California Attorney General Rob Bonta joined San Francisco Mayor London Breed and other local community leaders for a roundtable discussion on combating hate crimes on Thursday.
It was the first of 13 planned discussions on the topic, which will be held in cities across the state. The aim of the meetings is to develop “strategies to address bias and hate at their roots—strengthening responses to hate crime in California,” according to a statement from Bonta’s office.
Bonta noted there has been a 31 percent increase in hate crimes across the board in California over the last year; but anti-Asian crimes have exploded by a margin of 107 percent.
Thursday’s roundtable was held at the Visitacion Valley branch of the San Francisco Public Library, a few blocks from a park where 89-year-old Yik Oi Huang was attacked while exercising in 2019.
Huang suffered significant brain damage as a result of the attack by then 18-year-old Keonte Gathron. She died from her injuries nearly a year later.
The organization Stop AAPI Hate has linked the increase in xenophobic violence against the Asian-American community with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
“There’s no panacea, there’s no cure-all,” Bonta said, “but there are many ways to make progress.”
He said portions of Thursday’s discussion were devoted to strategizing optimization of in-language services for victims of hate crimes, as well as further developing cross-racial healing programs.
“An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” Breed said following the meeting. She said the city of San Francisco was committed to expanding services in the fight against hate crimes, including providing escorts for seniors as they run errands and dispatching patrols to impacted neighborhoods.