Toddler sleeping in his carseat killed by a stray bullet

WU FAMILY

Jaspar Wu would have been 2-years old next month.

 

A 23-month old toddler was killed by a stray bullet Saturday.

Jasper Wu was sleeping in his carseat as his mother was driving on a freeway in Oakland California when he was struck in the head by a bullet.

The fatal bullet came from an apparent shootout between two cars on Interstate 880 , according to the California Highway Patrol. Jasper's mother, two other adults and two other children in the car were unhurt.

Authorities said that they did not believe that anybody in the car was a target of the shooters.

The family were returning to their Fremont home from San Francisco when the gun battle occurred on the freeway. The unidentified shooters fled the scene. 

First responders rushed Jaspar to Oakland's Children's Hospital where he died.

Monday afternoon, family and friends held a small ceremony on the side of the freeway where Jaspar was shot.

Jasper's father, Jihao Wu, is on his way back from China to bury the son he had never met. Before Jasper was born, the father went back to China when the pandemic began and was not able to return to the U.S. because of travel restrictions. 

Because of Jasper's death, his father was able to get permission to re-enter the U.S. to make arrangment's for his son's funeral.

At a CHP press conference Monday, authorities were unable to reveal any specifics about potential suspects, authorities did provide one important new detail.

“The investigation led to evidence that the shots that were fired likely originated on the northbound side of Interstate 880 and randomly struck the victim’s vehicle,” said CHP Capt. Mike Lehman.

CHP did ask that anyone who was traveling in that area of Oakland on I-880 Saturday afternoon to check their dash camera video to see if they might have captured images related to the incident.

Jasper’s mother, Cherry an, pleaded assistance from the public.  

“I want to call on the public to help me find the killers,” said An. “I don’t want such a tragedy to happen to another person again.”

The Chinatown Chamber of Commerce set up a Go-Fund-Me page at the request of the family to raise money for funeral expenses.

Anti-Asian hate, COVID-19, white supremacy give rise to skyrocketing gun-buying by AAPI

OPINION

When my father passed away, I was surprised to learn that he owned a 45-cal pistol, a carryover from his days as an U.S. Army officer. Growing up under his roof, he never mentioned he had a firearm. I never saw it.

When my mother asked if I wanted the gun as a keepsake, I turned her down. 

As a former member of the military and as a journalist reporting on deaths by firearms,I've seen what bullets can do to a human body and the carnage that can be caused by a mentally ill person with a gun and I'm aware of the growing number of "accidents" caused by having a gun in the house.

I haven't fired a gun, including a .45-cal pistol similar to my father's gun, since I was in in the U.S. military decades ago. This year, for the first time, I seriously considered buying a gun.

Media reports that gun sales have shot up during the Trump presidency. Trump's ascendency opened society's doors to racial hate by the angry, threatened and easily manipulated segment of America.

“AAPIs are the fastest growing group in the U.S. and also more politically engaged than ever before," Varun Nikore, Executive Director, AAPI Victory Alliance. "Much of this engagement was due to the hate and fear driven by vicious rhetoric spewed against our community."

"If the same right-wing forces that fostered this environment now encourage members of the AAPI community to take up arms as a self-protection measure, that would be the ultimate deadly irony," says Vikore. "The vast majority of Asian Americans are immigrants, or children of immigrants, who are learning what it means to be an American. For far too many, being American means being able to pick up a gun to solve all of their problems. This is a lesson Asian Americans should not and must not learn.”

There is just 60 days left in the year, but it already looks like 2021 is going to be America's deadliest year of gun violence in the last two decades. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 296 mass shootings in the United States this year. A mass shooting is defined as a shooting that results in the killing of 4 or more people.

August, when 1.3 million guns were sold, according to the FBI, makes the month the second-best August on record for gun sales in the United States, exceeded only by 2020. Over the summer leading up to August, there ve been four straight months with gun sales at second-best levels.

The overwhelming majority of gun sales were to white men. However, since the pandemic hit the U.S. in 2020 and the attacks against Asians have continued to surge, gun sales to AAPIs have gone through the roof.

FBI reports of the growth of armed militias and their talk about an armed insurgency against the government have added to the fear darkening the mood of our country.  Going to the grocery, riding the subway, going to school or just taking a walk requires a heightened vigilance that saps too away energy and any good feelings. When every stranger is a possible attacker and every encounter is a potential danger; gangs are targeting AAPI entrepreneurs at their businesses or invading their homes; it is no wonder AAPIs are on edge.

Self-defense classes and whistles don't seem to be enough when the attacker is wielding a gun.

