‘It’s not political’
♦ Gordon County protesters say they are standing up for and demanding equality, not making a political statement.
CALHOUN — Sean Whorton rose after taking a knee in silence with dozens of other protesters for about eight minutes, representing the amount of time former police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the neck of George Floyd as he died in Minneapolis.
Chauvin is in jail, charged with murder, but protests against the treatment of black people and other minorities in American continued in Calhoun and across the country this week.
Whorton rose and walked over to talk to a reporter, saying he just saw a prominent local leader drive by with a look of disgust. He wondered, why aren’t more local leaders joining the effort after the group assembled for the fourth time in two weeks.
“It’s not political. I don’t care if you vote red or blue, why aren’t you out here?” Whorton said. “Just tell me my black life matters. My black skin has been a whipping post every day of my life. People wanted to reschedule the protest on Tuesday because of the rain, but I can’t reschedule being black.”
He went on to say that if the teachers and coaches and elected leaders truly cared about their black citizens, they would show their support instead of staying quiet about the ongoing demonstrations.
One local leader who was present on Thursday was Calhoun Police Chief Tony Pyle, who spoke at the invitation of organizer Dylan McKenzie. Pyle told the crowd the reason he and his officers hadn’t been around previously was because they didn’t want it to seem as if they were trying to intimidate protesters.
He said someone asked him him recently if he was mad about the local protests, and he responding by asking why he would be mad, explaining that the protesters are standing against racism and that he’s not racist and won’t allow a racist to work for his department.
Instead, Pyle said he supported their effort and was proud to see them raise their voices peacefully. “The citizens of Calhoun and Gordon County are showing the world how it’s done,” he said.
The chief also said he hopes the man who killed Floyd and the officers who stood by and did nothing are convicted and that they have to live the rest of their lives knowing the catalysis of change they inspired.
“What happened to George Floyd is indefensible. It was ugly. It was racism in its epitome,” Pyle said.
The chief said he was not only angry about what happened to Floyd as a person and a police officer, but he’s also angry about the 15 other people who have been killed by police across the country since demonstrations began.
He then took questions from those assembled before the protesters marched through downtown.
Had to do something
McKenzie, a 19-year-old Gordon Central High School graduate who sparked the local protests and introduced Pyle, said Thursday that he felt the need to do something after seeing so many people across the country raising their voices.
“I was at home on social media, seeing all these people saying, ‘Why can’t we have this in Calhoun?’ So, me thinking, ‘you can,’ I was going to come out here by myself on Wednesday, so I made a post saying anyone who wants to come with me can, and a bunch of people showed up. So, since then, it just kind of fell into place,” said McKenzie.
McKenzie said more than 100 people showed up to the first protest on Wednesday of last week and that even more came out on the following Friday. On Tuesday of this week, turnout was limited due to a driving rain, but Thursday’s crowd was robust once again.
He said that the response from folks driving by has mostly been positive. Of the people who roll down their windows and react, most shout words of encouragement, honk their car horns or hold up a clenched fist. There have been incidents of the occasional driver shouting profanity or other hateful things, but they have seemed to be outnumbered by those sharing their support.
“That’s the surface level, of course. On Facebook you can see what people really think about it. It’s kind of a mixed bag, really. A lot of conservatives don’t agree with it, a lot of Republicans don’t agree with it, but it’s not a political issue in my eyes, it’s more of a statement,” McKenzie said. “It’s a statement about the way American is right now towards African Americans and minorities. A lot of people might think it doesn’t happen here, and it might not as much, but again, 75,000 people live here and there’s a lot that someone might not see.”
McKenzie said his initial plan was just to protest that first day, and then he thought maybe three days would suffice, but now the movement has taken on a life of its own.
“Now I feel like it’s important that we don’t lose our energy with it. I don’t expect us to be out here for months and months and months, because at the end of the day, that’s not going to change anything,” he said. “We’ve been encouraging people to do more with their voting, we’ve been encouraging people to meet with other people and try and figure out solutions, to attend city council meetings, things like that that will actually progress us forward, because the protesting is more like a ‘we are here’ kind of thing, like this is what we believe.”