and Antioch California. In December, twenty twenty
a young woman from have I e, broken to tears. While remembering the story of her filipino japanese family migrants, who worked the pineapple and sugar cane plantations and the night the cops detained her father rooster.
Filled with addiction during a mental health crisis in April, while patrolling San Francisco chum.
town, a former mayor and son of immigrants from Tie Sean and Hong Kong pointed to the bank across the street.
hold me, his mother was mugged there a few years ago. He said she didn't want to go to court. She just wanted to bury it.
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Robert Jemison, one of the producers of the daily right. Now
there's something unique happening with labour in America, employers can't find workers
and some people are realising they don't want to go back to the jobs they lost during the pandemic in covering the store.
Our team is finding that its way more complicated than this narrative of stingy bosses are spoiled workers.
I'm getting a sense of the bigger picture involves talking to a lot of people from caterers,
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at a vigil in Madison Park in Oakland the week after the Atlanta shootings, a mother stood with her young son, holding a sign with which all face on it,
She was a tie, immigrants living in Alameda, a diverse town. She said
but one day last year, while biking near her house
an elderly man shouted out her, you don't belong.
Here another time
while walking around the neighbourhood with her son, they waved and
I feel that a young lady who is listening to music and dancing she too,
around to my son and said a few little boy. Each incident left her and shock and compelled her to attend the vigil. Her hope was for all people to work together and not blame each other. It's like being bullied when
doubling bullies and other sibling, and then they go to school, and then they bully other kids. It's like a chain reaction.
then there was mountainous and Eric there. It is
to make sense of we chose death to understand
What motivated it placed them in the centre of a cow,
relations so much broader than their own at the rallies they attended
every now and then a different black man approached the microphone or met with a couple on the sidelines and tried his best to break the ice. Why?
Of a young organizer told them
the Asian Americans who had marched beside him last summer and said he grew up with asian neighbours and lately felt that everything is so separated.
Another simply laid his hand over his chest. During an impromptu speech, and looking at mountainous said, my heart goes out to you.
Mountainous hasn't known what to really make of these gestures. She could see that we chose death meant something, but
than her own grief. Let he was part of a history that preceded her and a future. She could help shape, but what brought her out to the rallies more than anything was her desire for someone to
sir, for the loss of her father during her own speech that day, which she wrote?
by hand and rehearsed the night before mountainous told the crowd to call the city, including the police, for help when necessary,
You can dialed three one, one or nine one one. She reminded them.
They have any language to help anybody. I am
mountainous one breezy afternoon in April, at what ya, gotta Dama a Buddhist Temple outfitted inside a small two story house across the street from Golden Gate Park in a car
room upstairs draped in golden red, she knelt before a shrine of buddhas vases filled with fresh tulips and a black and white portrait of her father,
she lowered her head and open her ponds to touch the rug three times. Mountainous and her parents subscribed to a Buddhist believed that, after death, the sole takes one hundred days to reach the afterlife list.
Was the seventieth she had come every morning to wish her father a safe journey. Mountainous offered me a pastry and asked if I had seen the latest news
out the sixty four year old asian woman in Riverside California, who was stabbed in the stomach while walking her dogs
and later died of her injuries. Earlier this week
two more videos emerged from New York City.
Of a man in Times square stuff
sing on a woman on her way to church of a man. Punching
and choking another man on the J train. In each instance, the bystanders appeared to do nothing. The stories filled mountainous with questions. Why, since her fathers
did it feel as if there were more cases every day
Why was no one intervening? I want to know why she said
In another week her sons would go back to school and mountainous. A food safety inspector for the city, school district would be back at work Eric.
Who worked at two restaurants as a server and manager before the pandemic, was on unemployment,
She could feel the weight of the pandemic starting to lift, but where there had once been anticipation, she now felt dread. Since her fathers,
She and Eric agreed that no one would go out at night without him whenever she left the house. She tested a can of pepper spray in the bathroom
the fumes burning her eyes before talking it in her pocket in the months since her father died. She and Eric had spent so much of their time at rallies at court or on the phone with reporters and lawyers there
younger son, Troy a bright and playful eight year old, who is autistic, had become
easily agitated during the lock down and often stopped and shown it.
Their landlord had sent a series of noise complaints and eviction warnings Eric also busied himself
the emails to architects and building managers in Chinatown, where he
planning a mural, a few blocks from the dragon gate.
there was barely a moment to grieve. At one point, the couple agreed to stop going rallies for a while,
but inevitably they would get in the car with a poster of we, China back it's not because we feel bad
mountainous told me one evening, while sitting on the bed, where her father used to sleep tight, is playing video games near by but a p, I still attacked deeper deeper every day. Its non stop. You know
She thought about the people she had met at the rallies, who had quit their jobs to patrol or speak out full time.
