A March to End Racial Profiling
By Henrietta J. Burroughs
East Palo Alto Today
Posted on November 9, 2008
It was billed as a march to expose and eliminate the Palo Alto Police Department's long-standing practice of racial profiling against African Americans and other people of color. Many of the marchers said it lived up to its billing.
For San Mateo County Supervisor Rose Jacobs Gibson, who attended this afternoon’s event, the march from the East Palo Alto City Hall to the Palo Alto City Hall put the Palo Alto Police Department on notice. She said “Both communities are now aware of the prevalence of the Palo Alto Police Department’s racial profiling.”
Supervisor Gibson’s remarks at the end of today’s rally followed remarks made by Goro Mitchell and Glenda Savage who had the task of framing the issue during their presentations to the marchers. Mitchell, who is the executive director of the Community Development Institute in East Palo Alto, told the audience standing in the Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza in front of the Palo Alto City Hall, that the majority of the $500 million that East Palo Alto residents spent in 2006 for goods and services were spent in Palo Alto.
“So,” he said, “we continue to subsidize Palo Alto’s economy by providing labor and a tax base to a community that allows our people to have their civil and human rights taken away via racial profiling.
Glenda Savage, the chief executive officer of the Children’s Preservation Network, supported the idea of East Palo Alto residents boycotting Palo Alto and taking their spending power elsewhere.
While the idea of boycotting Palo Alto might have been a novel thought for some assembled in the plaza, it was clear for others like Gloria Flores-Garcia, the associate director of El Concilio of San Mateo County, that things could not continue the way they were going. “It is time for a change,” she said.
This call for change and today’s march, itself, come in the aftermath of remarks made on October 30 by Palo Alto Police Chief Lynne Johnson. In speaking to a group of concerned Palo Alto citizens about a rash of burglaries and robberies that have occurred in the city, Chief Johnson assured the residents that the Palo Alto Police would make every effort to bring an end to the city’s recent crime spree. She told the group that she had instructed the city’s officers to make “consensual contact” with African American men traveling in the city.
The racial implications of these comments touched a raw nerve for many in both the East Palo Alto and the Palo Alto community, who felt that they had long been unfairly victimized by the Palo Alto Police Department, since they were stopped and searched solely because of the color of their skin.
The pain that many have felt was clearly expressed in the welcoming remarks made at the march today by East Palo Alto’s Mayor Patricia Foster.
“For the countless people who have been stopped and questioned by the Palo Alto police solely because of their race or perceived race, it has been a painful and in some ways liberating week,” Foster said.
Foster called on Police Chief Johnson “to stop engaging in the unlawful and ineffective practice of racial profiling…and on the Palo Alto City Council to demand an end to racial profiling in their town.” She also called “on the residents of Palo Alto to hold elected officials accountable for protecting both the physical safety and the civil rights of everyone in the community.”
In response to Mayor Foster’s demands, Palo Alto Mayor Larry Klein replied that racial profiling in the city of Palo Alto was unacceptable, unAmerican and unconstitutional, and it would not be tolerated. On November 10, at its next city council meeting, the Palo Alto City Council will consider a resolution condemning racial profiling.
Those attending today’s march appeared delighted that it came off so well. The march was organized by a collaboration of East Palo Alto groups led by One East Palo Alto (OEPA) and the East Palo Alto African American Leadership Summit and the Coalition for Change. It was attended by a diverse group of several hundred people who came from various ethnic and racial groups.
Other program participants included Dr Faye McNair-Knox, the executive director of OEPA, who was one of the organizers of the march; the Rev. Dr. Anthony Darrington, the pastor of Jerusalem Baptist Church in Palo Alto; Rev. Mary Frazier, pastor of the Bread of Life Church in East Palo Alto; Rev. Paul Bains, pastor of St. Samuels Church in Christ in East Palo Alto and Sharifa Wilson, the site director of College Track in East Palo Alto.
For some of the marchers, it was an occasion for hope. Jacobs Gibson said that she was pleased to hear Mayor Klein make the commitment that there would be no more profiling.
Lakiba Pittman, a Palo Alto resident and a former member of the Palo Alto Human Relations Commission, said that she was looking at the whole issue as a catalyst for change. Pitman said that what Chief Johnson said was unfortunate. “But, I’m looking for the good to come out of it,” she said.
Saree Mading, a newly elected board member on the Ravenswood City School District Board of Trustees, said, "The march was not a reaction. It was a response. I feel really good about it."