Nov 6, 2023
The Bullpen: Black Woman Harassed By Racist Hecklers At Council Meeting Speaks Out
- 16 minutes
Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to The Bullpen.
[MUSIC]
>> Speaker 2: Would not hire him for
your own personal business.
If you- [BLEEP]
>> Speaker 4: Go home-
[00:00:20]
>> Go back to Africa, you don't like it.
[BLEEP]
>> Wow, wow.
>> Speaker 1: [BLEEP] Belong in Africa.
>> Speaker 2: [BLEEP] Has to stop,
correct?
>> Speaker 5: Please wait.
Please wait, yes.
[00:00:36]
>> Who was on the that's [INAUDIBLE]
>> Speaker 2: So, Mr.
Sorette, I would ask that you apologize
first for what just came through there.
While you're telling me to wait,
you should be-
>> I'm sorry.
>> Apologizing for what just happened.
>> I'm sorry,
that should not have happened.
>> Thank you.
>> And I don't know how it did,
it's a technical,
[00:00:52]
I don't have any control over that.
>> Speaker 5: Okay-
>> And surely that is inappropriate-
>> Thank you.
>> I couldn't agree with you more.
>> Speaker 2: Thank you.
So, to me, that should have been the first
thing said to every African American in
this place, everybody.
Because it's not just a me thing.
[00:01:09]
>> Speaker 1: We have the person who was
really a victim of that verbal assault and
racism and sexism and
everything else on the program.
Miss Amy Malone, I wish it was under
better circumstances, but thank you for
joining us on the show.
How are you?
>> Speaker 4: Thank you, sir.
I appreciate you for
having me on, and thank you for
[00:01:25]
bringing attention to this matter and
what happened.
>> It was so extreme, and your point
was so well understood immediately,
because, I think this was
the mayor pro tem, am I correct?
>> Speaker 4: Absolutely, yes, it was-
>> Okay.
>> It was the mayor pro tem.
[00:01:41]
>> Mayor pro tem-
>> The mayor was actually on Zoom,
via Zoom, but it was mayor pro
tem that was running the meeting.
>> Speaker 1: Okay, so
the mayor pro tem, he has the authority.
He has the tactical
control of the meeting.
This happens during the meeting,
[00:01:57]
you have a connection of
live plus online attendees.
That's something that happens, it's pretty
normative now with city council meetings.
>> Speaker 3: Yes.
>> Speaker 1: This outbreak of just insane
and aggressive talk happens.
I'm sure there are rules against it.
[00:02:13]
And instead of the mayor pro tem, who's
in charge of the meeting immediately,
a, chastising those who are talking this
way and cutting that mic off and saying,
shut this whole thing down, right?
It's as if he's coming at you,
telling you to be quiet.
[00:02:28]
>> Speaker 3: Correct.
>> Speaker 1: Talk to us about
what was happening that day.
>> Speaker 4: Well, in that moment,
there was a room full of people that were
protesting the hiring of
the new city manager.
And while I was speaking and expressing
my grievances regarding this gentleman,
[00:02:47]
I hear through the speaker
these derogatory slurs.
And I wasn't sure in that moment whether
it was coming, whether the person
was behind me, whether they were in
that room, or was that in the speaker.
[00:03:03]
And when I did realize
where it was coming from,
immediately I looked to mayor pro tem
to shut it down, to stop everything and
let us take a moment,
take care of what's going on, shut it off.
[00:03:19]
Because it went on for quite a while,
it should have been an immediate.
I've run Zoom meetings before where
you just cut off their sound, and
that's not what happened.
And once they continued,
he just continued, he kept saying,
I don't know where it's coming from,
instead of taking control and immediately,
[00:03:37]
everything needs to stop right now, and
then addressing me and apologizing.
>> Speaker 1: This happened in
San Bernardino city council meeting.
>> Speaker 1: Correct.
>> Speaker 1: What was
the grievance against
the newly hired city manager?
[00:03:53]
>> Speaker 4: So the new city manager, Mr.
Charles Montoya,
he was hired after a long search.
However, he'd been the city manager for
three other cities.
He was fired from those three cities for
corruption, insubordination,
[00:04:10]
theft of funds, those type of things.
So to hire someone who is currently
in litigation with another city
because of issues that they had with him,
to hire someone like that and
to think that that's the best that we
can do, I had a problem with that.
[00:04:29]
When you are bringing in somebody for
the highest paid position in the city,
the most powerful,
pretty much position in the city,
because he's taking care
of all of our tax money and
he's making the decisions on what
is going to happen in this city.
I felt that they needed to take more time.
[00:04:47]
We had a temporary person in place, we
could have continued with that person, and
instead they wanted to bring
in someone immediately.
