I had an opportunity to talk to Elijah Brunson, a concerned member of the community. Elijah, who has lived in Crescent City for about 5 years now, with much of his work has revolved around working with youth, recently posted a photo on social media depicting a piece of racist graffiti depicting the words hastily spray-painted, quote, “White Lives Matter More.” The post garnered quite a bit of attention.

Elijah reached out to Redwood Voice with the photo, hoping to inform us of the graffiti. I asked to interview him in order to get both the situation documented and get his thoughts on the matter. While he discusses both the vandalism of the billboard and the graffiti, and how these acts of racism are despicable, he also talks about how they are taking away from the many genuine problems our community is facing due to the division.

Elijah was a wonderful interviewee and walked me through a lot of his thinking in this! It seemed he really wanted to cover his bases, and while he spends time talking about the bigotry of the recent acts of vandalism regarding the Cal Endow Billboard and the graffiti in question, he talks through why these acts of racism are literally taking away time and energy that could be used on genuine problems in our community, especially among our youth! You can watch the interview below.

Welcome to the first episode of The Accountability Corner: a show where we take public officials who promote and engage in harmful ideologies or actions, and we break it all down to hold them accountable.

This episode discusses First District Supervisor Roger Gitlin, with the sparking point of his sharing and incitement of hate speech—and the absolute turbulence since then. I break down why the ideas spread are wrong (in more ways than one), highlight the community backlash, bring it back around to how his actions have inspired further harm, and wrap it up with a showcase of the rally that took place in front of the Flynn Center.

This is the first video I’ve made of this nature. I hope you enjoy and that it’s the first of many!