Oakland community leaders on Tuesday called on Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency to help quell an ongoing spree of violent crime in Chinatown and across the city.
Dana King/ Wikimedia Commons
San Francisco, CA. – Mayor London N. Breed today announced the City of San Francisco is planning a new public art installation to honor Black lives and the history of African Americans. The installation is planned to be located in Golden Gate Park’s Music Concourse next month, in time for Juneteenth.
The installation, ‘Monumental Reckoning,’ by Bay Area sculptor Dana King, honors the first Africans stolen from their homeland and sold into chattel slavery in the New World. The installation consists of 350 sculptures representing the number of Africans initially forced onto the slave ship San Juan Bautista for a journey of death and suffering across the Atlantic in 1619. A handful of these original 350 ancestors became America’s first enslaved people.
Moved by security camera videos of older Asians being viciously attacked in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jacob Azevedo, a young Latino man, offered in an Instagram post to escort anyone in Oakland’s Chinatown who felt unsafe. Others saw the message and wanted to help him: Compassion in Oakland launched in February and has grown from hundreds to more than 2,000 orange-vested volunteers and is working to take the initiative to cities across the country.
“This [violence] is the worst we have ever seen, but it’s the best response I’ve ever seen myself, because when the worst came, we are seeing the best of humanity,” says Carl Chan, president of Oakland’s Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, who emigrated from Hong Kong in the 1970s.
Moved by security camera videos of older Asians being viciously attacked in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jacob Azevedo, a young Latino man, offered in an Instagram post to escort anyone in Oakland’s Chinatown who felt unsafe. Others saw the message and wanted to help him: Compassion in Oakland launched in February and has seen volunteer applications grow from hundreds to more than 2,000, and the organization is working to take the initiative to cities across the country.
“This [violence] is the worst we have ever seen, but it’s the best response I’ve ever seen myself, because when the worst came, we are seeing the best of humanity,” says Carl Chan, president of Oakland’s Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, who emigrated from Hong Kong in the 1970s.
Reeling from a depressed economy and increased crime, Oakland Chinatown enters city s policing debate
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Armed security members from Goliath Protection Group, contracted and funded by a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign, patrol on Webster Street in the Chinatown district of Oakland, California Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021.Photos by Stephen Lam / The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
2of7A grocery worker, right, passes a bundle of fresh longan to a woman in the Chinatown district of Oakland, California Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021. Community members are on heightened alert after the recent increase in violent crimes, many caught on camera, toward the Asian American community throughout the Bay Area. Despite an increased police presence, armed private security, and volunteer groups patrolling the area around Oakland Chinatown, many businesses continue to worry and are taking extra precautionary measures such as boarding up storefronts and closing hours earlier despite how the pan