Armed protesters march for Black gun ownership
A group of armed Black and brown gun owners marched on Albany Avenue in Hartford Saturday morning, asserting their right to bear arms to protect their communities and their families in a society they said devalues Black lives and persecutes Black people who legally own guns.
About 40 to 50 people, including white allies, marched east from Woodland Street to Main Street in a loud but peaceful hourlong rally that drew supportive honks, shouts and upraised fists from motorists and residents of the predominantly Black North End thoroughfare.
Protesters of color walked in the street as four police cars and four police bicycles kept traffic at bay. White allies walked on the sidewalks, giving the street to the people whose neighborhood it was.
All guns were holstered and out of sight, to avoid anyone being charged with brandishing.
“We’re walking with Colt 45 and Smith & Wesson,” said Cornell Lewis, who organized the demonstration with his organization, Self Defense Brigade.
Lewis said the point of the rally was not to show guns, but to inform Black people of the need to own guns, due to endemic police killings of Black people, crimes against Black people that are not investigated thoroughly and the rise of white supremacist groups.
“Now it is time to come together and observe our Second Amendment rights,” Lewis said. “If the United States government won’t protect us, we’ll protect ourselves. If America doesn’t want to give us freedom and justice, we’re going to take it.
“We have our faith. We have our people. We have our guns. America does not want us here and does not care for us. We march. We fight. We die. That is the only thing left for us to do in this land of the free and home of the brave.”
The Self Defense Brigade was joined by Black Lives Matter 860, Power Up Manchester, the Huey P. Newton Gun Club — named after the cofounder of the Black Panther Party — and unaffiliated gun owners and supporters.
Cassandra X of the Gun Club said Black people are often intimidated by guns.
“All too often, we are victims of gun violence, but I feel we are the least educated,” she said. “All too often, people in the inner city are afraid to apply for a permit. … Know the law. Understand your right to defend yourself.”
She emphasized, though, in a pre-march speech, that Black people have to rely on themselves.
“Why aren’t we safe being arrested? Why aren’t we safe asleep? Why aren’t we safe on the playgrounds?” she said.
In another pre-march speech, Keren Prescott of Power Up Manchester said: “If we don’t protect our community, we’ll end up as another Tulsa or Rosewood,” referring to massacres of Black people by white people in 1921 and 1923, respectively.
Demonstrators, most of them masked, many waving Black Lives Matter flags, chanted names of people of color killed by police officers or by vigilante white people. They included Mubarak Soulemane, shot by a state trooper in West Haven in January; Zoe Dowdell, killed by police in New Britain in 2017; and Anthony Jose Vega Cruz, known as “Chulo,” killed by a Wethersfield police officer in 2019.
Natalie Langlaise of Black Lives Matter 860 said that in addition to gun ownership, she hoped the rally focused attention on gun violence in the community.
“As much as we support the right to bear arms, we also want to say we are not happy about gun violence in our community,” Langlaise said. “We want to see more intention in the community for safe streets and safe neighborhoods. We want to see these done simultaneously.”