PROVIDENCE — While Rhode Island has a long history of civil unrest, those who attended a protest held Saturday over the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis last week at the hands of a white police officer, said the demonstration was unique in its emotion and power.
“This rally ... was probably the most intense rally since we’ve been in Rhode Island,” said Gary Dantzler, an activist with Black Lives Matter Rhode Island, which organized the demonstration.
The protest, which started at noon in Burnside Park and continued into the evening at the State House, drew about 2,000 people over the course of the day, according to the state police.
Few other Rhode Island protests in recent memory have had such high attendance, which is notable especially given that this one took place during a pandemic, said Steve Ahlquist, a reporter and creator of the site Uprise RI who says he’s attended nearly every protest in the state over the past seven years. The Women’s March in 2017 drew around 5,000 people to the State House.
Black Lives Matter organizers said that Saturday’s action was the most important protest the group has held since 2014, when demonstrators blocked Route 95 southbound to express their anger over a grand jury’s decision not to indict the white police officer who fatally shot a black teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri.
Saturday’s protest reflected the sadness and frustration that has mounted over the years as police have continued to kill black people at a steady pace across the country, said Mark Fisher, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Rhode Island.
“I think what happened was this one was like a powder keg that was lit,” he said.
Although police violence against black Americans is not new, Floyd’s death and the video taken by a bystander that clearly shows a white officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes as Floyd said repeatedly that he couldn’t breathe was a breaking point for many, said James Vincent, president of the NAACP Providence branch.
The officer, Derek Chauvin, has been fired by the Minneapolis Police Department and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. Three other officers who participated in Floyd’s arrest and stood by while Chauvin restrained Floyd were also fired but have not been charged.
“It was so heinous, so depraved and so [obviously] a murder to anybody that can see that I think it struck a nerve,” Vincent said.
Vincent said he hasn’t seen such collective unrest over racial issues since the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
While protests in some cities have resulted in looting and violent clashes with police, Saturday’s event in Providence was peaceful. No arrests were made, according to Providence and state police.
Vandals spray-painted graffiti on parts of the State House and damaged glass on some of the building’s exterior doors at around 7 p.m., according to state police, but organizers said the official protest had ended by that time.
“That was separate,” Fisher said. “I think it was to be expected. The youth are upset too.”
Dantzler said he would have liked to have heard more appreciation from state and city officials for the way the protesters behaved.
“I led a rally where there’s thousands of people and there was no burning, no killings, no deaths, no city on fire, and I didn’t receive a phone call to say, ‘Thank you, brother Gary,’” he said.
Mayor Jorge Elorza issued a statement on Monday in support of the protesters’ message.
“Now is the time to focus both on justice for the family of George Floyd and for all of us to find safe ways to be allies with our black neighbors so that we all work towards addressing longstanding structural inequalities,” the statement says.
During her daily news briefing, Gov. Gina Raimondo said she believed that the novel coronavirus pandemic, which has disproportionately affected black Americans, may be adding fuel to the fire in many cities.
“I think the anger existed before,” she said. “I think it’s legitimate, and then when you overlay on top of that, people are out of work, stuck in their houses, that just adds a whole other layer.”
Protesters were spread out at some points during the demonstration, but in some places, such as in Burnside Park and on the State House steps, many people were gathered in close proximity.
While some public health officials have warned that large protests could lead to further spread of the virus, Joseph Wendelken, spokesman for the Rhode Island Department of Health, wrote in an email that many of the protesters in Providence wore masks and practiced social distancing.
“Our hope is that any transmission was limited or prevented for those reasons,” he said.
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