Rooting out racism in a ‘new’ Martinez
Not long after Sydney Chinchilla arrived at work on Saturday as a hair stylist at Citrus Salon on Main Street in Martinez, her car was vandalized.
It was the day before an antiracism rally in the city, and all four of her car tires were slashed. The footage from cameras outside Luigi’s Deli & Market on Main Street shows a white man looking around before stabbing the tires. Chinchilla said she didn’t recognize him.
Maybe her car was targeted because of the cardboard signs the 22yearold held aloft at protests against police brutality and systemic racism. She kept them in her car’s rear window. One reads “Defund the Police,” the other “White
Silence is Violence.”
“I got one nasty note from a neighbor,” the Martinez resident told me when I asked about the response to the signs before last weekend. “It’s really a shame that the All Lives Matter or antiBlack Lives Matter people did that to my car.”
On July 4, Martinez became a flash point in the racial uprising engulfing this country when two white people defaced a Black Lives Matter street mural. Many in the city feared Sunday’s antiracism rally would spark violent clashes with counterprotesters. It didn’t
happen.
Instead, hundreds of people marched peacefully for racial equality. That’s because Martizians stood up for their town by standing against hate. Martinez exemplifies how communities should respond to racism, because the rally that caused fits of hysteria around town turned out to be a celebration of diversity.
Black Lives Matter might be the largest movement in American history, in part because more white people are actively supporting it. But historically, as I wrote last week, some white people have responded to social movements with violence.
“If you’re used to being on top, if you’re used to dominating, if you’re used to being considered supreme, then equality feels like an attack,” said john a. powell, director of the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, who uses lowercase letters to alter the name imposed on his enslaved ancestors. “For Blacks to call for equality, for some whites, that’s an affront.”
Martinez resident Justin Gomez organized the painting of a 165foot long Black Lives Matter mural on the street in front of the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse in response to flyers calling for white unity being distributed around town. Soon after the mural was finished, a man and a woman, later identified as David Nelson and Nicole Anderson, dumped black paint on the yellow letters. Their ignorant display of patriotism was recorded, and the video went viral. The two were charged with a hate crime by Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton on July 7.
Two days later, they were on Fox News, complaining to Tucker Carlson, whose head writer resigned last week after CNN reported on the writer’s racist and sexist posts in an online forum.
“I grew up in Martinez, so it struck a chord with me. I don’t agree with BLM,” Nelson said. “Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with Black people. That’s not what this is about.”
So let me get this straight: A white man, who claimed racism is a lie in the viral video, is defining Black Lives Matter on a TV show that whitewashes racism for an overwhelmingly white audience. If you don’t see that as problematic, you are holding our country back.
“Certainly a person who denies racism is continuing to support a racist system,” powell said. “There are a lot of people who are strategically promoting antiBlack racism, and the president is the head of that movement at this time.”
The president has referred to Black Lives Matter murals as hate symbols, and he’s described protesters as thugs and terrorists. On TV shows like Carlson’s, images of looting during the initial protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death were played on loop for more than a month, painting
Black Lives Matter as violent.
The initial rage, which quickly gave way to sustained, peaceful protests, was driven by the injustice and inequality that was present before America declared its independence. It’s telling when people are more outraged by a weekend of property damage than centuries of human rights abuses.
Martinez, a city of about 38,000, is slowly diversifying, as renters and homeowners seeking affordable places to live in the Bay Area move to town. People are settling down, raising families.
“We know that Black Lives Matter is not a violent movement,” said Arash Pakzad, who owns Barrelista Coffee House and Barrel Aged Cocktail Bar & Lounge. “We know it’s truly a loving movement that’s all about equality.”
After years of working in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Pakzad, 42, moved to Martinez in 2011 and opened his first restaurant in 2012. He lives across the street from his daughter’s school.
“There are sympathizers with (Nelson and Anderson), but those people are gonna go away,” he said. “We are the true, new Martinez.”
According to census data, Martinez’s population has grown 6.3% since 2010. The city is 65% white, 17.5% Latino, 9% Asian and 3.5% Black. Ten years ago, Martinez was 69% white. According to the California Department of Education, roughly 4,200 students attend school in the Martinez Unified School District, and 47% — 1,955 — are white. Latino students account for 31% of students, while Black students are less than 3%. But get this: 10% of students identify as two or more races.
“The Martinez I know welcomed me and my family with open arms,” said Jonathan Wright, president of the Martinez School Board, who moved to town six years ago. “We’re an integrated family. My wife is a woman of color and an immigrant herself. We’ve met so many families that look just like us.”
Chinchilla’s oneyear anniversary for moving to Martinez was last weekend, when her tires were slashed. The corner of her windshield was also damaged, and friends set up a GoFundMe account to help pay for the damage. She reported the vandalism to police and removed the signs. Chinchilla still went to the antiracism rally.
“It was really powerful to be in such a large group of people, and have Martinez have a spotlight on them like that and just be able to show the media that Martinez does have more really amazing, loving people than racist, All Lives Matter people,” she said. “There’s this kind of new wave of young people my age moving here and trying to make it a more progressive place, which is really what attracted me to the town.”