And I felt there's got to be a reason,
when you're hiring someone
who has a past like this,
either there's ulterior motives going on,
something's got to happen.
[00:05:07]
And so for me, our current mayor
specializes in human resources,
so that just didn't match to me.
I thought that we needed to go back to
the drawing board, revisit seeing some
of the other candidates, and they just
continued to try to make it a race thing.
[00:05:25]
We wanna hire the first Latino,
and I'm not mad about that.
I want to hire a qualified candidate, and
I would love for them to be a Latino.
>> Speaker 1: So your gripe,
your issue is legitimate.
[00:05:41]
>> Speaker 1: Yes.
>> That's a legitimate concern,
I think, for anyone.
>> Speaker 1: Absolutely, and
it was a room full of people.
>> Right, who had the same concern.
>> Yes, that were concerned about that,
absolutely.
>> Speaker 3: Okay, as far as the response
from those individuals, right?
[00:05:58]
They started to call you the B word.
They're yelling racial slurs.
The audience,
there seems to be kind of a collective,
whoa-
>> Yes.
>> But it's silent.
So tell me what happened in that moment.
How was the crowd responding to this?
[00:06:15]
>> Speaker 4: Everyone was in total shock.
Shock, disbelief, anger.
There was anger immediately in the room.
There was a disbelief that
something like this was happening.
And you could hear behind me
people like you said, [SOUND] and
[00:06:33]
again, angry because there was quite
a few African Americans in the room.
But I wanna make sure people understand
San Bernardino is not racist.
I've seen and I've read that, well,
there have always been racist.
[00:06:49]
Well, no, everybody that I've come in
contact with has been more than gracious,
has been sympathetic,
has been angry about it.
It's the way that the dais handled that.
It's the way that our city
officials handled that, yeah.
[00:07:04]
>> Speaker 1: Let me repeat,
because I want to remind everyone of
what was said to you in that moment.
Somebody shut this n word up.
Go home, you b word.
Go back to Africa if you don't like it.
Obviously, no one knows how they're going
to respond in a professional moment,
[00:07:24]
and something like that is said to them.
I have no idea how I would have reacted.
What was going through your mind in
the immediacy of those comments?
>> Speaker 4: I was angry.
I was sad.
[00:07:39]
>> Speaker 4: Yeah.
>> It hurt, but I also knew my reaction
was going to determine
how this played out,
if they was gonna turn to me and
me being angry and cursing back.
[00:07:55]
Now, that changes the narrative.
Now they're talking about what I
said rather than what the person
who attacked me said.
So I knew in that moment and it may
sound like a cliché, but in all honesty,
I had in my head what Michelle Obama
said when they go low, you go high.
[00:08:10]
And in that moment, I had to go high, but
I broke down crying when I got in my car.
I cried, I screamed,
I called family because I
could not believe that
that happened to me.
You just don't think something like
that is going to happen to you.
[00:08:27]
And it hurt.
And I didn't realize how much it hurt,
to be very honest,
until I went to the city council
meeting this last week and
standing before them then it just all came
back, like I wanted to break down and cry.
[00:08:43]
And that's unusual for me.
>> Speaker 1: You see,
what you just said is 100% true.
You were aware of so
many things in a split second.
[00:08:59]
And the reason why we
are aware of these things,
we are aware that if we have
an appropriate response, we're angry.
We're angry that someone has insulted us.
If we respond appropriately to that anger,
meaning we are angry at how they
came to us in this racist anger,
[00:09:18]
we're just righteously angry, right?
If we respond that way, the story becomes
about our response rather than the racism
and the insults launched.
So you have to know all of
this in a split second.
And something I tell my college students,
that means when we have that response,
[00:09:35]
that means that we're carrying around
that trauma without knowing we
are carrying around that trauma,
>> Speaker 3: Yes.
>> Speaker 3: Right?
And I think that's some,
you experienced some of that when you
went back to that council meeting.
You're still carrying some of that trauma.
>> Without knowing, I did not know,
I thought I was fine.
[00:09:51]
I thought I was okay.
And this is just, look,
we have to do this.
There's a job now to do, and we have
to make sure that we don't allow that
to fall to the wayside,
continue with this.
But just standing in front of them,
I just literally
[00:10:08]
inside my stomach just felt empty,
like it just dropped.
And in the meeting they were
giving their apologies, and
it just didn't, a week later,
or matter of fact,
this was a couple of weeks later,
it doesn't feel sincere.
[00:10:25]
It doesn't feel, it's not enough.
It's not enough,
I needed you to be angry in that moment.
I needed you to be
appalled in that moment.
So to come back now and hear this,
it even made me angrier, and it hurt.
[00:10:41]
And so sometimes people don't understand
that because a couple of people said,
well, I appreciate your apology.