She worried about how the exposure affected her sons. She tried to shield them from the video, but
sometimes the evening news would be on in the footage would flash by before. She could turn it off after the funeral, mountainous and Eric hired a therapist to help Titus. He had not cried and seldom said anything about the episode during one appointment
Europe has asked if he felt angry and he replied in that sheepish preteen way. I don't know mountainous knew. The extra sessions were probably a lot on top of school. We again tie encoding classes.
And the therapist he already seized manages ADHD, but she and Eric
that the trauma might manifest years or decades later. She wasn't sure
Troy even knew what was happening
then one day after
knocking on a neighbours door to ask about their surveillance footage. She returned to her car to fine, Troy.
crying in the back seat when they got home. He pulled out her phone
Instead of putting on his usual cartoons, he scroll through her photos, whereas Grandpa Troy asked her mountainous pulled him close,
from behind. She didn't want him to see her crying. If you miss Grandpa, she told him go to his photo and say: hi. Troy walked up to
Who framed portraits of his grandfather that now hung side by side on the wall high? He shouted over and over mountainous new should find a councillor for herself to she wanted to be strong for her sons, but she had trouble sleeping at night and broken to tears,
expectantly sometimes Titus would walk into her bedroom to watch tv see
turn away and ask mom. Are you crying sometime
she walked into a room to see her own mother turn away, sniffling and cheering it's ok. He must be happy now because he's not coming back any more.
And sometimes when they were alone in the guilt swelled inside mountainous she fell apart mom. You know what I'm a bad daughter. She would say. I told him to walk that way. I killed dad mountainous arrived at this.
So the San Francisco hull of justice and imposing concrete building that spends a city block wherein Twond Watson was scheduled to appear for a pre trial hearing she
much too few sheets of paper. In one hand a news cameraman rustled with his try upon at the FAO,
shkreli a month earlier in Marge several hundred people.
Gathered here in support of her family. Mountainous was too emotional, then. Today she had prepared his speech and printed a few copies to distribute to reporters, but the steps were nearly empty. It was still early mountainous reminded herself
but she also couldn't shake the feeling that the world seemed to be moving on. There had been so many attacks since the one on her father.
And the headlines were preoccupied with the trial of Derek Chauvelin, the Minneapolis police officer, convicted of murdering George Floyd inside mountainous, held her composure, as her frustration grew after the last court hearing month in is called the victims advocate assigned to her by the district attorney's
Is to request a tie translator. She found it hard to follow the legal vocabulary and felt bad asking Eric to explain terms and intricacies. After several weeks, the advocate replied that the office didn't have the budget to hire a translator. She felt similarly snubbed after asking the advocate about applying for compensation for lost wages. After her father died, my
This had given up her night job processing customs paperwork for an import export company to help watch the kids. You know what she said. She said you were not a victim. Your father is a victim undercut.
A formula families of victims are eligible for work compensation only if a minor died or was hospitalized as they waited for
and on hearing to start mountainous and Eric watched from the front row of the gallery. As the judge heard a series of other cases due to the pandemic, the court had reopened at limited capacity to an enormous backlog, booting who started his term just a few more.
before the lock down in January. Twenty twenty inherited more than five thousand criminal prosecutions. Two hours later and one finally entered the room from the front row:
Mountainous, fixed her gaze on him ass. He walked slowly to a seat near the gallery. His orange jumpsuit fit loosely over his tall frame chains linking his wrists, his hair growing out before sitting down
he glanced toward the back of the room and smiled when he recognised a young man Anton, grew up in San Francisco in Spain.
Part of his childhood, with his siblings parents and grandparents and the ends of history.
area where we shall later lived.
The whole family is in deep agony, Jennifer Steiner along time friend.
lament one's mother chose to speak on her behalf, told me, and
I didn't wake up January, twenty Eightth, twenty twenty one with the idea of shoving somebody down and killing them, regardless of their race or gender,
That's not who he is Steiner. Who was
and once Elementary School principle said he needs
mental health support not prison time.
