‘Relax, I’m just black’
Rally decries police carding, criminalization of people of colour
There was anger, there was frustration, there was emotion and exasperation and even a hint of weariness from speakers and spectators alike.
Eddie Lartey decided to try a gentler approach, introducing a touch of humour and irony into Saturday evening’s rally billed as “Rise Up: Hamilton Against Police Brutality,” which was held at Victoria Park.
In his fast-paced poem recited before a crowd of about 150 people, Lartey addressed a fictional older woman seated near him on the bus, eyeing him with suspicion and “clutching your purse so tightly, like it was going to run away from you.”
“Relax, the only thing I want to steal is your ignorance,” the 23year-old McMaster University grad said with an easy smile. “Relax, I’m just black.”
While police brutality — both in Canada and the United States —
was ostensibly the main issue, the focus of the rally was almost exclusively on racism and the damaging effects of carding, criminalization and the disproportionate incarceration of people of colour.
“Though people are talking about race, we’re also talking about love, we’re talking about community, changes to policy,” said Lartey, who works as a program assistant for the Salvation Army. “These are things that affect us all so I don’t think it’s just a race-based thing.
“This addresses a bigger problem — the fact that we have to live together,” he added.
The sun-drenched crowd was a mix of ages and colours. Several people held placards with slogans such as “No one is free when others are oppressed,” and “Police don’t card bankers, whose side are they on?”
A number of police officers, including three on horseback, were stationed around the perimeter of the park, observing the peaceful rally.
The evening’s most anticipated speaker was Ward 3 Coun. Matthew Green, Hamilton’s first-ever black councillor.
“I know that there are some of you ideologically who don’t believe in checking into the system,” Green told the crowd, “but at the end of the day if we don’t have people within the police force, if we don’t have people at city hall, if we don’t have people at the province or federal government to change laws, the laws will not change.
“They will not do it out of the kindness of their heart,” he said. “They will not give it to you, we must demand it.”
In April, Green revealed that he had been arbitrarily carded by Hamilton police while he was waiting at a bus stop.
“When people read ‘Hamilton against police brutality,’ what a lot of people are only going to hear is ‘against police,’” Green said later in an interview. “Tonight was not an anti-police rally. Tonight was a call for a shift in the way policing happens in our communities.
“Tonight was just a step closer in coming together and beginning to address some of the systemic barriers that people continue to face in Hamilton,” Green added.
Sarah Jama, a 22-year-old McMaster student and one of the rally’s organizers, said she was pleased with the turnout, especially since the event was only conceived five days earlier.
“The point was to unite the community,” said Jama, co-president of the McMaster Womanists group. “For the community to show up shows that people are excited and they want the conversation to continue.”