SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) - Surveillance video from a popular alleyway in San Francisco's Chinatown shows a man defacing symbolic murals in a neighborhood already struggling from the pandemic.
KRON4 spoke to the artist who made those murals and she says this happened over the weekend but it's not the first time.
After she and her partner reviewed the surveillance video, they believe the same man is responsible for defacing these murals two times over a several-week period.
A man caught on surveillance video in Chinatown is seen walking down Jack Kerouac Alley on Saturday and defacing several murals.
Mural artist, who goes by Maconnayo, has been out here since Monday to repair the damage.
“It's really not about the fact that it was my work damaged. It's the fact that the imagery that we're dealing with, the message you know? What does it mean like who is Cai Shen the God of Wealth and Prosperity in the Chinese Culture? Anyone who is Asian American or knows Asian Culture, they know they understand the severity of what this man has done. For me, I see it as the equation of basically burning down a church,” Maconnayo said.
After reviewing the surveillance video, Maconnayo and her partner believe it's the same man who ruined and defaced their murals just a few weeks prior.
He's seen again in surveillance video writing over the murals with Sharpie. It was then that he left this message "handsome lee is a [d-word]" and "I'll be back.”
Maconnayo says he was foolish enough to follow through with that threat.
“No idea what he was thinking, to think that he could get away with this and nobody would say anything but the community, this community is very strong. We all know each other and we're not going to allow someone who is clearly anti-Asian and is, I won't even call him an artist because that's not what an artist does and he should be ashamed of himself,” Maconnayo said.
Several months of hard work and thousands of dollars went into these murals which Maconnayo and her partner donated for this community.
She's now on a mission to raise money through a GoFundMe page to restore the artwork and continue to give back to Chinatown where she grew up.
“I will fix it. You want to do it 20 times, 30 times, a thousand times, I will fix it,” Maconnayo said.
San Francisco police are investigating these two incidents.
Meanwhile, Maconnayo says she'll spend the next few weeks restoring the murals and creating new ones for the neighborhood.
from KRON4 https://ift.tt/3eIfxlO
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