Someone left a dead raccoon and a racist note outside the office of the mayor of Redmond, Oregon. The note was directed at the only Black member of the City Council. Redmond is almost 90% white.

The incident is being investigated as a bias crime. The City Council discussed the matter at its next meeting. A 10-year-old boy, Gavin Alston, asked his parents if he could go with them to the City Council meeting. He wanted to speak and share his experience of racism. He wrote some notes to read.

Gavin Alston, aged 10, accompanied his parents to the meeting and read a speech that he, too, had prepared – explaining how, at a different school in third grade, “I felt like I belonged.”

“Now I’m in fourth,” he continued. “A lot of people have been calling me the n-word or a monkey, even ‘Black Boy.’ One girl said to me, ‘I would hit you, but that’s called animal abuse’. We should not get treated like this. We should get treated equally. This is not fair to us Black people.”

His mother, Heather Alston, warned Gavin that “everybody’s going to be looking at you” and he was “going to be the centre of attention,” she told The Washington Post – but he remained unwavering in his resolve to speak and share his experience.

The Washington Post wrote:

He finished his remarks to applause from meeting attendees. But as he walked back to his parents, his speech in hand, tears started flowing down his face. He was thinking back to what he had felt during the incidents he’d written about.

“I was sad because I know how it feels for that to happen,” Gavin said.

Though he’d felt scared to rehash those moments in front of the council and community members, he hoped it had gotten his message across.

“I want people to change and not judge people just because of their skin color,” Gavin said. “They’ve got to know them for their personality, their kindness and respect.”