Opinion: Stop empowering predators like Foppoli

On the surface, Dominic Foppoli and I have a lot in common. We both grew up and attended private high schools in Sonoma County. We both owe much of our success to experience in family business. We both spent time in Active 20-30. We both have made attempts to influence the future of Sonoma County. We both have been molded and impacted by rape culture.

But within each of these similarities lives a contradiction. I attended Sonoma Academy, a co-ed liberal arts prep, as an outsider on scholarship. He attended Cardinal Newman, an all-boys Catholic school. My lesbian parents sent me to private school because Sonoma County public schools were failing to protect LGBTQIA+ students, and I was likely to be bullied for having two moms. Foppoli, as a straight white Catholic man attending a Catholic high school, did not have to face such challenges. My family’s businesses were true mom and pop shops, while his are Wine Country institutions. I have made attempts to influence the future of Sonoma County as an advocate for myself and others from marginalized communities; Dominic has long represented a symbol of why we organize. The mere fact that people from marginalized communities must work with powerful men like Foppoli we know would do us physical harm in and of itself is a form of oppression. And that’s what it was like for me to work with Foppoli, both as a volunteer with Active 20-30, and as a small business owner in the Town of Windsor. His terrifying reputation was common knowledge long before Thursday’s article, because anyone who has seen him in person at a party has seen him engaging in predatory behavior. They may just not realize encouraging someone to drink to excess, especially someone you hope to have sex with, is predatory behavior. Foppoli has nowhere to hide now that this simple truth is out in the open. His entire public persona was built around the fact that he knew how to throw a party and get people, especially pretty young women, drunk. That’s what makes him popular -- at least amongst so many men in Active 20-30 and other powerful local organizations.

Active 20-30

Foppoli and my lives first crossed paths when I moved back to Sonoma County in 2015. At the age of 25, I left my teaching job in Washington, D.C., to run Images on the Windsor Town Green, a beloved 35-year-old gift shop my family had recently purchased. Because most of my childhood friends are also disabled and/or LGBTQIA+, they were happy to stay away from Sonoma County. I felt socially isolated and lacking community. Like so many lonely 20-somethings in our area, I decided to join Active 20-30, a national social and charity club with multiple chapters in Sonoma County. I joined the co-ed Healdsburg club, and Foppoli was already an established member of the men-only Santa Rosa club.

I could write an entire book just on what is wrong, in my opinion, with Active 20-30 in Sonoma County. Back in 2015, which pre-dates the #metoo movement, I was already well aware of rape culture. In 2011, I reported my rapist to my college, resulting in a two year suspension (and that’s only because another student reported -- usually they only get suspended for one year). In 2012, I interned for the Boaston Area Rape Crisis Center and volunteered on their hotline. In 2013, I drew on my experiences to design and conduct original research on bystander intervention as part of my graduation requirements at Williams College. My ability to articulate the problem while speaking from a place of relative expertise meant nothing to the people of Sonoma County, except to the inspiring coalition of women in Active 20-30 working tirelessly to defend the community from Foppoli. Amongst most of the men and the more traditional-minded women -- I was still in search of LGBTQIA+ community -- I was written off as a bleeding-heart liberal, a snowflake, a trouble-maker. Most insulting, I was written off as damaged, trying to project my own trauma onto the situation.

But I had good reason to be alarmed. Active 20-30, at least the Headsburg and Santa Rosa groups that I spent the most time with, were a worse example of rape culture than anything I had seen in college. It seemed accepted that if you got too drunk someone might rape you -- it was just up for debate whether having sex with someone too drunk to consent is rape. And that’s rape culture: a chaotic environment that allows undoubtedly horrific behavior to be normalized. “If everyone’s getting shitfaced, it can’t all be rape, right? And everyone’s getting shit-faced, right?”

