Multiracial Mothers in White hold mirrors to ‘moral crisis’ in deputy’s killing of California 13-year-old
On Christmas Eve, many families gather to celebrate and exchange gifts. But what do you do when a beloved young member of your family has been killed just two months before?
This past Christmas Eve, a group in Santa Rosa, California, met to plan an action to support the family whose 13-year-old son, Andy Lopez, had been killed in late October by Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy Erick Gelhaus.
As part of the growing Justice Coalition for Andy Lopez, they demand a halt to cops killing innocent children and then not being indicted and punished.
Those who met on Christmas Eve were broadly representative of the Santa Rosa community.
Present were members of the Sonoma chapter of the long-time African-American civil-rights group, the NAACP, as well as Sonoma County’s largely white Women’s Political Caucus, its bi-lingual radio station KBBF-FM, and friends and neighbors of the Lopez family.
They decided to organize “Mothers in White” to plead for justice at a January meeting of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors. “Every member of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors is staring into a moral crisis,” the group wrote in its flyer to the community. “What kind of [county] ‘policy’ permits the brutal killing of a 13-year-old child who committed no crime?”
The committee planned to “create a dramatic visual impact” of at least 50 Mothers in White and their supporters at the supervisors meeting. Because Supervisor Mike McGuire had been reported as saying that Andy’s death brought a time to reflect in the mirror, people were invited to bring mirrors to hold up to the supervisors to examine themselves.
Earlier, Thanksgiving had been difficult for the Lopez family, including three surviving children. “May this day of Thanksgiving be an unforgettable one for all of you, never forgetting my misery and the suffering of my family,” Andy’s mother, Sujey, wrote in a public letter to Gelhaus.
“You didn’t even give my son time to face you. You murdered him like it was nothing, killed like a bird or raccoon on the side of a road,” she told him. “I comfort myself by hugging my son’s ashes.”
Dara McCuistion, the mother who chaired the Christmas Eve meeting, felt the same grief. “I’ve known too many mothers whose children’s lives were stolen by police,” she told the group. “When I heard about this I thought, ‘My God — not a 13-year-old child!’”
“I have seen Sujey’s mourning eyes. I have heard about Andy’s father Rodrigo’s cries over his casket,” she said. “It’s too much.”
Since Deputy Gelhaus shot and killed Andy, Santa Rosa has mounted dozens of prayer vigils, marches, and rallies. Just before Christmas, middle-school and high-school students calling themselves Andy’s Youth marched silently from City Hall to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, holding candles and wearing white shirts with images of Andy.
The community’s demands include creating a community review board for the police and building an Andy Lopez Memorial Park on the vacant lot where Andy was playing with a toy rifle when he was killed.
The supervisors have allocated money to build the park and set up a task force to study models for citizen oversight of local law enforcement.
But Its members “are for the most part the type who are reluctant to stand up to authority,” fears a cautious Coalition activist and mother, Karen Saari. “I suspect the intent is to assuage public outcry.”
“I would be very surprised if the outcome has any real teeth,” she says.
Coalition members are unanimous in believing that justice for Andy Lopez and his family goes well beyond the indictment and conviction of Deputy Gelhaus. They know they are in for a long struggle.
By staying active when other families were relaxing for the holidays, they have shown they are up to that struggle and that things will change — in fact, are changing — in Sonoma County.
