Her message at both pulpits is the same: “We need to love each other and talk about the burdens we face, not the politics.The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), the largest public housing authority in North America, was created in 1935 to provide decent, affordable housing for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers. Martin said she began to preach regularly at a Chinese church to understand the community better. We are like a big family here.”Īt a black church on the edge of Chinatown, Associate Minister Cara J. “People say the Pink Houses are the worst place to live - a bad place. The restaurant, China Doll, has served up peach cobbler and Jamaican beef patties next to lo mein and egg drop soup for nearly 20 years, said owner Bernard Momestime, who runs it with his Chinese wife. On one wall is a Barack Obama poster on another, a large Chinese landscape. As she lowers six crab wontons into the fryer, three black children pool their money for cheese fries. On the night he was shot, he was visiting a friend at her home.Īt a Chinese restaurant on the edge of the Pink Houses, where Gurley died, Diana Cheng handles a steady stream of phone orders in an accent that’s equal parts Brooklyn and Chinese, shouting the names of dishes in Mandarin to the cook in the back. But that history had nothing to do with his death, Peterson said. Many Liang supporters have fixated on Gurley’s record of drug-related arrests, in order to suggest he wasn’t an innocent victim. On the day of the shooting, he had been a cop for almost 18 months.īefore Liang’s bullet ended his life, Gurley was planning to move to Florida to be closer to his mother, said his aunt, Peterson. “He was seen as a good kid - people recognized that, so nobody messed with him,” Morrison said.Īfter college, Liang applied to the New York Police Academy. “We kind of stuck together since we were from the same background in Chinatown,” Wei said.Īnother classmate, Stanley Morrison, said he may have been Liang’s closest black friend at the school. Liang was widely respected and liked, but he kept to a small circle of friends, said Timothy Wei, who also attended the school. He attended elementary school and middle school in Chinatown, then went on to the Legacy School for Integrated Studies, where the student body was largely black. His mother was a garment factory worker and later became a travel agent. Liang, who declined to comment for this article, grew up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, dreaming of becoming a police officer. “Police officers always cause trouble,” he said in Chinese. “It’s an atmosphere of persecution that forms after an accumulation of years of marginalization,” Kwong said. In New York’s Chinese communities, Liang’s case has become a proxy for years of perceived mistreatment of Chinese Americans, said Peter Kwong, a professor of Asian American studies at Hunter College. “But Liang’s mother can come visit him every day. “Akai had family that loved him just like Peter Liang, a mother just like Peter Liang,” Gurley’s aunt, Hertencia Peterson, said. Gurley’s supporters say that whatever unfairness there may be in Liang’s conviction, it can’t compare with the injustice of Gurley’s death. A jury found him guilty of manslaughter and official misconduct, and he is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday. Liang didn’t call for an ambulance and didn’t perform CPR - factors that counted against him in court. The bullet bounced off a wall and tore through the chest of 28-year-old Akai Gurley a floor below, piercing his heart.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |