061224_GYS_2024_WEB

2O2 4 – 2O2 5 GU I D E to Y E L LOW S P R I NG S 47 said. “Family, fairness, truth, ethics, concern for the other. Identifying the forces oppos - ing justice and coming up with systemic ways of dealing with those — my idea of building community is infusing those values into our institutions.” In recent years, his advocacy on behalf of the Black Lives Matter movement has been robust and ongoing. His vol - unteer activities have included the AACW, the Human Rela - tions Commission, The 365 Project and the Martin Luther King Day Planning Committee. In 2014, Moyenda became active in the Justice for John Crawford movement — an effort to bring justice to Craw - ford’s family, including his two young sons, after Crawford was killed by police while shopping in the Beavercreek Walmart. The movement included letter-writing cam - paigns, marches and rallies. “I can count on my fingers and toes the number of good night’s sleep I’ve had since that incident,” Moyenda said of Crawford’s killing in 2021. “That atrocity and the systemic racist response to it, I believe, altered my central nervous system.” Attempts to hold officers accountable for police brutality and killing more often than not result in police officers going free. But sometimes there are successes. Moyenda has also worked to address the issue of the mass incarceration of Black and Brown people. In 2020, Moyenda worked with the Greene County Coali- tion for Compassionate Justice to defeat a proposed jail tax levy that would have funded the $70 million construction of a larger, 500-bed prison in the county. It failed 61–39%. A longtime village resident who graduated from the local high school in 1972, Moyenda said he came into activism early in life, strongly influenced by the Civil Rights Movement, and enhanced, he said, by the education he received as a student. Moyenda mentioned teach - ers, both white and Black, including Joyce McCurdy and the late Larry Ham, who encouraged his movement into activism by providing educational resources for him to study. As a student in the 1960s, Moyenda was also inspired by revolutionary writ - ing, literature and poetry by such authors as Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez. “We read Frantz Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ when I was a junior in high school,” remembers Moyenda. As a young student, Moy- enda closely followed the development of the Black Panther Party. “I always had that fire, King’s fierce urgency of now,” he said. Pausing for a moment, he continued, “People lost that urgency. We let the foot up off the gas.” Moyenda’s emergent activ - ism as a youth occurred early on when he walked out of class during a teacher’s read- ing of the book “Huckleberry Finn.” The teacher used the “N” word one too many times in his estimation. Saying the word back then didn’t provoke the same response it does now — but even at a young age, Moyenda fully under- stood the hateful implications of its meaning. “I got up and walked out,” he said. During a conference with both the teacher and the principal, Moyenda told them there should have been more of a pre-emptive conversation to provide more context for using the word. “I felt the teacher was a little too eager to use the word under the cover of presenting literature in the class,” he said. As an adult, Moyenda has himself fostered youth activism in the Yellow Springs community, mentoring young people involved in the youth group YS Speaking Up for Jus- tice Wrecking Crew, formed in 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd by Minnesota police. Known as “Mr. Bomani,” he has worked with this group of young people ranging from elemen- tary to college ages. With his guidance and support, they organized socially distanced rallies for 25 straight weeks from May through October 2020. The group wrote a list of demands that included the establishment of a community review board, or CRB, that would have input regarding the conduct of the Village police department, though Village Council never formally approved the board. In summer of 2020, the group also spoke out against the local police department after the then-chief of police received a phone call from a purported KKK member who threatened to counterprotest a July 4 rally; Wrecking Crew organizers said at the time that they found the police chief’s tone on the call overly friendly House of Ravenwood Metaphysical Rock Shoppe FRIDAYS & SATURDAYS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY 100 CORRY ST. 937-767-2819 FANTASY GIFTS, TUMBLED STONES, JEWELRY, TAROT DECKS, STATUES, METAPHYSICAL BOOKS & MORE Psychic Tarot Readings Choose Joy . If you need assistance or know someone who does, please reach out yscf@yscf.org | 937.767.2655 To donate to “The Love of Community Fund ,” visit www. YSCF .org T O G E T H E R W E W I L L D O M O R E .