At least two murals designed to cover the blight in San Francisco Chinatown have been defaced.
KTVU reports the suspect may be another artist.
The artwork pays respect to Chinese culture and some of the community’s icons including Bruce Lee. Twice, someone scrawled the murals, sometimes with anti-Asian graffiti. The first happened last month and the latest this month.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” said muralist MaCanna Yo to CBS5. “This is a very strong community. It’s the oldest Chinatown in the United States, and you have no right to deface symbolic symbols like Bruce Lee, and Cai Shen, the god of wealth and prosperity.”
A GoFundMe account has been set up to help restore the art work. More than $6300 has been raised.
Yo says she recognizes the person doing the vandalism who is seen on surveillance video. She told KTVU the vandal is another artist from San Diego.
She called the incidents a “hate crime.”
“It’s very shocking that after all the work and the beautification that a lot of business owners are putting into their business, we continue to see crime – laundry shops being broken into, glasses being broken, people being attacked,” she added.
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