THE UNSETTLING SURVEILLANCE OF ANTI-ASIAN RACISM

The rise of assaults on the elderly SURVEILLANCE, captured on security camera footage, raises questions about policing and what really keeps people safe

The video opens on a sunny Oakland street corner, where two men are walking down the sidewalk. The way they move, the composition of their bodies ufabet, suggests they don’t know each other. Their stances will feel familiar to anyone used to sharing city streets with strangers.

THE UNSETTLING SURVEILLANCE OF ANTI-ASIAN RACISM
SURVEILLANCE

The man in front appears older, walking with deliberate caution, when the other approaches quickly from behind and gives him one vigorous shove. The motion is swift, dispassionate. As the older man falls to the ground, the assailant bounds back with inverse force, releasing his hands above his head in what could be a display of triumph — or merely a reflex — before strolling out of the frame. The clip ends at five seconds, the old man lying still on the concrete.

The whole thing is abrupt and sudden. Maybe you’ve seen it, autoplayed on loop, almost like a GIF, as it moves through your timelines.

The victim, it later turned out, wasn’t Asian, but a Latino man named Gilbert Diaz.

The man who sent the footage of the attack to Lim was Carl Chan, who represents the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce. Chan, who has spent the past 30 years trying to give a voice to his community, is currently working on installing even more surveillance cameras to deter further assaults. “We’re under attack and this is reality,” he tells The Verge. “It didn’t happen yesterday. It’s been happening for so many years, but we just caught the national attention [now].”

But calls for increased police presence are in direct opposition to last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests that sought to raise awareness of the over-policing of Black people.