Unity March brings El Dorado together
A South Arkansas Unity March was held Saturday, with demonstrators making their way from the TAC House at North West and Fifth to the Union County Courthouse.
Signs and shirts reading ‘Black Lives Matter’ along with the names of myriad black people killed by police were seen on people filling North West and Main Street. Police from the El Dorado Police Department and Union County Sheriff’s Office blocked traffic incoming on the road in front of the Courthouse, where demonstrators gathered after the March.
“I’m proud of El Dorado,” Mayor Veronica Smith-Creer could be heard saying in a Facebook Live video during the event.
Members of the community spoke about potential reforms that could improve the lives of not only black people, but Americans in general, including everything from marijuana legalization and conviction expungement to regulating prescription drug prices to student debt relief and more.
“We’re not just pushing things that affect black people,” organizer Jacarllus Hill said. “I’m pushing for a cap on insulin and Epi-pen prices. We want to address income inequality, which is huge across the state of Arkansas; one in five people in Arkansas lives below the federal pov
erty line.” Hill said his goals for the March were varied: in addition to standing up for George Floyd, who was killed by Minneapolis police on Memorial Day when Officer Derek Chauvin pinned him to the ground, his knee on Floyd’s neck, for over eight minutes until he died, Hill said he wanted to see bold changes that could improve the economic standing of Americans, reform an inequitable criminal justice system and to bring people of all types together.
To him, he said, the March represented a revival of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign.
“Anything that’s essential to live, there should be a limit on how much it can cost,” Hill said. “All poor people are closer to the same level than they are different because of their race. We’re not out here just for Black Lives Matter; we’re here for all the minorities, disabled people targeted by police … victims of sexual assault. Justice for all is what we’re here for.”
King’s goal in the Poor People’s Campaign was to pressure Congress into passing an Economic Bill of Rights that would include a jobs guarantee, a form of universal basic income, widespread construction of affordable housing and federal allocations to measures that would prevent poverty. He was assasinated while organizing with a public workers’ union in Memphis, Tenn. in April, 1968; from there, Ralph Abernathy led campaigners to Washington, where 3,000 people occupied the Washington Mall for six weeks in a protest camp.
Their demands have yet to be met, but the movement has been revived in recent years, with organizers seeking to address issues like systemic racism and income inequality.
Several faith leaders were in attendance Saturday. Stephanie Miller-Owens also recited with gusto one of King’s most famous speeches, “I have a dream.”
“… even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” she recited, going on to complete the speech:
“Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill in Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we’re free at last!”“
Willie McGhee, who represents the city’s third Ward on City Council, said racism is incomprehensible, in his opinion; the March, he said, made him proud of the city.
“I think it’s great. I never figured out how we can hate someone over something we have no choice over. God doesn’t ask us before we’re born if we want to be white or black, rich or poor,” McGhee said. “I think God wants us to concentrate on each other’s character.”
His 17 year-old son, Zyon McGhee, came with him to the March. He carried with him a sign reading ‘No Justice, No Peace.’
“I just want something to change,” Zyon said. “It’s sad: You look on TV and you just see police chasing black people down. I want to see change in how police arrest people. You don’t have to put your knee on someone’s neck.”
Several local residents registered to vote at the event, which Hill said was one of his major goals. He emphasized the importance of carrying the issues marchers addressed forward at the voting booth.
“The main goal wasn’t just to march, but to give people information. Knowledge is power, trying to educate people on what’s going on and how they can make a difference,” he said. “These next couple of election cycles will tell a lot. If they won’t move, we’ll move them.”
At least 100 people and likely more, representing various races and ages, came together Saturday for the march. The event ended with a prayer, before organizers were transported back to their vehicles from the Courthouse in vans organized by Hill and others who helped to put the March together. “I see hope — all different colors, all different ages here,” Willie McGhee said. “This is a human being thing; we’re trying to treat human beings with humanity, empathy and love.”