Delashay Carmona-Benson, Santa Rosa student activist, dies at 54

The Black Lives Matter rallies sparked by the murder of George Floyd in 2020, and the social awakening that followed, elevated a number of new Black voices in Sonoma County. One of the most consistent — and frequently among the most pointed — belonged to Delashay Carmona-Benson, a 50-something Santa Rosa Junior College student with a penchant for public speaking.

An unflinching advocate for police reform and racial justice, she also was a natural leader, serving as student president at the junior college, and as co-president of the school’s Black Student Union.

Carmona-Benson died Nov. 1 in Mississippi, where she had lived since July. She was 54.

“I’m glad you didn’t call me a couple days ago, because I was a mess,” said Dejane Kidder, now a 24-year-old student at Spelman College in Atlanta who was side-by-side with Carmona-Benson at many social justice protests in Sonoma County. “I hate that she’s gone. I cried all my tears about it.”

In interviews, friends and relatives recalled a woman who found new confidence as she took to the public square in her middle age, a natural nurturer and protector who could also be opinionated and, on occasion, ornery. They described her as curious, creative, generous and hilarious, even as she battled through years of health and mobility issues.

Delashay Ivelisse Carmona was born in Puerto Rico, and through her teen years she split time between the island and a home outside Chicago, said daughter Mina Benson, 25. After starting a family with LC Benson, Delashay moved to Florida, then, after Hurricane Katrina, to Lake County. When she judged that area hostile to a Black woman, she bought a house in Santa Rosa in 2008.

Carmona-Benson had a diverse heritage that included Taíno, the Native people of Puerto Rico. She embraced that diversity, introducing many Indigenous practices in the household.

“I did my ‘23 & Me’, and it was crazy on my mom’s side,” Mina Benson said.

But Mina believes her mother also experienced a lot of trauma in her early years. Even those closest to her, the daughter said, knew little about Carmona-Benson’s life before her mid-20s.

She also dealt with significant health issues as an adult, including cancer and congestive heart failure. She died of a heart attack, Mina Benson said.

Carmona-Benson rose to public prominence in the summer of 2020, when George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer became the impetus for nationwide calls for justice — magnified by the anxiety of the exploding coronavirus epidemic and a volatile presidential race. In Santa Rosa, hundreds of people gathered repeatedly to demand police reform.

Often, it was Carmona-Benson delivering the pithiest and most powerful lines.

Such as a June 6, 2020, rally at SRJC, where she said: “Don’t get it twisted, we’re not asking. We’re demanding,”

Or a gathering at Julliard Park that July 4, where she told the crowd, “Happy Fourth of you lied.”

Over the next couple of years, Carmona-Benson was often at the scene of important local events, whether it was a celebratory Unity Walk, or the groundbreaking for a long-awaited student housing complex at SRJC, or the rollout of a vaccine mandate there, or a sit-in to protest the rules around how students were selected for college committees. She held meetings with then-Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch and delivered a set of demands to then-SRJC President Frank Chong.

Behind the scenes, Carmona-Benson was doing much more. She served on the JC’s Student Government Alliance for about three years, including more than a year and a half as president, and as co-president of the school’s Black Student Union.

“She wasn’t so enthusiastic about the emotional, visible, performative aspect of it,” Mina Benson said. “She knew the news cycle lasts a week or two, max. If there was going to be real changes in an area, it had to come by way of the legal, financial, bureaucratic route.”

If her mother saw an institution that needed change, Mina said, she would join up and seek to shape it from within. That included SRJC, where she embedded herself deeply in student issues.

“It was probably the biggest part of her life,” her daughter said. “She always wanted to go back to school. She was never ashamed of being older.”

Survivors include her three children — Patrick, and twins Mina and Calvin — and a nephew, Lashuan, whom she regarded as a son. Carmona-Benson also had three children who preceded her in death: Paul, Victoria and Kieth.

The family has established a GoFundMe page to help defray death costs and to pay off medical bills and debt she left behind.

Carmona-Benson had not always been politically active. When she stepped into that role, her daughter said, she had to learn the vocabulary of activism. But quietly, without being part of a movement, she had always been doing the work.

It began when Carmona-Benson was 8 years old and taking care of nieces and cousins, Mina said. It continued when she had her own family, and would enlist them in putting together “hundreds of plates of food” at Thanksgiving and Christmas. When she got to SRJC, younger students would call her for suggestions on finding a tutor or social services.

“I would say one of her biggest personality traits was to be very nurturing,” said Abrea Tillman, who succeeded Carmona-Benson as SRJC student president. “As a mother herself, and a caregiver, she had this way of trying to help you grow as a person, to reach your full potential. She was really good at trying to encourage students to think bigger, to do more, push a little harder.”

Kidder, the former SRJC student now at Spelman, recalled an administrative meeting at the JC when she was trying to establish a Black scholarship fund. Kidder raised a point, and the board members began to move on as if they hadn’t heard her, she said. Carmona-Benson stopped them.

What we’re not going to do, she told the administrators, is ignore what Dejane just said.

“She was like a mama bear to me,” Kidder said. “I grew up with no family, and she was kind of that for me. She always had my back.”

Tillman, now 35, was nervous about joining student government, she said. Carmona-Benson encouraged her to take the plunge and helped her connect to the student community. She and others still involved in the government alliance are feeling a great loss at the news of Carmona-Benson’s passing.

“It is a lot of grief in the spaces she helped create,” Tillman said. “ (Wednesday), a huge part of the agenda was how we can make sure we celebrate her. We’re thinking of a way to honor her legacy.”

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.