Wrong. Dear reader, when you’re tipsy, and the person you’re considering seducing is slurring their words or even puking, that’s not sexy, right? You back off? That’s because you’re not a predator. Predators like Foppoli are not like us, they seek out those who are slurring words or almost puking. He victimizes them. Sonoma County leaders should be ashamed of themselves for letting him get away with it for so long. When they claim they didn’t know, they are admitting that they were disrespecting the informed calls for action from concerned constituents like myself. I am not just calling out the Windsor Town Council -- indeed, I find myself in awe of Councilwoman Esther Lemus following her brave decision to go on the record as Foppoli’s sixth accuser. The Chamber of Commerce, The Downtown Merchants Association, and The Rotary Club, to name a few, all have prominent leaders who I chose not to believe me, or dismiss my concerns, when I approached them about Foppoli.

In the absence of strong leadership, the people of Sonoma County have been keeping each other safe. By the time I joined Active 20-30, measures had been put in place by women of Active 20-30 to protect other women, and nonbinary femmes like myself, from monsters like Foppoli. They warned us, made sure we were never alone with him, even tried to keep him out of events. These women were also the driving force behind the op-ed in the SF Chronicle. I would love to see our more traditional leaders -- our business owners who still will not condemn him, our neighbors who still defend him, any politicians who would deign to work with him -- could take a lesson in integrity from young women of Active 20-30 like Samantha Mineo and Rachel Mason, allies to survivors quoted in the SF Chronicle Article, who are undoubtedly responsible for protecting untold numbers of young people in Sonoma County.

I never became an official member of Active 20-30, but I wanted to. Once you submit an application, you don’t want to be rejected! After putting in my required hours at events and meetings, I was finally up for review.

The same organization that protected Dominic Foppoli rejected my application because I talked about taboo sex topics at a 21+ party with other members -- meaning, those members were discussing these taboo topics, as well. We were not participating in any sex acts or even gesturing anything. Just talking about the kind of stuff you’d find in a Dan Savage article. Indeed, the issue was brought up by a former president of the club, someone demographically quite similar to Foppoli. He said he questioned whether I could be trusted around children, despite my success both in the teaching profession and running the family-oriented Images on the Windsor Town Green, which is known for children’s ear piercing. The organization offered me a second interview so I could defend myself, but I turned it down. I felt humiliated to have had my morality called into question like that. I had been deemed less worthy of Active 20-30 than a known rapist.

Community Leaders

Outside of Active 20-30, Foppoli and I shared similar ambitions, despite the fact he was almost 10 years my senior. Like Foppoli, I hoped to build off my success as a small business owner and eventually run for local government. I was even in talks with other local leaders who were concerned about Foppoli’s increasing popularity, and were hoping to find another young leader to challenge him. Even my closest friends will be surprised to hear that I ever took the idea of a City Council bid seriously. It only lasted a few days, because I quickly realized the things that made Dom popular were the things that would make me unpopular in Windsor.

Dom is just like every other politician, so he makes sense as a candidate. In order to represent myself authentically, I would have to explain to the citizens of Windsor the difference between a “woman” and a “femme” and debate whether I even bother asking people use they/them pronouns with me. I feared being an out and proud bisexual, while married to a man, would leave me labeled as one of “those” problematic gays who have to shove it in everyone’s faces. And I absolutely wanted to speak truth to power when it came to rape culture in Sonoma County. Alcohol of any form is an integral factor in rape culture. Predators across the world use alcohol essentially as a date rape drug. Unless we’re acknowledging and working against that in Sonoma County, it’s happening here. I saw it not only at every Active 20-30 drinking social I attended -- except trivia! -- I also witnessed it at countless bars and birthday parties.

But I was considering running against one the most well-known predators amongst millennials of Sonoma County, and he had a huge head start: connections, money, and popularity. I finally concluded I was screwed while attending a Summer concert on the green with some acquaintances through Active 20-30. Foppoli stopped at our tent and began pouring wine freely into people’s glasses. He didn’t know me (I think), but offered me wine without verifying I was even 21. I was disturbed by this behavior, but the vast majority of folks I’ve spoken to about that experience see nothing wrong with a mayor distributing free wine to his citizens to curry favor, even potentially underage ones.

