18-year-old Santa Rosa resident at forefront of Sonoma County’s Black Lives Matter movement

Joy Ayodele thought that, at most, 50 people would show up to the first protest she organized in honor of George Floyd.

The 18-year-old Santa Rosa resident had never organized a demonstration before, though she was no stranger to activism. Her family, especially her mother, has always encouraged her to speak out against injustices.

So when Ayodele heard people criticizing the violence seen at some of the protests the weekend after Floyd was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer, she felt like she had to get involved.

“I will admit that the decision to organize the first one was very spontaneous,” she said. “I was trying to get the point across that although (some protests) had escalated in a violent way, they’re very important.”

“They’re not violent people,” she said of the people protesting. “They’re protesting because they’re angry.

“We’re all shouting, we’re all angry. But I don’t think that anybody is going about it in a violent manner, but because a lot of those events are unorganized, it’s very easy to play it off in that way.”

Ayodele created a graphic promoting her event - a youth-led protest that would start in Old Courthouse Square and march around downtown Santa Rosa. She sent it to about 20 friends and then posted it on her Instagram.

On June 1, 300 people marched peacefully through the streets with her, sharing their outrage over racism and police brutality.

Emboldened by the success of her first protest, Ayodele told people that if the three other officers involved in Floyd’s death hadn’t been arrested within the next week, she would organize another rally. While the officers were arrested June 3 on suspicion of aiding and abetting murder, Ayodele and a group of coordinators still held another youth-led protest Monday to keep the movement going.

“You need to continue fighting,” she said. “You need to continue showing up in our community.”

Hundreds of Sonoma County residents came to her protest Monday - not just teens, but also adults and families. The crowd marched to Santa Rosa City Hall, turning in about 300 letters requesting that Mayor Tom Schwedhelm, a former city police chief, defund the police department. And Ayodele came face-to-face with Chief Ray Navarro, confronting him with questions about the department’s funding and use of force policies in front of a shouting crowd.

In the past couple of weeks, Ayodele has become a prominent young leader in the local Black Lives Matter movement. Born and raised in Santa Rosa, Ayodele graduated from Montgomery High School and is enrolled at Santa Rosa Junior College.

Organizing, she said, has helped her become even more aware of the issues in her community. She said she was “shocked” to see that Housing & Community Services only received 1% of funding in the city’s 2019-20 General Fund, while the Santa Rosa Police Department received 32% - $1.9 million compared to $59.7 million. She felt that her protests were a way to help inform others in the community too, and at her second rally, she set up a voter registration table.

When Santa Rosa Junior College student Samali Namaganda, 18, learned about Ayodele’s first protest on social media, she reached out to Ayodele to see how she could help, and became a coordinator for both protests.

Namaganda applauded Ayodele for putting pressure on city officials and informing the public - particularly the community’s youth - on important issues, such as the upcoming budget.

“She’s passionate, driven and she carries herself well,” Namaganda said of Ayodele. “Seeing how she can give back to a big movement (for the) youth - that’s so inspiring and so amazing.”

As a black woman, Ayodele has experienced racial profiling before - and is nervous whenever she has to interact with a police officer.

“Every time I get pulled over, (I worry) about ‘is it going to escalate?’?” she said. “If I even see a cop driving by, I’m definitely worried that they’re going to look at me a certain way. And that’s very sad.”

Floyd’s death has stirred more feelings of sadness and anxiety in Ayodele, but she said the protests have awakened “overwhelming power, overwhelming joy and peace.” The unity and support she has felt from her community, she said, is beautiful.

“It’s not just right now that this is so important,” she said. “But this is definitely a time when it’s felt so important to a lot of people.”

Ayodele is organizing another event within the next week or so, and hopes to focus more on cultural appreciation. She created a new Instagram account called “What We Are Fighting For,” which shares information about her upcoming events. She’s started to look into creating an official nonprofit to “move forward with this at a larger scale.”

And she plans to stay in contact with city officials, ?including Navarro, about police ?accountability.

The chief’s visit to her protest on Monday was disappointing to Ayodele. Navarro only stayed for a few minutes, and Ayodele didn’t feel like he adequately answered her questions.

When she asked him why the police department receives so much taxpayer money, and where that funding is going, Navarro said that the department works with other city officials to allocate budgets but “I can’t explain to you fully on all the decisions that are made.”

“We need to receive some answers,” Ayodele said. “When those kind of hard questions are asked, everybody in (politics) tells us that they understand our concerns, but I think that’s definitely not enough of an answer to meet our concerns.”

Black Lives Matter is the focus of Ayodele’s activism right now, but she also wants to expand her work to include immigrant rights, LGBTQ+ issues and environmental issues.

Organizing protests has made Ayodele feel more connected to the people in Santa Rosa than she’s ever felt in her 18 years of living here.

“Truthfully, prior to this last week, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people of color in our community ... just like coming out together,” she said. “I think we’re all kind of cautious in that way - to gather in that way, it’s a dangerous thing.”

“But I think that’s been really, really powerful and really beautiful.”

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story misspelled Samali Namaganda’s last name.

You can reach Staff Writer Chantelle Lee at 707-521-5337 or chantelle.lee@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ChantelleHLee.