While there is no official data on firearm purchases by Asian Americans, anecdotal evidence from gun owners in a survey by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) indicated that Asian Americans bought 42% more firearms and ammunition in the first six months of 2020 than they did in the same timeframe the year before.

Gun industry happy

It is not surprising that the gun industry is happy that everyone is so fearful. They profit when Americans are afraid of each other.

Exploiting the increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, the gun industry is targeting the Asian American community as potential new gun buyers and future pro-gun advocates, according to How the Firearms Industry Markets Guns to Asian Americans, a recently released study from the Violence Policy Center (VPC).

“Much like the tobacco industry’s search for replacement smokers, the firearms industry is seeking replacement shooters," says Josh Sugarmann, Executive Director, Violence Policy Center. "The targeting of Asian Americans is just the latest example of how gunmakers will cynically exploit any tragedy to fatten their bottom line, regardless of the lethal real-world impact of their actions.”

The firearms industry and gun lobby are currently targeting minority communities in their marketing in response to long-term stagnation in the traditional gun market of white men. This coordinated “diversity” campaign was launched in 2015 at the annual “Industry Summit” held by the gun industry trade association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF).

Until recently, this campaign focused primarily on Black and Latino Americans (for more information, please see the January 2021 VPC study How the Firearms Industry and NRA Market Guns to Communities of Color), but the gun industry has now ramped up its efforts to target Asian Americans.

Asian Americans have low gun ownership rates, strongly support stricter gun laws, and are the fastest growing voter group in the United States. 

As a result of their increasing size and consumer power, Asian Americans are viewed as an untapped market by gunmakers. And in the eyes of the firearms industry and gun lobby, the purchase of a firearm is the first step down the path for new gun owners to become future pro-gun advocates and voters.

In marketing efforts to communities of color, the gun industry frequently focuses on the self-defense use of firearms. The VPC study rebuts these false claims, citing unpublished FBI data showing that in 2019, across the U.S., Asian/Pacific Islanders committed only two firearm justifiable homicides and that, for the five-year period 2015 to 2019, Asian/Pacific Islanders committed only 37 firearm justifiable homicides. During this same five-year period, 3,076 Asian/Pacific Islanders lost their lives in firearm homicides, suicides, fatal unintentional shootings, and other gun deaths: a ratio of 83 to one.

Nevertheless, the study also reveals, using data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that from 1999 to 2019 more than 10,000 Asian/Pacific Islanders died from guns in the United States.

The VPC study goes on to caution, “For any American, regardless of race or ethnicity, bringing a gun into the home increases the risk of death or injury to the owner or a family member. If the marketing efforts targeting the AAPI community gain traction, the impact will be measured not only in dollars and cents in gunmakers’ coffers, but in increased death and injury among Asian Americans.”

“Historically, Asian Americans have owned very few guns, which is precisely why we have experienced low rates of gun violence," says Gloria Pan, Vice President, MomsRising. "Safety through gun ownership is a myth that gun manufacturers peddle, and one Asian Americans must not succumb to because every credible study has shown that more gun ownership in a community only leads to more gun-related injury and death.

"Guns everywhere do not make any of us safer, and we must do everything possible to thwart the gun industry’s cynical, destructive marketing, not only to Asian Americans but to all Americans.”

But the white supremacist militia's call for armed insurrection grows louder. The threat to democracy is real, according to the FBI.

And the anti-Asian hate is real, the social covenants against racism grow weaker, the racists grow bolder with their actions and words, eating away at our institutions, even the Supreme Court and Congress.

In a sane world it makes the ultimate sense to not have a firearm in the house. But, when people believe that the 2020 election results were not legitimate and break down the doors of the U.S. Capitol; when people gather in Dallas to welcome JFK, who they claim has been alive all this time; when people injecting themselves with a deworming serum believe  it is more effective than a CDC-approved vaccine (ala Aaron Rogers) to fight COVID-19 -- whose to say the world is sane, anymore?

 

And who can argue against one new Asian American gun owner, who when interviewed by ABC News wished to remain anonymous - out of fear. "But to ignore the inconvenient truth that Asians are targets isn't going to stop the attacks," he added. "Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it."

Every. Damn. Day! The insanity is relentless and I grow more tired. Still - after careful consideration, no gun for me.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, raves, reviews and news from an AAPI perspective, follow me on Twitter, @DioknoEd.

Sunday Read: 'This Is America' video a breakthrough for its Asian American director

FX

Hiro Murai has directed most of the hit series 'Atlanta.'

LAST WEEK, Childish Gambino's new music video "This Is America"  exploded into America's Internet consciousness prompting discussions about race and violence.
Some of the scenes have people gasping in its shocking imagery and the matter-of-fact reaction to violence from the performer, AKA actor Donald Glover.

