Over the next two weeks, Sonoma West Times & News will be remembering 2020 in west county. We’ll be reviewing the biggest events in the local schools, as well as covering topics such as COVID-19, health care, homelessness and more.
Some pains in 2020 weren’t new or unprecedented at all, but activists in Sebastopol mobilized the community to demand change and accountability.
When Sonoma County and the rest of the nation saw Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin sink his knee into George Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes on May 25 until he died, Sebastopol joined cities everywhere in protest of his death and the voluminous history of anti-Black policing, older than the country itself.
Two hundred people, mostly wearing masks but still having trouble keeping distance, met at the intersection of Highway 12 and Main Street in downtown Sebastopol on June 3 for a demonstration organized by Jonah and Lily Balakhaneh.
They hoped to create a calmer scene than Santa Rosa’s opening protests, and Greg DeVore, the Sebastopol Police Department’s interim police chief, agreed to take a knee in the street with protesters for nine minutes in memory of how long Floyd lay dying, face down and handcuffed.
Sonoma West Times & News reported a large protest against police brutality in downtown Sebastopol the next day, a smaller crowd at the plaza June 5 and an action by three dozen protesters spanning the downtown plaza to the Sebastopol Police Station Saturday, June 6.
Organizers Kaelyn Ramsden, Lillian Digden and Shannon Creighton got to work. Ramsden said they understood an officer knelt with protesters a couple days prior and a Black Lives Matter poster was displayed in the Sebastopol Police Department’s window, “and yet we’re here to ask them, ‘What is your plan of action as far as protecting the lives of Black people in our community?” Ramsden said in Sonoma West Times & News’ coverage.
Creighton and Ramsden emphasized the need for white people to refrain from centering their feelings over people of color in protests. Creighton also pointed to examining local budgets funding police more than housing or education as priority.
On June 7, they were involved in a demonstration of about three dozen protesters who strode from the police station to the corner of Main Street and Highway 12. The disturbing pattern of drivers accelerating toward protesters across the nation surfaced in Sebastopol, according to reporting by Sonoma West Times & News that some protesters said they’d “had cars rev their engines menacingly while speeding in their direction. (While interviewing three high-school age protesters who were standing on the pedestrian median strip, the reporter witnessed a young white man in a pickup truck do just that.)” Otherwise, many drivers honked in solidarity with the cause.
Then 17-year-old Analy High student Dezi Rae Kai assembled over 300 protesters in Sebastopol’s biggest Black Lives Matter protest at the time on June 11, when the high schooler-heavy group swept from the Sebastopol Plaza to Starbucks to the Barlow and the police station to kneel for nine minutes for Floyd.
Kai said the opposition she saw on social media from other teenagers toward the protests against George Floyd’s death and anti-Black police violence motivated her to rally the town and Sebastopol showed up, despite the pandemic.
She said, “It’s really cool to see how many people are out there, how many people are supporting the movement, and it really touches my heart. Growing up as a black teenager, it’s very dear to my heart to see everybody out there fighting for my rights and my life, too.”
Next, Kai and 15-year-old Lume Dorado organized a community art and candlelit vigil honoring lives lost to police violence that drew between 80 to 100 people to the Sebastopol Plaza July 5 to process the grief beyond the fury toward systemic racism. The teen girls invited community members to bring signs and art or create them there to fix onto a fence near the plaza.
Within two weeks, hundreds of all ages returned to the Sebastopol Plaza July 25 to reach into paint and press colorful handprints between the letters of a new giant sidewalk mural that said “BLACK LIVES MATTER” in bold, yellow road paint.
According to Sonoma West Times & News, Sebastopol’s Public Arts Committee donated $1,000 to the event organized by the Black Lives Matter Visibility Team, a group of youth and adults in the area who coordinated a T-shirt silk screening, a free mask giveaway and a dance performance by Nebula.
Someone vandalized the mural a week later, spray painting “ALL” in white across the first letters of the word “BLACK.” The Black Lives Matter Visibility Team said, “While we know that all lives matter, we also know that this phrase was created as a direct negative response to the Black Lives Matter movement. By saying ‘All Lives Matter,’ you are overlooking the fact that black people in this country have been treated unfairly, disrespected and have not been seen for far too long in America,” on the group’s Instagram.
“Stop silencing black people. Stop silencing people of color. Start listening and learning because all lives can’t matter until black lives matter!” the statement read, reported by Sonoma West Times & News.
Meanwhile, some of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence showed up in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and other causes every second Saturday of the month since June.
Sonoma West Times & News reported their presence at the main intersection in Guerneville in September, where drivers sounded their horns in support and they ignored “at least one loud two-wheeled heckler who yelled that the Black Lives Matter movement was a communist hoax created by four white people.”
Dezi Rae Kai reflected on the local movement and the work ahead to create systemic change in society with Sonoma West’s Steve Einstein in August. “It’s going to take a while, but I have faith in my generation, mainly because we’re more aware of the risks to our future, especially when it comes to climate change. We’re more motivated to make real change, both in terms of fighting racism, and in terms of attitudes toward the environment.”
