Activists prepare gun, voting rights rally
About 200 Black and brown activists, many of them legally bearing arms, will march on Albany Avenue in the North End of Hartford on Saturday morning, in a demonstration to educate the community about Constitutional rights and to let people know “we will embrace the Second Amendment, if wehave to, to defend ourselves,” the protest’s organizer said.
Cornell Lewis of the Self Defense Brigade said people of color believe they must be prepared to protect their communities and their families due to endemic police killings of Black people, crimes against Black people that are not investigated thoroughly and the rise of white supremacist groups.
“We are demonstrating to let those in power know we’ve asked nicely. This is not what we want to do. It’s what you forced us to do. You haven’t treated us in a fashion befitting humanity,” Lewis said.
Lewis said he was frustrated by racial justice activism that focused on peaceful solidarity.
“Black and brown people in America seem to think only way to get across that we want justice is praying, picketing, kneeling, holding hands with the oppressor. It hasn’t seemed to work,” Lewis said.
Keren Prescott, co-organizer of the event, said marchers will gather at 10 a.m. at Albany Avenue and Woodland Street. The march will proceed east about a half mile toward Garden Street, pause, then go another half mile toward Main Street. At that location, there will be voter-registration activities and talks about gun rights, safe gun handling, self-defense and freedom of speech.
.Prescott said one point of the rally is what is perceived as the racist enforcement of gun rights.
“Neo-Nazis, racist biker gangs, they are armed. The police know it and they don’t say anything, but the minute Black and brown people decide to stand up for their rights and defend themselves, it’s a problem,” she said, citing the criticism faced by Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, whoowned his gun legally.
At the rally, participants will not hold their weapons, as that is legally considered brandishing, Lewis said. The guns will be holstered.
Hartford activist Linda Correa will be at the rally. She will not have a gun but will support the cause. She said protesters want Black and brown kids in the community to see Black and brown adults with guns.
“When kids see people who look like them marching and waving, whohave guns, they will not feel that this person is going to shoot me, which is the kind of association they get from someone who doesn’t look like them, like the cops in the area,” she said.
Prescott noted that law-abiding gun owners also can protect themselves from crime originating in their own neighborhoods. She refused to call this “black-onblack crime,” citing the Jennifer Farber Dulos case. “People don’t call that whiteon-white crime,” she said.
Liberals are traditionally critical of conservative gun-rights activists. However, Lewis said it doesn’t matter what white liberals think.
“People may say that guns are not the way to go but it’s not their arse that is being threatened. Black people are being threatened and abused by the system, by the police,” Cornell Lewis said. “If white people don’t like it they can always go back to where they came from and be white there.”
Only people of color will be allowed to walk in the streets, Lewis said. White allies maywalk alongside on the sidewalks. This is to emphasize that the protest is happening in a Black neighborhood.
“When we go to protests in the suburbs, they say ‘This is our neighborhood, get out.’ But this is our neighborhood.” Lewis said. “You can’t tell mewe can’t do what wewant in our neighborhood.”