Child speaks up after mayor finds raccoon, racist note: ‘I know how it feels’

10-year-old speaks at Redmond meeting after racist raccoon incident - The Washington Post

When Gavin Alston stepped up to the lectern at a Redmond, Ore., city council meeting this week, he couldn’t reach the microphone.

“Why should Black people suffer racism?” asked Gavin, who is Black.

Reading from a sheet of loose leaf paper he’d written on, Gavin continued his remarks, ending with: “We should get treated equally. This is not fair to us Black people.”

The fourth-grader’s comments came just over a week after Fitch found a handwritten message and a dead raccoon in front of his office. The incident, Fitch said Tuesday, was a racist statement, and police had not yet named a suspect. The note left at Fitch’s office named him, along with Redmond’s first and only Black councilman.

Though there was a city council meeting held the day after the incident, this week’s meeting was the first where Fitch and council members commented on it.

“The cowardly act that was carried out at the mayor’s personal business office was something out of the 1950s and ’60s,” said Clifford Evelyn, the Black councilman who was named in the message.

Evelyn added that “horrible acts of racism are occurring in our town and in our community” but said “dog whistles and gestures will not deter me from performing my duties.”

Gavin’s mother, Heather Alston, and her husband decided to attend Tuesday’s meeting after hearing about the incident through friends who’d seen it on the news.

The pair, who live in the predominantly White town of about 36,000 people, were talking over the weekend, saying they should attend to show support for Fitch and Evelyn, when Gavin overheard them.

“I want to go and support,” he told his parents.

Beyond that, he wanted to speak about the racism he’d experienced in school.

“If you want to do that, then everybody’s going to be looking at you,” his mother said. “You’re going to be the center of attention.”

“That’s fine,” Gavin replied.

He wrote out what he wanted to say the night before the meeting, scribbling in pencil across a page of his notebook.

The next evening, he stood in line waiting to speak. He was nervous. He’d never spoken in front of a crowd of people in that way before.

“I felt like I wasn’t going to say the words right,” Gavin said.

As he sat down and began speaking, Gavin recounted his experiences this year when he transitioned to a new school after finishing third grade.

“Now I’m in fourth, a lot of people have been calling me the n-word or a monkey, even ‘Black boy,’” Gavin said. “One girl said to me, ‘I would hit you, but that’s called animal abuse.’”

He finished his remarks to applause from meeting attendees. But as he walked back to his parents, his speech in hand, tears started flowing down his face. He was thinking back to what he had felt during the incidents he’d written about.

“I was sad because I know how it feels for that to happen,” Gavin said.

Though he’d felt scared to rehash those moments in front of the council and community members, he hoped it had gotten his message across.

“I want people to change and not judge people just because of their skin color,” Gavin said. “They’ve got to know them for their personality, their kindness and respect.”