Milpitas police are investigating illegible voter signs as a hate crime

Two Asian American candidates in Milpitas were targeted in hate crimes and their political signs were defaced.

Milpitas City Council candidate Bill Chuan and City Council member Hon Lien, who is running for mayor, were defaced with anti-Asian language on their campaign banners. “NO ASIANS” was spray-painted on Chuan’s banner on Barber Lane. Next to it, “NO NO” was painted across Lien’s banner.

“I’m really tired of people attacking others based on their ethnicity and race,” Lien told San Jose Spotlight. “This country is the land of opportunity for everyone, not just for one group or another.”

Voters elected Lien to the Milpitas City Council in 2022. The native of South Vietnam fled the country with her family during the Vietnam War and stayed in a refugee camp in Malaysia before moving to the USA

Lien has served as a trustee on the Milpitas Unified School District board and on the Milpitas Planning Commission, but said this is the first time she has experienced anti-Asian hate in an election. The incident left her not only angry, but also uneasy.

“Because I don’t know how far people would go with this, I’m very conscious of my surroundings,” Lien said.

Chuan, who was also a member of the city's planning commission, said the defacement did not inspire fear – instead, he felt an urgent need to stop discriminatory actions.

“When I saw the anti-Asian graffiti, I was shocked and disturbed,” Chuan told San Jose Spotlight. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, especially in a city as diverse as Milpitas. In my earlier days, I have experienced anti-Asian hate, but nothing like this recent incident.”

Milpitas police are investigating the incidents as a hate crime. Lt. Tyler Jamison said these were one-off incidents and there was no pattern of racist graffiti in the city.

“We take incidents like this very seriously as they do not reflect the values ​​of our diverse and inclusive community,” Jamison told San Jose Spotlight. “In the last five years, only one other incident of graffiti containing hateful rhetoric has been reported in Milpitas. This incident was nothing like this one.”

With a population of 80,000 people, almost 75% of Milpitas residents are of Asian descent – ​​57,500 people. According to 2020 U.S. Census data, Latinos are the second largest group with 10,500 residents.

When the pandemic hit, anti-Asian hate spread as more people reported attacks and feared harassment. According to the Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center, California had the most reported incidents compared to other states. From 2020 to 2023, the California nonprofit received 4,320 reports of anti-Asian hate acts, ranging from assault, harassment, property damage and more. The state with the second highest number of incidents, New York, recorded half as many incidents.

The Bay Area has seen some of the highest numbers of anti-Asian hate incidents, with Santa Clara County recording 328 incidents and San Francisco recording 946 incidents from 2020 to 2023.

But Hien Do, a sociology professor at San Jose State University, said anti-Asian hate in America began long before COVID-19.

“California has the strictest discriminatory laws against Asian Americans,” Do told San Jose Spotlight. “The (Chinese) Exclusion Act of 1882 began in California, the internment of Japanese Americans also occurred in California. So it’s not like we’re immune to it.”
Regarding recent attacks on Asians, Do said they were psychologically damaging to the community and signaled to Asians that they should not speak out.

“There was a professor … who talked about the idea of ​​the eternal stranger, that no matter how many generations we've been here, we still feel like we're seen and not part of America,” Do said. “That holds up perpetuates the idea when they think of Asian Americans that they see us as… these intruders in their society.”

To curb anti-Asian hate crimes, Do says the strategy is two-fold: It starts with continuing to collect more data to show how pervasive the problem is, and it also requires educating communities about the problem.

“People think (because) we are the model minority that these things don’t happen to us,” he said. “It is very important that people can work together and build bridges between communities so that we can eliminate this problem.”

Contact Joyce Chu at [email protected] or @joyce_speaks on X, formerly known as Twitter.