APRIL 3-6, 2021 Volume 31 - No. 26 • 2 Sections – 18 Pages
Locsin: Hate crime against elderly DATELINE USA Bay Area Fil-Am teen Filipina will ‘influence’ PH foreign policy recovering after FROM THE AJPRESS NEWS TEAM ACROSS AMERICA
being shot in the face
A FILIPINA American teen has been discharged from the hospital after getting shot in the face in San Francisco during an incident her family is calling a hate crime. Jessica Dimalanta, a 19-year-old from Vallejo, California, was reportedly attending car stunt shows with four friends in San Francisco on Sunday, March 21, when a group of men pulled up in a dark sedan and opened fire on the grey Lexus she was riding in. Dimalanta and a 19-year-old male were hit, while their other three friends were unharmed. The suspects fled the scene. She was taken to UCSF Mission Bay Hospital in downtown San Francisco, and was later transferred to SF General Hospital, according to a report from Daily Mail. Her uncle, Dexter Martin, confirmed with the Asian Journal that Dimalanta is Filipina. He started a GoFundMe page for her, claiming that his niece was a “victim of a hate crime” for being Asian.
by RITCHEL
MENDIOLA AJPress
PHILIPPINE Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. has condemned the recent brutal attack against an elderly Filipina American in New York City, saying it will influence the country’s foreign policy with the United States.
“This is gravely noted and will influence Philippine foreign policy. I might as well say it, so no one on the other side can say, ‘We didn’t know you took racial brutality against Filipinos at all seriously.’ We do,” Locsin said in a tweet on Wednesday, March 31. A 65-year-old Fil-Am woman, identified as Vilma Kari, was walking to church in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood on Monday morning, March
LA Catholic leaders hold prayer vigil in solidarity with AAPI communities by RITCHEL
MENDIOLA AJPress
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‘This is the reality a lot of us face’: Fil-Am Army veteran hurt in another hate crime in SF
29, when a man assaulted her and knocked her to the ground, as previously reported by the Asian Journal. The unprovoked attack was captured by a CCTV camera, showing the man kicking the woman several times in the head before walking away. He reportedly told her, “You don’t belong here,” according to the police. u PAGE A2
Auxiliary Bishop Alejandro “Alex” Aclan of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles delivered a homily on Wednesday night, March 31 at Incarnation Church in Glendale, California denouncing the recent attacks on Asian Americans, including on a Filipina senior citizen in New York. He also encouraged dialogue and reconciliation with other communities and racial groups. Aclan is the second Filipino American priest to be ordained a bishop in the United States. Photo by Angelus News/Víctor Aleman
A FILIPINO American U.S. Army veteran from San Francisco was recently subjected to a racist tirade and injured in a physical attack in what is being considered a hate crime. Ron Tuason — a 56-year-old longtime Bay Area resident who is of Filipino, Chinese and Spanish descent — was waiting for the bus after a trip to the grocery store in the city’s Ingleside neighborhood on March 13 when another man approached him and started spewing racial insults. The man, who was wearing a Navy hat, pointed out Tuason’s veteran cap. “He notices me and the color of my skin and the fact that I’m wearing a hat that says, ‘veteran.’ He ends up saying, ‘Get the hell out of my country, you caused this problem. Do you want to get hurt? You’re not a veteran, I’m a veteran,’” Tuason recounted in a recent interview with the Asian Journal. The veteran, who uses a cane to walk, tried to record the incident on his cellphone until u PAGE A3 Vilma Kari
AMID the surge in racial violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) across the United States, Los Angeles Catholic leaders held an outdoor candlelight prayer vigil in solidarity with the affected communities. LA Archbishop José H. Gomez on Wednesday, March 31, reminded attendees that Asian American families belong to the oldest communities that arrived in the country. “The first families from the Philippines arrived here in California, at Morro Bay, nearly 450 years ago, in 1587,” he said during the prayer vigil held at the Incarnation Parish Church in Glendale, California. “If you think about it, Asians were here, working and worshipping, 33 years before the Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower on the other side of the country. It is very sad that these relatives, neighbors and u PAGE A3
65-year-old Filipina in ‘good spirits’after brutal attack Over $200K raised for Vilma Kari’s recovery by MOMAR
G. VISAYA AND CHRISTINA M. ORIEL AJPress
THERE’S an outpour of support for Vilma Kari, the 65-year-old Filipina immigrant who was violently attacked on her way to church in New York during the start of Holy Week. A GoFundMe page — started by Kari’s daughter Elizabeth days after the brutal incident in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood — has garnered over $200,000, within a day. “First and foremost, I want to start off by saying my mom is humbled by the outpouring of messages and support from not only our friends and family, but from the kind souls all over the world,” her California Gavin Newsom, 53, received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine on
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Thursday, April 1 as the state’s residents 50 and older became eligible for COVID-19 vaccines. Photo courtesy of the Office of Governor Newsom
fend themselves! Fight me instead.” “We have one color in our Blood! Stop discriminating. LOVE AND PEACE TO EVERYONE!!” he wrote in the accompanying tweet. The Filipino victims included in the graphic are Jessica Dimalanta, a 19year-old from the Bay Area who was shot in her right eye; Noel Quintana, a 61-year-old who was slashed from cheek to cheek on the New York subway; and Danny Yuchang, a 59-yearold travel agent who was punched during his lunch break in San Francisco. It features a photo of Brandon Elliot, the suspect who attacked Vilma Kari, Senator-turned-boxer Manny Pacquiao sent a message on social media to Photo from Twitter/@MannyPacquiao u PAGE A3 those attacking Asian Americans.
older, individuals over the age of 16 with high risk conditions, and those working in education, child CALIFORNIANS over the age care, agriculture and food, and of 50 are now eligible to receive a emergency services have been COVID-19 vaccine as it continues prioritized for vaccinations. its mass vaccination campaign. On Thursday, Governor Gavin The expansion took effect Newsom received the Johnson & on Thursday, April 1 to include Johnson single dose vaccine at a those 50 years and older who South Los Angeles vaccination previously did not qualify to be site. inoculated under one of the eli“Getting vaccinated is a vital gible categories. step we can take to protect ourHealth care workers, long- selves, our loved ones and our term care residents, those 65 and u PAGE A3
Pacquiao challenges perpetrators of anti-Asian attacks: ‘Fight me instead’ by AJPRESS PHILIPPINE Senator and eight-division boxing champion Manny Pacquiao is daring those committing violence against the Asian American community to challenge him instead. The 42-year-old people’s champ took to social media on Thursday, April 1, calling for an end to anti-Asian hate and racism by posting a photo of him in front of a collage of recent hate crime victims and suspects. The graphic, which was also translated in Tagalog, Chinese and Korean, bears the message to perpetrators: “Stop attacking Asians who can’t de-
California expands COVID-19 vaccinations to residents 50 and older by AJPRESS