A mass of people came
together in Washington, D.C., Saturday for a national march against
police violence. The crowd gathered in front of the White House and
marched toward the U.S. Capitol, stopping on Pennsylvania Avenue,
where the families of Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, and
other young men recently killed by American police spoke about
their heartbreak and their hopes for some meaning to come from the
death of their loved ones.
The Reverend Al Sharpton, whose nonprofit National Action
Network organized today’s “Justice For All March”, presided over
the event. I showed up near the Capitol just in time to catch to
Sharpton and the family members speaking. The crowd was much larger
than I’d imagined, stretching down several blocks and fanning out
thick in all directions around the stage and screens reflecting it.
I have no idea how many people were there—Sharpton says 50,000,
which seems dubious; most coverage so far is just saying “thousands”. Regardless, there were
a lot of people—buses had been organized from around the north and
south east—many holding signs or wearing t-shirts printed with
“Black Lives Matter”, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot”, and “I Can’t
Breathe”.
Sharpton took the stage, calling for a spate of uninspiring
reforms that mostly seemed to revolve around shifting more power
from states to the federal government; he was better spouting the
kind of rhetoric that may not really translate directly to politics
but makes people feel like they are a part of something that has
momentum and potential. Whatever you feel about Sharpton, the man
can rally a crowd.
“This is not a black march, or a white march, but an American
march for the rights of American people,” said Sharpton. Bad cops
and their allies “thought it would be kept quiet. You thought you’d
sweep it under the rug. You thought there’d be no limelight. But
we’re going to keep the light on Michael Brown, on Eric Garner, on
Tamir Rice, on all of these victims because the only way—I come out
of the hood—the only way you make roaches run is you got to cut the
light on.”
Sharpton brought the families of Brown, Garner, and others up on
stage, and they took turns speaking. Some of their stories are
well-known, some not; some led the crowd in short chants; many
thanked the crowd for being there; most spoke of justice.
“My husband was a quiet man”, said Garner’s wife, Esaw, after
thanking the crowd. “But he’s making a lot of noise right now.” One
of Garner’s daughters spoke about what a good father and family man
he was.
Samaria Rice, the mom of 12-year-old Tamir Rice—fatally
shot by a Cleveland police officer for
holding a toy gun—announced the newly-released results of her son’s
autopsy: it was ruled a homicide. In November, Tamir was shot by
Officer Timothy Loehman within two seconds of the police car
pulling up beside him in the park after receiving a 911 call from
someone who reported a “probably fake” gun.
The father of 22-year-old John Crawford, shot by Ohio police in WalMart for carrying around
a pellet rifle he picked up there and planned to buy, said he
was there so everyone would remember his son’s name. “Please stay
focused,” he urged, stressing that his son hadn’t been gunned down
by cops “on the streets” but at America’s number one retailer. Not
only did the family not “get one condolence” from WalMart, the
company refused to release the footage from store cameras of
Crawford’s death.
The brother of Cary Ball Jr., shot 25 times by St. Louis
police officers in 2013, spoke and urged audience members to
remember his brother’s name alongside more recent, high-profile
victims of police violence.
Levar Jones, the man shot by a South Carolina state trooper as
he was reaching for his license at the officer’s request, spoke at
the rally alongside his wife. The incident was caught on a widely-circulated dashcam video
(“Sir, why was I shot?” Jones asks as he’s lying on the ground). In
this case the officer, Sean Groubert, was actually arrested and is
facing a felony charge of aggravated assault and battery. Jones
urged those in the crowd to connect with one another and others in
their individual communities to keep an appetite for reform
alive.
Though most of the family members ended with hopeful remarks
about obtaining justice or change, Kadiatou Diallo—mother of
Amadou Diallo, the unarmed 23-year-old shot
down by four white New York Police Department officers in 1999
(all were aquitted)—offered a sobering reminder that momentum can
be meaningless, or at least painstakingly slow to build into any
actual change. Diallo held up a 2000 issue of Time magazine and noted that her son’s
story had made it on the cover; the crowd cheered. She read the
cover blurb: Cops, Brutality & Race. “And today,” said
Diallo, “16 years later we are standing still and debating the same
thing.” If a palpable awkward silence can descend on a crowd of
thousands, it did.
Diallo spoke also of Sean Bell, the New York man gunned down
along with two friends by NYPD on the day before his wedding in
2006. The men had been at a strip club where police were
investigating prostitution, and apparently rubbed cops the wrong
way—they used 50 bullets between the three young men. Diallo
went to see them in the hospital. Bell was handcuffed to the
hospital bed.
In all of these cases we have to ask the same question: “Why
(do) our sons look suspicious?” said Diallo. “Time and time again,
we are going through the same history, and reliving the tragedy
every time, … Our sons died so that we could come here and review
what is happening,” have a conversation, make reforms, and then
heal. “We want to heal,” Diallo added, with all the doubt
and wariness but cautious optimism of someone who’s been fighting
this particular battle for more than a decade. “We need
healing America.”
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