According to Slim, on no lobby the public defender,
And one feels remorse and shame for what happened and wishes he could sit down with which all families so
could explain the struggles he has gone through in life. His mother, who was also laid off from her job during locked down
and work through relatives in another state and was for a while supporting the family from afar. She wakes up crying. She goes to sleep crying Steiner said she lost her child. The hearing was brief and procedural. A trial date has yet to
said as to bailiffs escorted Antoine out the young man in the back left the court room and returned with a baby in his arms and Taiwan. He shouted holding up the baby.
love you dude, the young man repeated himself
on turned around and smiled again until the door closed on him on her drive home mountainous thought,
about a defendant. She saw earlier in the court room. The man had accepted a plea agreement for domestic violence charges and afterward. His victim asked the judge if she could say a few words when she finished
the defendant lifted his glasses and wiped his eyes? Mountainous wanted to speak to the judge too. I have no chance to talk how unfair
right now how I deal with it. Every time I do laundry. Every time I drive to work. She said.
Looking in her rearview mirror tears streaming,
She thought about her father in the back of the car with the kids there,
and her when she got ready for work in the morning the way he greed
her with relief when she came home late from work
she thought about in Taiwan
Knowing there were people in his life who loved him he's
nineteen years old to be
jail. She trail
off and let out a deep sigh
She had always looked to her father when something troubled, her conscience,
had guided her through life's big decisions are moments of
certainty endowed. He was the
Who encourage her to go to the United States the reason
She started her life here now.
All that remained was the memory of him. The sound of his voice
in her head. She knew what he would
say if he were here now.
and one was still young
He still had a life ahead of him, give him a chance. She,
hear her father saying let it go a few days later
Eric ask me if I saw the news about the recent attack on Karl Chan, the head of Oakland's chum.
town Chamber of Commerce who has been a Vulcan supporter of increasing foot patrol
in camera, surveillance in the neighborhood.
chance showed a photo of the person he said, attacked him. Who appeared to be black with reporters Eric said the photo.
Which was taken from behind and does not show a phase made. The person look hateful. I know that's totally crazy, he said, but I get that feeling some time.
I wonder if it's my inner racism coming out, or am I just sensitive or is this my trauma? I'm not a Jew
I am not a lawyer, I'm not a cop
a human being feels things he pondered this while sitting in his car in the spot, where
Twond, reportedly parked on the morning of the attack on we charge
upon died as a result of Anton not being arrested for reckless driving. He said
not having proper services to come out and talk to him. While he's out here yelling all morning, he thought about Anti One's family and something his friend one
told him about how, when his son had issues with another family, he would meet with them to talk about it. I have this weird stupid, fantasy. Eric said the future me, the real me says I wish we
could forgive everybody. Everybody should acknowledge this bad thing happen
and right now it feels like maybe his firm.
Sees me as an enemy and in a way I kind of em
but I dont want to be like that. I want to know what happened. I want to know the truth.
I just want to know why he did it at once.
Here that I don't think we have a choice but to accept it, I dont know: if we can, you know let him go. He added. I think he has to pay for what he did, but once he does wish
work out some kind of situation where we could forgive somehow and move on with our life. Other
you're going to have that forever
but maybe we're going to be heard forever anyway, one
Two days after her father's death, mountainous boarded a boat with Eric, their sons and a few friends. Three monks carried piles of orchids and roses are framed, photo of which are and a forest Green box.
Holding his remains there, marigold robes glowed in the sun, mountainous wore a black wool cloak over a pleaded dress that flew up as the boat pulled away from the dark Titus Dry,
in a black suit and a pair of his grandfathers, leather loafers that fit tight around his growing feet chased his little brother around the deck
They sailed toward the Golden Gate Bridge
the choppy waters, jostling them, as they chanted the five precepts, a web cameras
dreamed, the ceremony for friends and family abroad before his third heart operation, which
debated whether to go through with the procedure. He wasn't sure if he would make it. He told mountainous that when the time came he wanted to be scattered in the bay the place that became his home you're, going to survive. Dad mountainous told him
I'm going to take care of you. You have to live longer, so you can watch Titus graduate from college on the far side of the bridge where the Bay meets the Pacific. The engine stopped the group filed out to the edge of the deck everyone felt
silent, a monk leaned over and gently shook. We chose ashes into the lapping waves, friends, scattered the flower petals mountainous wailed, softly Eric held her, and she held her sons
ass. She watched the parade of flowers and ashes flowed out to sea. She spoke to him. I kept my promise dad she said in the next life.
I hope I'll get to be your daughter again
Ass.
Afghanistan fades from the headlines. The international rescue Committee is staying in the country to prevent a full scale. Humanitarian crisis, as well as working across the United States to resettle many of the thousands of Afghans evacuated,
last month, learn more about how you s, communities are coming together to welcome afghan refugees and how the Irish Sea is planning to keep health education and financed
services running for women and children across Afghanistan. Visit rescue, dot, Org slash, help Afghanistan to find out how you can help
Transcript generated on 2021-10-08.