An Asian American Democratic city councilwoman in California says she’s struggling to deal with cancel culturists who’ve called her racist and hounded her for months following a dispute with a local Black activist.
Lynette Lee Eng, a city councilwoman in Los Altos, was in the middle of an official Zoom meeting on Nov. 24 when she received a text message from a 22-year-old local activist named Kenan Moos complaining about the way she’d voted. She said something about it, and then things went woke.
She said the case illustrates how cancel culture and organized shaming and intimidation can interfere with officials’ routine duties as well as keep them fearful of speaking their minds honestly and getting meaningful work done. Moos and his supporters have repeatedly returned to subsequent city council meetings to re-air their grievances.
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“It makes it hard to clearly state your position, because you have to constantly rethink it,” she told Fox News on Friday. “You want to make sure it’s stated correctly so no one takes offense, because if not, this is what’s going to happen to you.”
Lee Eng, who speaks slowly and deliberately, said that she has survived a stroke and already goes to great lengths to articulate her thoughts. The drama just makes her job harder, she said.
“If you’re in the more popular view, of course, it’s easy for you to do your job,” she said.
But sometimes constituents have concerns that may align with unpopular positions.
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“We have to be considerate that there are concerns that need to be raised, to make sure that we can have a dialogue,” she said. “And maybe we could try to work out compromises.”
Additionally, anti-Asian American hate crimes are on the rise. Destructive woke mobs vandalizing people’s houses are on the rise. And the idea that free speech should be protected has somehow become controversial.
Not to mention, a fellow Los Altos councilwoman recently pressured into apologizing by the same group of activists just a few months ago after she used the phrase “you’re out of your cotton-picking mind” when speaking in opposition to an outdoor mask mandate.
And Lee Eng said all that combined had her worried about herself, her family and her home when Moos’ text message popped up.
“We all want to make sure that people are respected not just for the color of their skin…not just the race, but the cultures, the diversity of thought,” she said. “People need to feel safe to be able to express themselves, and if I don’t feel safe, that should tell you my constituents don’t feel safe.”
The proposal in question would have created third-party control over complaints against the Los Altos Police Department, which has only received a single use-of-force complaint in the past six years, out of 15 total reports. Lee Eng said she wanted to know more about the program’s cost to taxpayers before voting.
In the middle of the official meeting, the activist sent her a direct text to her phone.
“Your name will be all over the papers,” he warned, according to Lee Eng.
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“We know there are racists that supported you,” he continued. “You are trying to delay this. It has nothing to do with budget.”
She spoke out and said she had received a text from an activist and had concerns for her safety.
Then the blowback began. Moos and his supporters demanded her resignation, started showing up regularly at city council meetings to repeat their concerns and pressured other council members to censure Lee Eng.
Moos said during one meeting that “Lynette, your false accusations have increased the odds that I could be killed by the police,” according to the San Jose-based Mercury News.
He likened himself to Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black Chicago boy lynched and mutilated by a Mississippi mob in 1955 after a White woman falsely accused him of a minor offense.
But according to Freddie Wheeler, a city resident who has defended Lee Eng from Moos’ supporters, Moos is the son of a doctor and a tech CEO, living in Silicon Valley and in his senior year at the University of Oregon. He founded a Black Lives Matter-aligned group called Justice Vanguard to advocate for social justice in his community.
“The idea that police are gonna shoot him is so ludicrous that it’s actually outrageous,” Wheeler said.
Moos has maintained that his texts were not threats, and even wrote as much in one of them, explicitly stating that they were “in no way a threat of any kind.”
And his repeated insistence on that point attracted local media outlets and some residents to begin claiming she had falsely accused him of making a direct threat to her and her family.
But considered in the greater context, Lee Eng said it’s easy to feel unsafe when going against the grain.
She points to a national rise in hate crimes targeting Asian Americans as well as mob gatherings at other Bay Area officials’ homes that included vandalism, graffiti and flag burning.
She said that the texts didn’t have to include a direct threat of physical violence from Moos to make her fear for her safety.
She also said the concerted effort to shame and intimidate her makes it difficult to do her job and could likely discourage “good people to step up to run for office in the future.”
“I support social justice issues, social justice matters,” she said. “I pushed for implicit bias training within the city. I am not a racist.”
At least two residents spoke up in support of the councilwoman at a recent meeting, according to the Los Altos Town Crier. They noted the rise in hate crimes targeting Asian Americans across the US as well as mob bullying focused directly on Lee Eng. They also noted that her campaign signs had been defaced last year with the word “racist.”
Wheeler was one of those residents.
“Are you showing her the same lack of respect you accuse others of showing you by not believing her?” she asked Moos’ supporters.