Community discovering new unity after Andy Lopez shooting

"It's pulled back the scab and exposed the wound of social injustice that's been there for a long time," Supervisor Shirlee Zane said.

Supervisor Efren Carrillo, the only Latino on the board of supervisors, agreed.

"As tragic as Andy's death has been, he has left the community a significant gift, that of coming together around community change," he said.

It's too early to say what specific policy changes might stem from the shooting, supervisors say, but issues could include an independent review panel to investigate shootings by law enforcement, annexation of unincorporated fringes of Santa Rosa by the city to provide better urban services, and more investment in infrastructure and education in largely Latino neighborhoods.

"I think we need to look at all existing policies and existing conditions," Carrillo said.

The effect of the killing, however, goes beyond the Latino community, many say.

Former NAACP board member Sherman Blackwell linked Lopez's death with the fatal shooting, also involving sheriff's deputies, of Sebastopol teenager Jeremiah Chass in 2007.

"I think the communities of color are going to be aligned now," he said, referring to the "horrific fatalities" attributed to law enforcement.

Lopez was the child of Mexican immigrants and Chass, 16, was biracial with a black birth father.

The racial alignment will give new impetus to the call for a civilian review board to evaluate such cases, Blackwell said.

"I think it shall come to pass; enough is enough," he said. "The community is pretty raw on this one."

The North Bay Organizing Project plans to turn today's annual meeting, set for 4 p.m. at Sonoma Academy in Santa Rosa, into a multiracial discussion of specific policies and issues that the newly energized community can pursue, from local matters such as transit funding to national causes such as an overhaul of immigration laws.

"The energy and anger that has come out of this event has to be channeled into enduring organizations and enduring coalitions," said Marty Bennett, a member of the project's leadership committee.

Santa Rosa Mayor Scott Bartley said local elected officials need to take time to listen to such grass roots calls for change.

"We'll have time to lead, but at this point we need to be listening. ... Believe it or not, that's a hard thing for politicians to do sometimes," he said. "But by listening, that will inform how change happens. Change will happen. Change has to happen."

An even worse tragedy, he said, "will be if we don't learn from this."

One of the remarkable features of the protests since the shooting is the substantial participation of young people, many of them Lopez's friends and classmates. Of the hundreds who turned out for a protest march through Santa Rosa on Oct. 29, many appeared to be youths from city schools.

"My personal hope is that our young people, who have now become ignited for equality and justice, stay involved in our participatory government and remain involved throughout their lives," Santa Rosa City Council member Julie Combs said.

Santa Rosa City Schools Superintendent Socorro Shiels did not return messages left for her Friday, but school board trustee Larry Haenel commended the way school staff, particularly in the schools in Lopez's neighborhood, have handled the event and the students' reaction.

"It is an opportunity to open the lines of communication where they have previously been closed," he said.

Trustee Laura Gonzalez called Lopez's shooting death a "tragedy of errors."

"I think again it brings up the elephant in the room of the issue of race and class in our city," she said. "I don't believe what happened was racially motivated, but I think it picks at that wound of feelings of inequality, disenfranchisement of the Latino community, right or wrong."

Former Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Ihde, now CEO of Goodwill of the Redwood Empire, said he hopes the killing will focus public attention on the pervasive culture of violence in the United States.

"I think in society, overall, we've become more violent," he said. "Look at the issue of school shootings. Twenty years ago, we never thought about that. Today's youth are desensitized to violence and guns."

Moorland-area resident Mario Barragan puts more blame on law enforcement, saying deputies often came into the neighborhood to "harass" residents. Since the shooting, he said, it has been quiet and peaceful, all without much presence by deputies.

"Since they haven't been here, I haven't seen any problems," he said. "To me, it seems like they're the problem."

Several students and residents said they saw greater harmony within the community. Even groups and individuals who formerly were at odds seem united, Rosie Meraz said.

Before, she said, the talk at school would be about which groups were having a disagreement, which neighborhoods weren't getting along.

"Now it's like 'Andy,' you know," she said. "It's all about Andy now; I mean, it's good."

(Staff writers Kerry Benefield, Matt Brown, Guy Kovner, Kevin McCallum and Brett Wilkison contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Sean Scully at 521-5313 or sean.scully@pressdemocrat.com.)