I don’t understand San Jose without the anchoring moral force of Reverend Moore. For decades, across different communities, generations, political orientations, from teens to elected officials - he represented the conscience of our city. A San Jose that does not have Reverend Moore feels untethered to what guides us towards the righteous.
Even though he moved to Georgia months before he passed, it never felt like he left. Despite being in another state, he was just as plugged in, as involved, in sculpting and curating the story of justice in San Jose as was when he lived here. There was a piece of me that really thought he would move back to San Jose someday.
The first time I witnessed Reverend Moore’s public power was at a city hall meeting years ago. It was at a heated city council meeting about police abuse. The rotunda was overflowing with community who had lined up to give public input. But in those meetings, after the public comments, the electeds turned to one another to discuss the issues, often not acknowledging anything that was said by the community. The feeling of not being heard was boiling over that meeting. Then, from the audience seats, unsolicited, Reverend Moore, stood up and spoke, for us. His voice boomed, froze and commanded that whole big room with a clarion call for accountability and racial justice. Applause erupted, city council members had no response. Security would not dare tell him to sit down. The conventions of City Hall politics were obliterated by the force of Reverend Moore. I had never seen anything like that, but as the years rolled on, I came to know that he could move like that, orate like that, defy like that, whenever felt compelled to do so, whenever the community needed him to.
Real talk - Rev. Moore was the people’s champ.
I loved opening Reverend Moore’s emails. It would be directed to some public official, and he would cc community folks, and it was just like we were watching him chew them up in person at a City Hall or Board of Supervisors meeting. On behalf of an aggrieved person or people - the email would tear into the DA, or police chief, or one of those types, calling for immediate action. Sometimes, parts of it would take the form and structure of poetry, or quote scripture. And because he was who he was - they had to respond, often apologetically, about how they would move quickly to resolve whatever issue he brought to them.
The first time I witnessed Rev’s personal, more private, power was at a candlelight vigil. A family of someone we knew had a loved one killed by police, and they were having a memorial at the site of his death, a neighborhood street near an elementary school. We had sent out their flyer to the media, advocates, community leaders, politicians. It ended up being on a cold, rainy, Friday night. The only people that showed up was the family, some De-Bug folks, and Reverend Moore. He was the only public figure that came. No media was there. The family huddled around the middle of an unremarkable residential intersection, under umbrellas, trying to keep candles lit against the wind and rain. I don’t know if someone asked Reverend Moore, or he simply knew that was his offering, but he led a prayer for the departed, for his loved ones. After the prayer, the mother of the young man who passed clutched Reverend Moore. Standing in the rain, he consoled her, giving her soft words of comfort and peace. In the less seen places and moments, the intimate spaces that his walk of justice often him brought him to, his grace expressed itself differently, but just as powerfully as his public oratories. I’ve seen Reverend Moore lead prayer in court hallways, at rallies, at school parking lots. His faith would embolden and transform, and he shared that with us.
His walk often mapped the personal to the larger terrain of the fight for justice. I think it’s because Reverend Moore really was a San Jose guy. He knew people. Went back with people. He knew folks’ Uncles and Aunties, knew people’s kids. There was a young man, 15 years old at the time, who had a juvenile court case for some nonsense at school (the school called police instead of just resolving the minor incident on campus.) We were going to attend court with him to call for a dismissal of the charge, and were going to reach out to Rev to join us. If you were a person of traditional political power - a school administrator, a judge, a city council person - if Rev Moore came to the meeting, you knew the community was not playing.
But when we were talking to the young man’s grandma to see if it was cool to invite Rev, she said of course he should be there - like that was always the plan. Turned out Rev. Moore would counsel him after school regularly. Would show up at his house to check up on him, and the young man would seek him out all for guidance all the time. That would happen all the time. Whenever we would reach out to Rev to support someone’s fight for justice, he would often already have had some connection to them. When we called on him to join our call for the release of a man who was wrongly imprisoned for 18 years, Rev said he had already spoken to the mother of the man. She cut his hair in high school, and so of course Rev had already been advocating to the DA to recall his sentence. That man is home now and Rev’s advocacy was part of his freedom. He was released just a month before Reverend Moore’s transition home.
The grandma of the young man who Rev Moore would counsel and mentor when he was younger texted the night we learned of Rev’s passing. The child has sadly passed in an accident a couple years after that court case we came together for. She texted how they could look out for each other in Heaven now.
As rooted in San Jose Reverend Moore was, he also connected to the larger world, demanded that of us as well. The largest protest I have seen in person was when he called us to rally in front of City Hall after the death of Breonna Taylor who was killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky. The entire plaza area bleeding onto Santa Clara street filled with San Jose families protesting the killing of Black woman by police with a community two thousand miles away - all from a call for solidarity by the one voice who could bring us all out - Reverend Moore.
And during the past year and a half of the genocide of Palestinian people, Reverend Moore has enlisted all of us in San Jose who believe in justice, in life, to call for ceasefire and an end to the occupation and colonialization by Israel. For Reverend Moore, San Jose could not disengage from the struggles of those beyond city limits or national boundaries.
We are heading into Martin Luther King Day, and I can’t help but see Reverend Moore when I think of King. I don’t know if those who had the fortune to be around King during his time understood his greatness, how his enduring truth would live beyond his physical time here. But I always felt the transcendence of Reverend Moore with us here in San Jose, in so many different ways, and see it everywhere in this city, still.
I can’t imagine a San Jose without Reverend Moore, and I don’t have to. His legacy, his life, his pursuit for justice for all of us, is in San Jose, and always will be.
Photo : Charisse Domingo
