"His strength, his presence when he came into the room, he lit up the room.”

These days, as the twenty-fifth anniversary of Khadafy's death approaches, her mission has expanded.

“What I wanted to do," Libby told me, "was get her wisdom about how should I, as the Mayor of Oakland, show up when someone is murdered.”

Recently, I asked Marilyn what she would say to her son’s killer if she could talk to him.

"But Justice doesn't stop by everybody's house..."

His singing makes you feel the presence of holiness.

In the electric cloud of grief and pain and power I had witnessed at each service, my sense of my role had undergone a change.

"Marilyn organized what I believe is the chaos.”

Marilyn on KTVU Channel 2

When I think and write about her work and her kindness, I need to remember that no matter how she seems, “it all deeply impacts her.”

When through my open window I hear the call of a sideshow...I hear all of Oakland.

The things we keep.

"They can be whoever they are, they can feel however they are, and she’s just gonna be with them."

And so, like in the beginning, at the end, the son is swaddled and alone with his mother.

As Oakland politicians were set to crow about a 34% drop in homicides from 2023 to 2024, violence surges at the year's turning...

I remember a very stern-faced and serious KD, his bold, confrontational eyes staring into the eyes of a city...

No trial, no hearing, there is no due process for the dead.

Think about the last piece of news you read or saw about the killing of a young man in Oakland. What did it tell you about the victim?

Last night at a fundraiser for Youth Alive, held at The Crucible in West Oakland, I was invited to read an excerpt from my work in progress

It is a story that also speaks to the love that refuses to be silenced by violence.