Community members in Oakland, California are stepping up to keep Asian American people safe amid a recent flurry of assaults against Asian American elders, spurred on by racist disinformation and xenophobic scapegoating from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier this year, a video of elderly Thai American man Vicha Ratanapakdee being brutally attacked by an unprovoked assailant in San Francisco went viral. Ratanapakdee later died from the injuries. His attack was just one of many in the state and across the country, including a Vietnamese grandmother who was assaulted and mugged in San Jose, California; a Filipino American man, Noel Quintana, who was slashed across the face in a New York City subway station; and an elderly Filipino woman who was attacked on a trolley in San Diego.
According to Stop AAPI Hate, an advocacy group speaking out against violence of Asian American and Pacific Islander people, there were more than 2,808 firsthand accounts of anti-Asian racist acts across the country between March 19 and Dec. 31, 2020. More than 7% involved victims over the age of 60.
