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SAN FRANCISCO, CA—The recent anti-Asian hate crimes in the San Francisco Bay Area have spurred some citizens to action, including 24-year-old Bruce Lou, who distributed hundreds of units of pepper spray from noon to 3 pm today in Portsmouth Square in Chinatown.
Lou, along with about a dozen volunteers, handed out pepper spray to passersby, prioritizing elderly citizens who have been the primary target of the recent crime wave. Lou and the volunteers demonstrated effective usage of the pepper spray units, which were intended to provide an inexpensive, non-lethal deterrent to community members.
"The Asian community is going to stand up for its own, and we're not going to wait around for law enforcement or the government to do something," Lou said in an interview to ABC7 News. "We can't afford to wait for solutions when our community is under attack."
Volunteers provided translation services in six different languages, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Tagalog. Lou said that reaching all segments of the population, many of whom are non-English speakers, was important.
"Service to the community is of the utmost importance to me," Lou said. "Words only go so far. I wanted to take action."
