In March, Donovan Lawson spat at a bus driver Tommy Lau, age 63, who tried to intervene against the harassment of an older Asian American couple. Then, Donovan punched him in the face, calling him an anti-Chinese slur. The incident took place at 86th Street and 25th Avenue in Gravesend around 11:20 a.m. Tuesday, according to The New York Times.
“I can’t take this when people just think they can get away by attacking elderly people. God forbid it was my mom,” Lau told CBS-TV-2.
The New York Police arrested Lawson, an African American, and charged him with a hate crime, according to a New York Post report on Monday, April 6th.
The Times also reports, “it was the 33rd arrest for Lawson, 26, who is homeless and mentally ill, the authorities said. Four times, officers had been called to intervene with him because he appeared to be in the grip of a mental breakdown, and he was being monitored for treatment in a mental health program run by the Police Department.” The mentally deranged racist has attacked 3 Asians and up to a dozen Whites. Most racist attacks in NYC are done by serial attackers who have made racist attacks against multiple races.
The White House attacker, who drove his car into the police and jumped out with a knife on April 2, was also mentally deranged anti-White racist. We may find out that he also attacked Asian Americans.
Attacks on Asian Americans are symbolic of the attacks on other races in America’s cities.
I don’t know how many times that a deranged homeless person has walked by me muttering into the air that he was going to kill “the White mthr-fkr.” I just sidestepped him and walked on. I had five or six of them shake a chain while saying they were going to get Whitey. I was on the other side of the street so I ignored them. If Asian American activism can help solve the problem of racist attacks on the streets, I am all for it.
You who have ignored this problem on our streets need to wake up.
According to The Times, “Lawson was one of at least seven people arrested after attacks on Asian city residents in the last two weeks of March, ending with a horrifying attack on a Filipino-American woman, who was kicked repeatedly in broad daylight in Manhattan by a man the police say was homeless and on parole after serving a prison sentence for killing his mother.”
“Of the seven people arrested, five had prior encounters with the police during which they were considered “emotionally disturbed,” police parlance for someone thought to be in need of psychiatric help. Investigators believed the remaining two also had signs of mental illness.” We will undoubtedly find out, if legally allowed to see their case files, that all seven had prior racist attacks against other people.
To stop this racist crime spree that has been tolerated too long in our city, we need a multiple-pronged approach: policing; mental illness treatment; and spiritual compassion. We should be careful to not lump the racist homeless with other homeless. The goal of Asian American anti-racist activism, according to one of its prominent leaders, is to heal the hurts of the nation. We don’t want to blunder into creating more hurts than healing, dividing the homeless off from everyone else.
