Hate Crime in SF
Swastikas were scrawled over as many as 50 campaign signs in a hate crime against an Israeli-American Richmond District businessman seeking election to the Board of Supervisors.
The target of the anti-Semitic vandalism spree was David Heller, president of the Geary Boulevard Merchant Association and first-time candidate for supervisor in District 1.
Upon arriving to work Monday morning, Heller was inundated with messages from business owners whose windows had been defaced with swastikas over the weekend. In each reported incident, the campaign sign, which features Heller's picture, was taped to the inside of the store window and the vandal used a black marker to superimpose a swastika and a Star of David symbol in front of Heller's face on the outside of the glass.
I lived in the Richmond district for 2 and a half years. It's a great place to live and is arguably the most overtly Jewish section of the city; there's three synagogues and one of the city's two kosher butchers in the area where this hate crime happened. Anti-semitism is always upsetting but when it hits close to home like this it's also scary.
There were 63 anti-Jewish hate crimes in Northern California in 2003, 21 of them in San Francisco.
What also concerns me is that a number of the businesses who were displaying signs for Hiller have now pulled them out of their windows becasue they're concerned about the potential for further vandalism - which hurts his campaign. Now I don't know anything about Hiller as a condidate but when people can be scared into not supporting thier candidate of choice for fear of violence there is something very wrong going on.