Conclusions

If we want to take a meaningful stand against rape culture in Sonoma County, we have to focus on the entire community, not just Foppoli. We must stand up to our friends and family who still support him. We must continue to hold The Press Democrat accountable for refusing to investigate Foppoli in 2018, ensuring they make good on their promise to speak truth to power. We must hold Active 20-30 accountable, demanding they improve the drinking culture at their social events. We must hold Foppoli’s inner circles accountable, because there is no possible way they did not know exactly what Foppoli was capable of. We must not jump to pat Sheriff Essick on the back in response to his promise to investigate Foppoli, because Essick himself has a track record of alleged disrespect against women in our community. We must hold the rest of the Windsor Town Council accountable, in particular Deborah Fudge. In 2019, she became the swing vote that made Foppoli our mayor over Esther Lemus, despite the fact that Lemus had received more votes from the people. Imagine how different all of our lives would be if the survivor, not the predator, had been chosen to lead our town.

When people like myself talk of holding people accountable, we are often accused of starting a “witch hunt.” As the type of person who would definitely have gone on trial in Salem, I take offense to this accusation. While I do not deny that holding people accountable for heinous acts can lead to lost jobs and reputations, I always wonder: why is that your main concern? We do not owe predators their jobs and reputations. However, we do owe future generations in Sonoma County leadership that can be trusted to keep them safe. We must find new leadership with concrete plans to change the systems and traditions that protected Foppoli. Period. I think if we all take a step back and really ask ourselves where our values lie, the vast majority of Sonoma County residents would agree with me.

Not only must we hold our leaders accountable, we must hold ourselves accountable. We must ask ourselves hard questions, like whether the Old Redwood Brewery was worth electing a predator. Rather, did we really need to keep him in power to attract a brewery to Windsor? Of course we didn’t, but his economic contributions are the main reason people justified their continued relationships with him. Moving forward, we must ask ourselves what we will do the next time making money means working with someone who has victimized members of our community. We must discuss these things out loud and in public. We must hold people to their word.

On my end, I intend to hold my former mentors, who have so tirelessly defended Foppoli, accountable. Back in the late 2010s, not one non-millenial woman leader I reached out to, besides my wonderful mothers, offered me support in my efforts to keep predators out of positions of power in Windsor. They have shown extreme loyalty to Foppoli, going so far as to say “if Dom is an embarrassment, then I am an embarrassment.” Even when they didn’t challenge his reputation, they encouraged me not to let my values get in the way of my success. It angers me to think this advice will continue to be given to future young entrepreneurs like myself. Millennial definitions of success include uplifting our community. How can we accomplish that while accepting that we are led by a predator? My former mentors, who remain in positions of power, must look to younger generations for a lesson in a values based approach to leadership. Where the old model directs leaders to chase symbols of success and status on behalf of their community, a values-based approach directs leaders to make choices that reflect the shared values of our community.

Most importantly, I must hold myself accountable. When I moved away from Windsor for the third time in 2020, a part of me had given up on making change in Sonoma County. I won’t say focusing my energies elsewhere hasn’t been good for me. I founded a nonprofit, Education Without Limits, and created my dream job. I live life openly non-binary and use both she/her and they/them pronouns. I have been in therapy for three years, leading to positive changes in my eating, sleeping, and communication habits. I have not consumed alcohol in over a year. I deleted social media. Life is so much easier outside of Sonoma County, simply because the forces that protected Foppoli oppressed me. I had more support fighting them out here in Oakland. That’s just the difference between living in a city versus a small town where you’re a member of a marginalized group -- in a city, there’s more of us, and you can actually find community. But I was a part of a community in Windsor, too. I want the next generation of marginalized youth in Sonoma County to have the support I found in Oakland, and I have been ignoring my role in that battle. This is a wake up call for all of us who care about justice to take responsibility for our community away from those who represent the powerful, and give it to those who represent the people.

We already have leaders like that: Esther Lemus. She showed that leadership when she made her case in 2019:

“(I have) a unique voice, one that is rarely seen in these positions, not just in Sonoma County but throughout state and nation,” she said. “That is the voice of a female of color, a working mother, a worker — one who is not retired, one who is not self employed and not independently wealthy — and one who works hard to serve in the role. I’m a non-traditional elected official, but I work hard because I believe this voice is very important.”

Let’s not force them to work with predators like Foppoli anymore.