Why won't the same city who comes out for Black people killed in other states come out for Asian people killed in their own city?
On June 12th 2020 as estimated 60,000 people in Seattle took part in a protest over the death of George Floyd. The protests against the killing of George Floyd would go on for months and end up costing 3 people their lives and countless people their jobs. Organization after organization would readjust their mission statement to being an “anti-racist” organization. Despite an economic state of emergency due to COVID the city quickly gave into demands for $100 million to be directed towards the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) community. Black activists quickly upped the ante and demanded $300 million, going only to Black people.
Six years earlier then-Mayor Ed Murray organized a press conference in reaction to news that a Grand Jury had declined to indict Ferguson Missouri police officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Mike Brown. Murray stated: “My message to the young African American men in Seattle today is this: While we do not have the answers today, we in this city are listening to you. Your city hears you. And your city loves you.”
Then there is the infamous event a year later. During a speech Bernie Sanders was giving at Westlake Center two Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted and took to the stage demandeding 4 minutes of silence for Mike Brown. When the crowd didn’t readily comply, Marissa Johnson proclaimed “I was going to tell Bernie how racist this city is, filled with its progressives, but you already did it for me. Thank you.”
Seattle-King County NAACP President Gerald Hankerson was present at the event and stated, “Some of the way these Seattleites reacted to these young ladies and this movement was horrifying to me….There were some horrific things being yelled at these young ladies, or these organizers, that I found to be troubling, but also indicative of Seattle, which proved their exact point.”
After having spent 22 years in prison for the murder of a young Laos refugee who was left to die in his own blood on the corner of 24th and Spring in 1988 one would think some booing from soccer moms wouldn’t be so rattling.
Has he accepted full responsibility for his conduct? If so, why does he claim to be the victim? Why does the media describe him as“wrongly convicted”? Even if his highly credulous version of events is true he still was involved in the killing of Nai Vang Saeturn.
According to a Seattle Times April 14 1988 article on the trial:
Saeturn came to the United States in 1980 with his family, members of the minority Mien group in Laos. Members of the Christian Mien community in Seattle hoped he could become the first minister in their church, and hoped to raise money to send him to religion classes.
Matthews said that, on the night he was stabbed, Saeturn was expecting a visit from someone who had befriended him earlier in the day. Wanting to have refreshments on hand, he went to a nearby store for soft drinks.
However, the deputy prosecutor said, the store the victim normally patronized _ just two blocks from his apartment _ did not sell ice, so Saeturn went to another store two blocks farther away.
The attackers were at the store and saw Saeturn pay for the soft drinks and ice, then followed him when he left, Matthews said.
From there, the version of events accepted by the courts takes over:
This is Hankerson’s version of events:
[Hankerson was 18 and his accomplice was 20. From personal knowledge, people of this age would be able to buy alcohol at many groceries in the area without needing to find someone over 21 to do it]
The next day the Seattle Time had a blurb on the murder, underneath a report of King County being fined $1000 for allowing a garbage dump to run into a waterway:
Last year upwards of 100,000 Seattle residents chanted “Black Lives Matter” and shouted the names: “Mike Brown! George Floyd! Trayvon Martin! Sandra Bland!”
Any reason no one is remember a 27 year old refugee who survived a long war in his own county, a year in a refugee camp in Thailand, then came here for a better life? He lived humbly and honestly, worked as a janitor to support his parents but was left to die in his own blood on 24th and Spring by the regional NAACP President, Seattle Race and Social Justice Board Member, and newly appointed Seattle External Affairs Liaison. While Hankerson denounces how gentrification negatively impacts Black people the fact that the Laos population of that Central District neighborhood fled due to constantly being targeted for violence.
“You don’t deserve to hold any office” Gerald Hankerson proclaimed of Lorena Gonzalez and demanded she resign from her position, according to the Oct 24th Seattle Times article. What was her crime? While running against Bruce Harrell for Seattle Mayor she ran an ad that criticized how Harrell (then City Council President) dealt with sexual abuse allegation against then-Mayor Ed Murray.
In a city obsessed with “equity” is anyone going to ask whether an Asian man who had taken part in the killing of a Black man in similar circumstances would be given such an appointment? Or a White man who committed this crime? Why in a city where a Boeing CEO had to resign last year for statements he made in 1987 that women shouldn’t hold combat roles in the military, the positions of power Hankerson has obtained have never really been questioned? Why he has been given so much clout and framed as “an innocent man wrongly convicted” despite his own claim that he held down the man while two other men killed him?
Hankerson’s sensitivity for the Asian community doesn’t seem to have increased over the years. After the 2015 murder of Asian community activist Donnie Chin by Black men who frequented a local hookah bar the city started asking questions about those business, which openly violated the laws against smoking. Hankerson showed more concern over the potential for these businesses to have to follow the same laws as everyone else, than the murder of Chin. This pressure led Mayor Murray to back off and instead promise to invest $200,000 in job training for young Black men and other services for the Black community.
In a 2017 Seattle Times op-ed condemning the police killing of Che Taylor, he wrote,
It’s 2021. And in the most recent wave of Black on Asian violence it’s far past time for answers. From where I sit all I see are lies and thinly veiled attempts to cover the truth over the murder of Nai Vang Saeturn. The question is, does anybody care? Or will this be swept under the rug and blamed on the “system”, Hankerson’s “underprivileged” background, racism, poverty or some other excuse?
We are about to find out.
Archive of Seattle Times articles about the murder of Nai Vang Saeturn