Melissa Hartman/Town Crier
Trudy Pitt pushes her 2-year-old son in a stroller, with a sign resting in his lap reading “When Do I Go from Being Cute to Scary?” Pitts took part in a peaceful protest in downtown Los Altos Friday (June 5) following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
Growing up as a black person in Los Altos, Kenan Moos said he has been pulled over by police in town 15 times, been accused of stealing from local stores and watched people do double-takes and hold their purses closer as he walked past.
Those experiences, along with the recent death of George Floyd, prompted Moos to organize a peaceful march through downtown Los Altos Friday (June 5), which drew a large crowd that stretched across multiple blocks.
“I’m tired of being scared of sirens and of being scared walking around my town,” Moos told the crowd.
As the eldest of four, Moos said he felt an obligation to speak out, especially on behalf of his younger siblings. A 2016 Los Altos High School graduate, he is heading into his senior year at the University of Oregon in the fall.
The protesters met at Los Altos High School and marched down Almond Avenue, onto San Antonio Road and snaked through downtown, ending at Lincoln Park. Los Altos police blocked off streets and stopped traffic along the route. As the crowd went past, residents and employees of downtown shops came out to watch, sometimes clapping and cheering the protesters on.
The marchers held signs with messages such as “No More White Silence” and “Racism is a Pandemic.” They broke out into chants including “Black lives matter,” “No justice, no peace, no racist police” and “Hands up, don’t shoot.”
When the march reached Lincoln Park, the crowd kneeled in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the length of time Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin held his knee to Floyd’s neck.
A series of speakers then took the mic and told the assembled group about their experiences with racism, as well as the changes they want to see in the community and broader world.
That included Moos, who addressed the comments Councilwoman Jeannie Bruins made at a council meeting last month. In debating a proposed ordinance requiring masks in public, Bruins responded to Councilwoman Neysa Fligor, who is black, by saying, “Anybody who thinks that is adding clarity ... I think you are out of your cotton-picking mind.”
Some residents have since called for Bruins’ resignation. A petition on Change.org urging the city council to take action on her comment has more than 3,000 signatures.
Moos told the crowd that when he saw Bruins’ comment, he emailed the city council asking for an explanation and subsequently spoke with Bruins, inviting her to speak at the protest. Moos asked Bruins to come up and talk to the crowd if she were present, but she didn’t appear.
In an interview afterward, Bruins said she had intended to speak and drove to the protest, but ultimately decided it wasn’t safe for her to do so because of the risk of catching COVID-19. Bruins said she is personally in a high-risk group, as is her 85-year-old mother, who lives with her.
“This bothers me immensely, because I had every intention and desire to do it,” Bruins said. “There’s too many things going on right now, with COVID-19, with all of this turmoil around the brutal, brutal death of George Floyd. I don’t like the fact that I had to make a choice.”
Bruins parked nearby and asked Fligor if she would read the speech Bruins had prepared. Fligor declined, but agreed to ask Moos if he would read it. He also refused, saying that he wasn’t there to defend Bruins’ comments.
Bruins and Fligor issued a joint statement earlier this week, calling Bruins’ comments “wrong, inappropriate and hurtful,” but adding that Fligor “knows the words did not come from a place of malice, hatred or racism.”
In an interview after the protest, Moos said Bruins' comments at the council meeting showed a lack of education and a deeper misunderstanding of issues of race.
“She can use whatever excuses she wants, but she still said those comments,” Moos said. “They still have those racist connotations, and I think that she should still step down.”
Protesting injustice
Among the speakers at Lincoln Park was Jimmy Dessouki, who spoke about the times we are collectively living through.
“A pandemic, the brutal murder of George Floyd, police brutality, the list goes on. All horrible things that happened in an unforgettable year,” Dessouki said. “But I don’t want us to remember 2020 for everything bad that happened. We are going to remember 2020 as the year where things finally changed.”
Although people have been fighting against racism for generations, Dessouki said he is seeing the commitment of young people to bring about lasting change, with hundreds turning out, even during a pandemic.
“Don’t stop until racism has ended. Don’t stop until police brutality is over. And don’t stop until we change the system,” Dessouki said.
The protest was made up of many high school students and recent graduates, but there were also older adults in attendance, as well as families with young children.
Trudy Pitt pushed her 2-year-old son in a stroller, with a sign resting in his lap reading “When Do I Go from Being Cute to Scary?” As the mother of two black sons, Pitt said she knows that “racist cops, they don’t see their hearts. They only see the color of their skin.”
Although Pitt lives in San Jose, people she knew in Los Altos told her about Friday’s event. Her 10-year-old daughter wanted to join a protest and Pitt said she figured this event would be more peaceful than some of the larger marches in San Jose.
Said Pitt, “It’s just important for us to be out here and come together in solidarity to let racist America know that it’s a new day and age and it’s time for change.”
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Los Altos protestors call for lasting change - Los Altos Town Crier
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