Supe flips the bird, faces threats on reparations plan

San Francisco’s only Black city supervisor, Shamann Walton, is facing attacks from all directions this week, from those opposing his work to uplift the Black community, to others who say he doesn’t do enough. 

Some of the criticism is perhaps warranted due to his own behavior — Walton flipped off a protester last week — but much of the vitriol is unfounded, his office says. 

Ahead of a reparations hearing next month that will consider repaying eligible Black residents for systemic subjugation under the city’s public policies, the District 10 supervisor, who initiated the process with a 2020 resolution, has been getting threats and hate mail. 

Walton’s office said Wednesday that it “has received multiple hateful and threatening calls and emails” from across the country “that are cause for alarm.” 

Mission Local reviewed one such letter filled with racial slurs addressed to Walton’s office. Walton’s aide, Tracy Gallardo Brown, told Mission Local that one of her interns was too stressed out to come in to work today. 

The public became more aware of the reparations plans this week, after Walton’s vacation during his birthday, and subsequent flight delays, caused the hearing, originally scheduled for Tuesday, to be delayed. Egged on by some inflammatory headlines, critics and trolls took to social media to accuse Walton of partying instead of doing his job. 

Around the same time, video from a rally last week showed Walton flipping off a protester during a rally held in solidarity after a young Black man, Tyre Nichols, was brutally killed by Memphis police last month. 

The protester accused Walton and other speakers of hypocrisy for not supporting local police violence victims: The rally organizer, Phelicia Jones, did not allow at least one victim of local police violence to speak. It is not clear that Walton had anything to do with their exclusion. 

“It’s taking away from what is really happening,” said Gallardo, Walton’s aide, of the rally interaction. “And what’s really happening is, reparations recommendations are coming out and people are flipping out.” 

In a statement today, Walton’s office offered remorse for the supervisor giving the middle finger to a heckler. 

“After repeated attacks from this individual, Supervisor Walton raised his finger and flicked him off. This action from Supervisor Walton, as a result of continued harassment from this person, was wrong,” the statement read. “Although freedom of speech is a right, this individual’s actions are a dishonor to the memory of Tyre Nichols and extremely disrespectful to the Black Community. This individual has a history of attacking Supervisor Walton, as well as other community members in San Francisco.”

Adroa “Doggtown Dro” Anderson, the protester who shouted at Walton with a bullhorn at last week’s rally, had followed him to his car in recent weeks, Walton told Mission Local, and “threatened” him at the rally. “He is upset because he is not an SF resident and I won’t keep responding to his harassment,” Walton wrote in a text. 

“There was absolutely nothing of that nature whatsoever,” Adroa wrote in a statement to Mission Local in response to Walton’s accusations. “I vented my frustration at the hypocrisy of advocating for police accountability remotely but being silent when it’s in your own city and district, as is transcribed in the video and expounded in the caption.”

Anderson said that Walton only appeared to be progressive or “a lone voice of common sense on public police policy votes” when contrasted with other more right-leaning Board members.

Whether Walton had any knowledge of the rally’s screening process by its organizer is unclear. When he spoke at the rally, he did not mention April Green, the aunt of a police shooting victim who was told explicitly that she could not speak at the rally because of her political views. Asked about his support for Green, whose nephew Keita O’Neil was shot dead in Walton’s district in 2017, Walton told Mission Local he had been supporting victims like her for years. 

“I don’t need to defend my track record,” Walton wrote in a text. “People can research ALL of the justice reform work I do.” 

This is not the first time Walton has come under fire for acting inappropriately at City Hall. In August, Walton was accused of using the N-word in a dispute with a sheriff’s cadet, in frustration over being searched more than his colleagues upon entry to the building. That, Walton suggested at the time, was in retaliation for his work to develop a sheriff’s oversight board. 

At the time, fellow supervisor Aaron Peskin told Mission Local that, even though he set off the metal detector every time he entered City Hall, he had never been made to remove his belt by security, as Walton was. 

Walton’s misfortune regarding a delayed flight following a pre-planned vacation was used by all factions to portray him as irresponsible, uniting both those supportive of and those opposed to his politics. 

“These recent actions are additional proof of how Black leaders are treated and reacted to when they seek to change systems of oppression,” read the statement from Walton’s office. “While we understand the passion for justice reform, Supervisor Walton’s work on justice reform speaks for itself.” 

Walton, who until last month was the board president and second most powerful leader in the city after the mayor, has helped push through various efforts to support Black communities, Gallardo said. This includes the CAREN Act to prevent racially motivated 911 calls, his work toward closing juvenile hall, implementing sheriff oversight, and the effort of redirecting $120 million from the police budget to the Black community.

“Let’s grade him on the work that he’s done,” said his aide Gallardo, who called the situation “very frustrating” for Walton. “Anything he does, he gets attacked for — anything.”