It has also brought an avalanche of attention to its director, Japanese/American Hiro Murai. FX, the network that airs Glover's creation Atlanta, has contracted with Murai guaranteeing that it gets first look at any development ideas of the Japanese-born director.

What the video boils down to, Murai explained in a New York Times interview, is "a really crazy confluence of tone changes — that’s the premise of the whole video and the song, in a way." The "harrowing" yet "cartoony" violence also plays a huge role: "There’s Looney Tunes logic in there somewhere. Obviously we’re dealing with very provocative images, so it’s a total tightrope walk."

In other words, in today's America, we've become numb to the violence around us. We're no longer horrified, aghast or shocked. Violence has become normal; yet, the show must go on.

How does a Japanese/American director interpret, reflect or depict the black experience in the video and in Atlanta? (He's directed seven of the 11 episodes of the surprise hit.)

“I’m an immigrant and I think being an outsider in your home is something that I really relate to,” Murai explained to Indiewire. “I was like, 10 [when I immigrated].

Atlanta's writers are all black. Murai doesn’t pretend to know what their lived experience is like. He told MTV News he “wasn’t about to go in there and tell stories about what it’s like to be black in Atlanta.”

But he was able to use his experience as a first-generation immigrant -- as a perpetual outsider. "So when Donald was saying how strange it is to be black in America, and how you’re kind of outside of the main conversation in a way, I really related to that in a lot of ways.”

Murai also understands that as an Asian/American in the entertainment industry, the “outsider” feeling is all the more prevalent.

“When we were in the room for the Golden Globes, I look around and it’s just me and Alan Yang,” he told GQ. “And obviously that’s very odd. It’s ... weird to even grow around not that many people that look like you.”

There are only a handful of Asian/Americans out there making a living as a director. According to the Director’s Guild of America, Asian/Americans directed 5 percent of all TV episodes. White directors, on the other hand, directed 78 percent of all episodes.

So the attention Murai has gained through the music videos he's directed for big-name artists, his work for Atlanta and now the controversial "This Is America," has given him strong street cred in the business.

“Hiro has excelled as a director and a creative force in commercials, music videos and episodic television, and we welcome the chance to see him develop his own series through FX Productions,” said Nick Grad, original programming president for FX Networks and FX Productions. “He helped make Atlanta the most acclaimed comedy series on television, greatly contributing to its signature style and tone and becoming an integral part of the creative team led by Donald Glover. With his boundless artistry, Hiro is poised to take the next step as a television creator.”

It's only a metter of time that he directs a feature film. You can bet that Murai makes it unlike anything else we've seen.

___________________________________________________________________________

Indian American teen shot by police, family wants access to police videos

ASAM NEWS

NATHANIEL PRASAD's  family wants transparency on the fatal shooting of the Indian American teenager, reports Little India.

NATHANIEL PRASAD

Prasad, 18, was fatally shot by police officers on April 5 in Fremont, California. He was wanted on a felony firearms possession warrant, a felony probation warrant, and a misdemeanor evading arrest warrant.

Civil rights lawyer John Burris said that the police video of the incident should be released to the family, as there is still-unreleased in-car and body-camera footage.

“Two patrol officers responded to the area, activated their emergency lights and siren, and stopped the suspect vehicle,” stated the police report, released on April 19 by the Fremont Police Department. “The driver of the vehicle stopped and Prasad fled from the right passenger side of the car on foot.” The driver was identified as Prasad’s mother.

One of the police officers followed, and “Prasad pulled a firearm from his waist area and it appears that he fired one to two shots in the direction of the officer,” the report continues. “The officer drew his duty weapon, returned fire and broadcast over the police radio that the suspect had a gun.”

Allegedly, Prasad started to run and encountered more officers, and at some point he used his firearm again to fire at the police. “In response to Prasad’s fire, officers shot in the direction of Prasad, striking him several times, causing him to fall,” the police report states, continuing on that Prasad still had the weapon in his hand at this point and officers fired additional rounds.

Officers then approached Prasad, recovering a stolen .22-caliber revolver. Officers gave emergency medical care until paramedics arrived; he was pronounced dead at the scene, reports East Bay Times. The involved officers in the incident have been placed on paid administrative leave.

“We keep seeing what’s written about him and it does not seem to fit how he was,” said Prasad’s father, Danny Prasad. He said his son was looking at colleges after having graduated from high school.

“The police, they’re saying ‘These are the type of people we need to take off the streets,’ and all those other hurtful comments,” said Danny Prasad. “He was just a scared little kid.”

________________________________________________________________________________