‘Protect myself’

“When language fails, violence becomes a language; I never had that feeling.”

—Elie Wiesel

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW York City-based Philippine Consul General Elmer Cato has called on authorities “to do more” to ensure safety in the Big Apple after more members of the Filipino community were recently assaulted in the city.

The latest was a 53-year-old customer in McDonald’s badly mauled by a 30-year-old black assailant, and a 73-year-old elderly violently pushed to the ground and manhandled by a notorious criminal while on his way to church, all in Manhattan.

While Cato’s appeal was good and necessary, I realized it’s only tantamount to a drop in the ocean.

What I’m saying is, even if Cato will make the appeal on a daily basis, the “authorities” can never save the more or less 270,000 Filipinos of the three million Asians living in New York if the street brutes—the so-called “Asian haters”—will continue to physically assault us anytime and anywhere in the Big Apple in particular.

The new battlecry should now be, “protect myself” at all times.

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I have adopted this “psychological defense” for myself since last year after I became a victim of harassment in March 2021; and I exhorted my fellow Pinoys living in New York and other parts of the United States to do the same. 

I told myself “never again” in order to conquer my fear. I needed to suppress the fear in order to survive in this urban jungle. For me it has become a case of “survival of the fittest and the best.” 

Unlike the other Filipino victims who were mostly elderly, I was lucky to  “escape” unscathed inside the subway train because of presence of mind.

No one else except me, or us as individuals, can protect ourselves against any harassment or treacherous physical mugging at night and in broad daylight. 

When we walk in the NYC streets, it’s a case of “you take good care of yourself because if you don’t…” 

I am actually one of the most vulnerable individuals because I walked around the Manhattan area, the most densely populated of New York City’s five boroughs, from the workplace every morning from Monday to Friday and evening from Monday to Friday when I reported for work.

Because of the distance of my two workplaces, which are all in the Midtown and Upper Manhattan, I skipped the subway and walked if it is winter and spring.

As a lover of city life, I crisscrossed the entire Big Apple for two to four hours during my free time—from First Avenue to Fifth Avenue (crossing the Second, Third, Lexington, Madison Avenues vice versa).

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All over the United States, attacks mostly against Asians increased by leaps and bounds even after my case and the cases of other Filipino victims in 2021 were reported in the media and went viral.

No less than President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, among other officials in the higher authorities, have condemned the violent assaults against Asians in various statements and rallies, yet the New York City Police Department (NYCPD) with 35,000 cops deployed all over New York City, couldn’t stop the brutality that happened mostly in public places.

There were 131 hate crimes targeting Asians in New York last year compared to 28 in 2020 and just one in 2019, according to NYPD statistics. 

The increase has continued so far this year, with ten offenses logged in January and February compared to four in the same period last year.

But for many Asian Americans, those alarming statistics do not capture the true scope of the violence that has rocked their community. 

Asian New Yorkers have faced a long string of unprovoked attacks by strangers, many of which were not classified as bias crimes. 

Even some of the most high-profile assaults and killings, such as the death of the woman shoved in front of a train, have not been designated as acts of hate.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)