Hate Crimes Test the Resolve of S.F. Enclave

In this city’s gritty Mission District, nonprofits champion the cause of everyone from battered women to low-income immigrants and transsexuals. Radical activists mingle peacefully with working-class Latinos and Arab American owners of corner stores and cafes.

Here, where antiwar posters plaster the windows of fading Victorians, leftist rhetoric is as common as the smells of carne asada wafting from tiny taquerias.

Now, for the first time in recent city memory, the Mission’s progressive pastiche has also become a bull’s-eye for hate mongers.

A spate of anti-Arab and other hate graffiti has plagued the district over the last year, punctuated with a trickle of face-to-face confrontations. As talk of war escalated between December and March, so did the damage: to a landmark four-story mural on the Women’s Building, to an anti-violence organization, to an Arab-owned cafe, to a socialist bookstore, to a yoga studio, and -- six times so far -- to the home of a Palestinian woman and two roommates who had tucked a small Palestinian flag into the lace curtain that hangs from their front doorway.

“It’s not going to go unnoticed here,” said Tina D’Elia, a director at Community United Against Violence, a multiethnic gay advocacy group whose building was defaced with “KILL ARABS” graffiti last year in the first of a string of similar vandalisms.

“This is the place to hit if you’re not just trying to hit the Arab community but also send your message to the whole antiwar community,” she said.

The unsolved hate crimes -- the most recent of which occurred a month ago -- have brought this neighborhood closer together, spurring new levels of activism. About 100 people, including business owners and residents who have been targeted, recently turned out at a Women’s Building vigil to commemorate the anniversary of the first attack. Fliers in door windows declare, in five languages, that the Mission is “a hate-free community.”

San Francisco saw a citywide spate of anti-Arab hate incidents after Sept. 11, 2001. Those flared anew -- although in smaller numbers -- with talk of war in Iraq. Neither the San Francisco Police Department nor the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee here tracks hate incidents by neighborhood. But both say reported cases in recent months appear to be concentrated in the progressive heart of this tolerant city.

“In the Mission ... the anti-Arab stuff is something new,” said San Francisco Police Department hate crimes inspector Henry Seto, who is investigating the incidents. “We’re as surprised as anybody else.”

Seto said it is not yet clear whether “it’s one person doing this or a group of people, or an organization or extremist group.”

The telltale “KILL ARABS” graffiti -- in black block letters -- first appeared a year ago in the middle of a night on D’Elia’s building.

But what most shocked the Mission’s liberal sensibilities was the attack that same night on the nearby Women’s Building, which was scarred with the same anti-Arab slogan and with anti-female vulgarities. Its multicolored mural -- Maestra Peace or “Teach Peace” -- depicts women who have contributed to the history of the world. Even as gang activity swirled around the 18th Street community center, its mural had remained untouched for more than eight years. That first act of vandalism has been followed by five others, prompting statements of support from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, a fund-raiser to purchase security cameras and, most recently, the vigil.

By last December, the attacks had grown more personal.

Sama Abu Ayyash, a Jordanian-born Palestinian, awoke to find “KILL ARABS” sprayed across the sidewalk in front of the flat she shares with two roommates. “DIE PIG” was scrawled across the door and black paint blotted out the spot where a small Palestinian flag peeked through the curtain. Former students of one roommate -- high school teacher Jennifer Moffitt -- covered the sidewalk graffiti with painted flowers and John Lennon lyrics. But that, too, was defaced.

And so it went. The anti-Arab slogan appeared twice more. Rotten vegetables were left on the porch. Feces were smeared on the front door, and gobs of brown goo were flung at the windows where they still cling.

“This has been a haven for a diverse community,” said Abu Ayyash, 30, who moved here from Dallas, Texas, about a year ago after graduate school to work as membership manager for the city’s Museum of Modern Art. “When Sept. 11 happened, I got e-mail from people all over saying, ‘Are you OK? Don’t speak Arabic in public.’ I kept thinking, ‘Who would target me?’ ... Now I’m thinking, ‘How naive of me.’ ”

The women, who have mounted a small Web camera in their window since the latest assault last month, believe the perpetrator is one man.

“One person can do a lot of damage,” said Moffitt, 36, who pasted a sticker of the Cuban flag -- also vandalized -- in the window and has decorated the flat with posters of Che Guevara.

“The rabidity of his attacks probably have to do with him feeling like a minority here,” she said. “There are Arab-owned corner stores and liberal peace groups all over the Mission. I can just imagine how painful his little world is.”

The message has been widely spread. A house up the street that sports antiwar posters and an earth flag was targeted with the same graffiti. One block farther north, the Little Spot Cafe’s windows were smeared in Anti-Arab slogans, including “Nuke Iraq.”

The owner, Musa, who asked that his last name not be used, said he moved to San Francisco seven years ago after living in Orange County. He often felt the sting of anti-Arab sentiment there, he said. But never before had he felt it here.

“It’s hard and very strange,” said Musa, who is originally from Jordan. “If somebody feels this way, they usually don’t live here, in such a liberal neighborhood.”

Today, the cafe’s walls are lined with condolence cards from schoolchildren at nearby Cesar Chavez Elementary School.

“Every single customer that walked in helped,” said Musa. “In a way, it was a positive thing that happened -- it brought everybody together.”