John Jordan Foundation to help repair defaced Santa Rosa mural

A local foundation has stepped forward to remake a South Park neighborhood mural depicting key Santa Rosa civil rights figures after vandals painted gang epithets and threats on the artwork at the heart of a city park.

The John Jordan Foundation has put up $3,000 in matching funds to spearhead a community effort to restore the 5-foot-by-20-foot mural covering the side of a Head Start preschool building at Martin Luther King Jr. Park on Hendley Street.

“I really want us to repaint the mural,” said Vince Harper, assistant director of community engagement for Community Action Partnership, a nonprofit group that organized the mural’s creation in 2011 and runs the Head Start program. “I think if we’d do anything different, that takes away the power of it.”

The artwork depicts national civil rights heroes Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez as well as key Santa Rosa leaders with connections to the neighborhood - Alicia Sanchez, Rev. Ann Gray Byrd, Greg Sarris, Eddie Mae Sloan, Platt O. Williams, Rev. James E. Coffee and Jesse Love.

Byrd, 80, of Santa Rosa was just recently honored with the ACLU of Northern California’s 2016 Jack Green Civil Liberties Award for community activism.

She said that she was “heartbroken” when a friend told her about the vandalism. Byrd, who for decades lived on Grand Avenue and then Milton Streets, said the mural was an overdue recognition of the history of the neighborhood, long one of the city’s most multicultural areas, and its residents.

“To see it just destroyed, I took it personally,” Byrd said. “There was a lot hanging on that wall, and to see it destroyed like that … it was personal.”

Lisa Wittke Schaffner, executive director of the John Jordan Foundation, said she heard about the vandalism at a Wednesday meeting with the city’s violence prevention partnership that works on gang prevention programs. She quietly reached out via text message to her organization’s founder, John Jordan of Jordan Vineyard & Winery, and within minutes the foundation offered up funds to launch a fundraising effort.

“This is so much more than a mural,” Wittke Schaffner said.

Harper hopes to raise at least $6,000, the estimated amount it will take to repaint the mural. People interested in contributing to the South Park Dream Mural Restoration and Preservation Fund can call Harper at 544-6911. Funds may be directed to Harper at Community Action Partnership, 141 Stony Circle. No. 210, Santa Rosa, 95401.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@jjpressdem.