And that's fine,
I'm not taking that away from them, but
I know what I needed in that moment,
I did not get.
And I'm sure so
many people that look like me,
[00:10:58]
whose parents, I had older people,
my elders who called and
reached out to me bawling
because it was a trigger.
It was something they said, we fought so
you didn't have to do that.
You never would have to feel that.
And it was just the weight,
the weight of it.
[00:11:17]
>> Speaker 1: What did they end up doing?
I saw an update, and I think I provided
that update where they spoke tough and
said this would be
different in the future.
But what actually changed or
what justice was sought?
>> Speaker 3: Nothing, nothing.
[00:11:33]
I'm gonna be very honest with you,
nothing changed.
They said they identified the IP address,
but
I've heard nothing about the people
who perpetrated the crime.
The mayor called me about a week later,
I'll say about five days later,
[00:11:55]
because she was having a gathering
to stand against racism.
And even in that,
the three Black city council
members attended,
the other four chose not to.
[00:12:10]
The other four did not attend,
and all had reasons they did not,
but I just think something
like that speaks volumes.
>> Speaker 1: Let's talk about that, okay.
What's the racial makeup of council?
>> Speaker 4: So, three African Americans,
[00:12:27]
three Latinas, and one white man-
>> Okay.
>> And then our mayor is Vietnamese.
>> Speaker 1: And when the mayor calls for
basically a racial reconciliation
type of event-
>> Yes.
[00:12:44]
>> Speaker 1: Only the Black council
members responded with presence.
>> The ones that came.
Those are the only that came.
>> Wow.
>> Yes, and
that's like a slap in the face as well.
So, how do you think that
I felt when then they
had a constructed statement at
the last council meeting to say,
[00:13:02]
we are really sorry about what happened,
it should never happen [SOUND].
I feel like unless something detrimental
is happening, you should come together and
stand against something that
you say you don't stand for.
[00:13:18]
Because I feel like if you don't
stand against it, you stand with it,
there is no middle ground.
>> Speaker 1: That's right.
You are obviously an outspoken individual,
you're willing to be the leader
in the room, that's necessary.
You will speak truth to power.
[00:13:35]
Give us some of your background.
What was the genesis for
you to become the leader you are?
>> Speaker 4: So let me just say this.
I've always been an outspoken individual,
and I utilized that, and
I became a public relations specialist.
[00:13:52]
So I work in publicity,
I'm a publicity strategist.
I own Girl in Charge Public Relations,
and that is why I know
how a story can turn.
And I knew in that moment that, I know
what I would have advised my client to do,
[00:14:10]
and I needed to do the same thing.
I just could not allow them to take that
and let that be what now is who Amy is,
who Amy Malone is, is the person
who cursed out or did whatever.
I couldn't do that.
[00:14:26]
I could not.
So as a person who works in communication,
that's how I chose to handle it.
So, yes, I'm a PR director, and
I do publicity, mainly entertainment PR,
[00:14:41]
but I do work with nonprofits and
elected officials.
>> Speaker 1: Well,
I got to tell you this.
[COUGH] The way you responded,
it was flawless, in my opinion.
You never took any of your response that
gave the energy to those who are racist.
[00:14:58]
You went back to the person
who was in charge.
>> Thank you.
>> The people
who were convening the meeting,
that is their responsibility.
Take that pressure off of you,
put it back on them.
That's exactly what you did.
>> Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
I appreciate hearing you say that.
I respect you.
[00:15:13]
I respect your opinion.
I've been watching you for
many, many years.
So, thank-
>> Thank you.
>> You so much.
>> Speaker 1: We appreciate you.
And for
those who are watching this interview and
they are looking at the scene,
they see what's happened, but
[00:15:31]
they may be hesitant to step out and
become a leader.
What would your recommendation to them be?
>> Speaker 4: It's your right.
It's your right.
Don't allow anybody to take from you what
people fought so hard for you to have.
[00:15:49]
Your civic right is to go and
to speak out and to speak up.
If we don't do it,
then those elected officials are able
to do anything that they want to do.
You can't be angry when someone
takes control of your life and
[00:16:05]
what happens with your money and
your living situation, and
they run with it if you keep silent.
So I would encourage because I know that
people like that, that got on there and
did all of the verbal attacks,
their purpose was to make people scared to
[00:16:22]
speak and to intimidate people,
and that just can't happen.
So I tell anybody, vocalize your feelings,
whatever it is going on,
if you have a problem with something,
speak about it,
talk about it, and
make sure that your voice is heard.
[00:16:40]
>> Speaker 1: So well said.
Miss Malone, thank you so much for
your time today, and thank you for
your leadership.
>> Speaker 2: I appreciate you.
Thank you for allowing me to join you.
>> Speaker 3: Absolutely.
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