BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
The director of Palo Alto’s public art program says that she didn’t know who Assata Shakur was when she approved the controversial figure’s inclusion in a Black Lives Matter mural in front of City Hall, according to court documents.
For that matter, the artist’s proposal for the mural didn’t include Shakur’s name.
The painting went on to become the subject of a lawsuit from six police officers, who said the painting of Shakur put a target on their backs and made them afraid to come to work.
Shakur is a civil rights activist turned refugee after she killed a New Jersey state trooper in a shootout in 1973.
Officers said they lost their appetites and ability to sleep because the city created a hostile workplace for non-African Americans.
The city responded in a motion on Feb. 21 that said altering the painting of Shakur would’ve amounte to censorship and a violation of the artist’s rights to free speech.
“Anti-harassment laws do not trump the First Amendment,” attorney Suzanne Solomon wrote in a motion asking Judge Socrates Manoukian to rule against the officers on May 28, before the case goes to trial in the summer.
Council will discuss the lawsuit in a closed session on March 11.
Elise DeMarzo, Palo Alto’s public art director for 10 years, said in a declaration that she reviewed a proposal from Oakland-based artist Cece Carpio in June 2020.
The Public Art Commission picked Carpio and 15 other artist teams to paint a letter in the 245-foot-long mural on Hamilton Avenue.
Her proposed sketch included a depiction of a woman with an afro hairstyle, and the words, “We must love each other and support each other,” DeMarzo said.
DeMarzo said she didn’t know the painting was of an actual person, and none of the text indicated who the woman was.
“I reviewed the sketches for family-friendliness in accordance with the terms of the artists’ contracts, and to ensure they did not include corporate logos, nudity or foul language,” DeMarzo said. “I did not
reject any of the sketches proposed by the selected artists, nor did I request that they be modified in anyway.”
Initially, the police union told City Manager Ed Shikada the painting of Shakur created a hostile workplace and asked him to take it down.
“The violent, intimidating and offensive content of the workplace speech is overwhelming,” said Sgt. Antony Becker, then president of the Palo Alto Peace Officers’ Association.
The mural was removed in November 2020.
Officers Eric Figueroa, Michael Foley, Robert Parham, Julie Tannock, David Ferreira and Chris Moore filed their lawsuit in June 2021 in Santa Clara County Superior Court.
The officers said they “feared daily that they would be targeted, attacked or threatened at work because they are non-African-American police officers.
Solomon said the painting posed no physical threat.
“No reasonable person would have considered public speech on a sidewalk during the summer of 2020, when the entire country was focused on its history of racial injustice, to be hostility directed toward them personally because they are not African-American,” Solomon said.
The city and the police officers are also battling over whether the image of a black panther in the letter “R” depicted the logo of the New Black Panther Party.