New group unites efforts to combat hate
SANTA CRUZ >> A broad coalition of organizations and interested citizens are working to knit together an anti-hate narrative for Santa Cruz Country.
The Santa Cruz County United for Safe and Inclusive Communities held its inaugural meeting in August, in the shadow of several recent alleged local hate crimes. In July, two men were arrested and charged with hate-crime related vandalism after the defacement of the downtown Santa Cruz Black Lives Matter mural, allegations surfacing in March of a Santa Cruz visitor’s racist treatment at the hands of security and police during a concert at the nightclub and finally the distribution of racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic flyers around Aptos in August.
The driving force behind the group’s formation, however, drew from a personal experience that took place outside Santa Cruz County’s borders. In a savage and fatal attack, Taliesin NamkaiMeche, 23, and two other men were stabbed while intervening in a 2017 hate crime in Portland. Namkai-Meche’s aunt, Santa Cruz resident Marci DuPraw, is a professional facilitator by trade and operates the Collaborative Choices LLC. After her nephew’s murder, DuPraw became connected with the Oakland-based activist group “Not In Our Town,” whose director soon asked DuPraw to consider putting together an antihate event in Santa Cruz County, she said.
Fast-forward several years later, when hate-related issues began to rise to widespread public notice locally.
“People in my family do things in his honor, where we can,” DuPraw said during a recent interview with the Sentinel about her motivations. “I’m the catalyst for it, but I think it’s incredibly important that we continue to cultivate shared ownership with as many (members) of the community as possible.”
During and after the new group’s initial meeting, several group efforts became priorities. One committee is hard at work to organize public events to raise awareness in time for the Not In Our Town-sponsored United Against Hate Week, taking place Nov. 14-20. A longer-term organizational goal is to create a hate and bias response team that can be mobilized in the wake of reported hate crimes and also work to improve hate crime reporting. The response team’s concept is still a developing concept seen in the city of Novato. DuPraw added that she hopes the Santa Cruz County
United for Safe and Inclusive Communities will be able to connect and coordinate with UC Santa Cruz’s existing Hate/Bias Response Team.
Santa Cruz High School senior Laura Wang, cofounder of the high schoollevel Asian Student Union, said she became interested in Santa Cruz County United for Safe and Inclusive Communities through her work in teen-level social justice organizations.
“It’s really nice to see the broader group of people coming together, of all different ages and backgrounds, and just working together to say, hey, we are visible and we’re breaking the bubble that Santa Cruz is this place where no racism happens and it’s not this utopia,” Webb said. “I feel that’s one of the main messages we’re trying to convey here.”
Locally, Santa Cruz County-based law enforcement agencies recorded 14 reports of hate crimes in 2020, according to published FBI Uniform Crime
Reporting data.
Coalition member Cliff Friedlander, who heard about the new group’s formation through his involvement with the local chapter of the NAACP, said he is working to help organize bystander training sessions that would allow community members tools to safely intervene when witnessing acts of bigotry or hate crimes. Friedlander, whose son-in-law is Asian American, said he believes Santa Cruz County residents are often unaware of the breadth of bigotry present locally, especially where it includes acts that would not easily be reported as hate crimes — as when some yells a slur out a car window — yet which do harm to their intended victims.
“I’m actually very encouraged and very appreciative and I think the response that we seem to be getting from various public officials as well seems to make a big difference,” Friedlander said.
For further information or to get involved with the group, contact DuPraw by email at marcidupraw@ gmail.com.