About six years ago, Linda Moore, an African American, was shopping near the fruit section of her local Safeway grocery market when a young Latina woman approached her and asked, “Can you get me some watermelons?”

“I was first appalled at her audacity to even state such a discriminating and hurtful comment,” Moore said.

“But I brushed off her comment and pointed her in the direction where the watermelons were but I was hurt the entire time.”

Moore is now one of 20 community members of the Hayward Community Task Force, which the City of Hayward Human Services Commission formed on Nov. 10, 1992 to update its Anti-Discrimination Action Plan (ADAP), which aims to reduce discrimination in the community and support Hayward citizens who are victims of discriminatory acts.

Moore and the other task force members met on last Thursday to talk about updating the city’s anti-discrimination plan to move beyond race to include a broader spectrum of people, including those who identify as undocumented, the LGBTQ+ community, and individuals with disabilities.

In accordance with the Anti-Discrimination Action Plan of 1992, the plan is designed to help those who were victimized by discrimination.

The plan emphasizes California law that any act of discrimination, include those based on race, sex, religion, national origin, age, disability and sexual orientation, is forbidden.

The whole purpose of the Anti-Discrimination Action Plan is to reduce the lack of insensitivity and increase the knowledge of individuals.

The California The plan identifies three general issue areas: illegal forms of discrimination, accessibility issues and discriminatory values and attitudes.

“We started the idea to meet up with the task force after the inauguration of the President in January,” Maria Hurtado, Assistant City Manager in Hayward, said at the meeting.

“In light of the President’s newly created immigration laws and policies, we, as a task force, knew we had to meet up and revise the current anti-discrimination policy of Hayward.”