BOUNDLESS LOVE: A MEMORIAL TO IDRISS STELLEY

This sweet-faced, loving young man, who Mesha Irizzary, his mother says was "230 pounds of solid muscle," apparently knew what was coming and warned the other patrons, 'If you have families or people who love you, leave now. Something bad could happen."

Idriss Stelley's girlfriend, Summer, returned from the bathroom, asking, "Baby, what is going on? Why are you alone?' Idriss told her to go home to her family because he didn't want her to get hurt. Summer left "out of respect" for Idriss who then sat alone in the back of the theater, "waiting for his death."

Three police stations of officers were dispatched to the Metreon, emptied all the theaters, entered where he was sitting, and "shot him 48 times."

Reviewing the autopsy and police reports, Mesha determined the placement of all bullet casings and holes by an emergency exit repudiated police claims that Idriss lunged towards the stage. "He was frightened, and he was trying to get out," she asserted.

"Idriss was being racketeered," said Irizarry, " but I will never know what the deal was."

Idriss was never involved in crime. He never lacked for money. At City College , he tutored advanced math, Spanish, French, and English in the Day Labor Program which eased undocumented immigrants into jobs.

Nearly 700 people attended Idriss' funeral service at Cornerstone Baptist Church on Third and Gilman in the Bayview.

In the pulpit, his professors testified, 'Idriss was not crazy. We called him the Shaman. He was our spiritual teacher.'

Though Idriss was Muslim, he researched many spiritualities and counseled people. Mesha told me that on the Idriss Stelley Foundation website, "I have testimonies of kids saying,'I was suicidal. Idriss got me out of the loop.' 'I was going to be a single father. Idriss helped me regain my strength.'"

She dismissed as a fiction the story that Idriss had mental problems and was off his medications. "He had never been on medications," she said.

He was diagnosed with chronic depression. Poor people of color often carry diagnoses of Attention Deficit and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, she said, when actually the toxicity of the environment and the tremendous stress put on the community, "is what impairs their function."

Like others in the community, Idriss resisted medications, avoiding "that system."seeking comfort and healing in the warmth of family, peers, friends, spiritual philosophy and learning.

"He was studying computer programming," said Mesha.. Out of 90 students at Opnet, an advanced web design program, Idriss graduated number One.

Though feeling justifiably fragile on the anniversary of her beloved son's death, ("I am beside myself. The thing doesn't go away,") this grieving mother insists on de-emphasizing the subject of Idriss, "because my agency is much bigger than that. It is named in his memory, but it does not have much to do with Idriss Stelley anymore."

Mesha Monge-Irizzary deflects attention to the burgeoning numbers of shootings of other people of color in San Francisco's at-risk communities and her work as Director of the Idriss Stelley Foundation on Police Accountability issues.

By her efforts, this amazing woman has transcended terrible trauma, loss, and grief, creating a loving memorial to her lost son into whose memory she continues to pour a boundless love elevating the community supremely by both their presences.