Project Diary: standing in the sun

Marilyn and the moms at City Hall in 2025

Soon after the murder of her son in Oakland in 2000, Marilyn started showing up at City Hall to demand that Oakland pay official attention to the families of its killed. The mayor at the time said she and her cause wouldn’t last two years. He’d seen it all before, he told her; people in the passion of their grief came to him all the time wanting funding to start programs for survivors, and then he’d never hear from them again.

That was 25 years ago.

On September 25, 2025, a national day of remembrance for murder victims, there she was, as she has been so many times now, in front of Oakland City Hall, calling for justice and love and attention for survivors.

Standing in the sun with her were other mothers who have lost children, including mayoral candidate Brenda Grisham. Many who spoke credited Marilyn’s presence in the immediate aftermath of their loss with getting them past the unbearable pain and darkness. Not that their pain goes away, of course. Mothers, fathers, families, carry it with them for the rest of their lives.

So does the city carry its pain, whether it wants to admit it or not. Also there on Thursday was the current mayor, Barbara Lee, the Alameda County DA, the Oakland Chief of Police, the chief of the City’s Department of Violence Prevention, city council members and, over all, the spirit of Marilyn’s son, Khadafy Washington.

Marilyn in the middle, with the mayor and the chief of the Department of Violence Prevention, in 2025