After the shock of discovering offensive words and pictures spray-painted on the family home Monday morning, Esi Lewis had the presence of mind to contact law enforcement and members of the press with the information, but for the most part declined to answer any follow-up questions from journalists. Lewis did, however, grant an interview to this Hudson Valley One reporter.
The New Paltz town council member was setting off to drop Lewis’ nine-year-old at school when the pair saw the graffiti scrawled in dark spray paint on their house, which included crude sexual imagery, a profane instruction regarding an intimate act, and that nine-year-old’s name. They were both deeply disturbed, Lewis confirmed. “We are afraid to be home.”
Many in the community — certainly the scores who packed the town council meeting Thursday night — see this as an explicitly racist attack upon an African-American woman who has served in numerous public roles, including as the county’s chief diversity officer and as executive director of the Dr. Margaret Wade-Lewis Center for Black History and Culture, named for Lewis’ mother, a powerhouse professor who worked to build the university’s black studies department. Lewis did not immediately agree with that position, but over the course of the conversation moved toward it.
Initially, Lewis called the situation “complicated,” as incidents like this on private property are not common in New Paltz. That said, “Race sets me apart in jobs,” Lewis added. “I’m always speaking out about equality. This could be a message based on the work that I do.”
Whether or not the perpetrator was motivated by race has yet to be determined, but Lewis nevertheless warns that racism is thriving locally and nationally. Town council members have not pushed any municipal employees, including themselves, to take the “Undoing Racism” class that is designed to expose how it can be a motivating force even without conscious intent. “People of color are afraid to be involved” in public life, Lewis said. “We are not honest as a community about racism — it’s a real problem. This country was built and funded on racism. We are not immune.”
Supervisor Amanda Gotto read the room well on October 9. As many as 150 people crammed into the meeting room at the justice center, and Gotto understood that they were to talk about Lewis. To that end, the supervisor set aside the entire agenda and allowed members of the public to speak, instead. It took more than two hours before everyone felt they said enough, but many left feeling that much more needed to be done: more to make the Lewis family feel safe right now and in the future, and more to address the issue of racism that those who spoke feel underpinned the crime.
While waking up to find such targeted vandalism on one’s home has admittedly been difficult for the town council member, this meeting also took a visible toll. Many of those who spoke had deep ties to the lifelong New Paltz resident, and the show of support and love occasionally led Lewis to shed tears. Many others who know Lewis less well also offered their full-throated support to solutions ranging from installing security systems where Lewis lives and works and donating to a reward fund, to hiring more black police officers and reestablishing the costly — but highly regarded — “Undoing Racism” class for all town employees and officials.
Manny Nneji, the county’s district attorney, was in attendance to hold a question-and-answer session, but quickly volunteered to reschedule. This incident “turned my stomach” and was “grossly offensive” tgo the Nigerian immigrant, who acknowledged sharing the outrage of others present. Nneji did respond to a question about whether what happened in this situation would rise to the level of a hate crime. “It depends on who did it,” the D.A. said, and that can’t be answered unless a suspect is arrested. Hate crimes hinge upon the suspect’s mindset and motivation.
Limina Grace Harmon, who worked closely with Lewis in response to a former governor’s executive order to reinvent local police, did not feel constrained as a prosecutor might. “This is inexcusable . . . it is a hate crime.” Harmon expressed hope that leaders “will think on their own actions” that contribute to a climate that makes such targeting seem like acceptable behavior, but also invited all residents to consider the question: “How will you respond when hate is close to home?”
One speaker, Robert Hitchcock, spoke about students attending freshman orientation being targeted by groups of white men making monkey noises in McDonald’s, among other incidents, and being hesitant to contact police because as newcomers, “They don’t know who to trust.” Current students spoke about not feeling safe on campus.
Kitt Potter, who directs arts and cultural affairs in Kingston, agreed with Harmon’s assessment that this was a hate crime. Potter’s concern is that it might be minimized as merely graffiti.
A somber fact shared by high school teacher Albert Cook was that “black people who grow up here and leave, do not come back. That’s the history of New Paltz.” Lewis stands out precisely for returning, which gives Cook hope.
Many speakers emphasized the need to follow up with specific action, to capture the feelings in this room and encourage the many thousands of residents who did not attend to rally around finally making New Paltz as safe as a white person might believe it’s been all along. There is a concern that this issue will disappear from the conversation without anything much having changed. As one individual noted, that was what happened nationally when Obama was elected president, when in fact that was a moment which simply exposed problems that suggest that the Civil War is still being fought.
Speaking on the issue of complacency Harmon, now a county legislator, recalled that the group which wrote the report on addressing racism in the context of policing created an “order of operations” to be followed, “and it didn’t happen because of systemic racism.” There were suggestions that failing to mandate “Undoing Racism,” as well as a current struggle over if and how to reform the town’s police commission, is all connected to that underlying current.
Lewis was asked toward the end about ways to help, and said, “I don’t have any more answers. . . . I’ve given my answers to this board” repeatedly over recent months and years.
No information about a reward fund had been posted publicly before this story was filed, but information on how to donate to the Dr. Margaret Wade-Lewis Center for can be found at https://www.mwlcenter.org/it-takes-a-village.
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