Who’s leading the protests?
Different people, groups organizing demonstrations
There isn’t one person or organization leading Phoenix’s nightly protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. Instead, it’s a patchwork of organizations, and the leaders have changed day by day. Some are easily recognizable — people who have been involved in Phoenix area activism for years. But other faces are new. Here are some of the people who have organized and led the protests in Phoenix.
Amirah Loury with Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro
When Amirah Loury, spokesperson for Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro, moved to Phoenix from Chicago in 2019, she was looking for an organization that works for the black community and ended up joining Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro.
“We are an organization that believes in black liberation,” Loury said. “We believe in a future where we can hold each other accountable without using violent means.”
Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro started in 2017 and has been involved in various campaigns against police brutality and violence, community wellness, redistributing resources to the community and working with families of those killed by police.
Most recently, they have been working with the family of Dion Johnson to advocate for justice after a trooper fatally shot him. They held a “Justice for Dion” vigil on May 29.
Loury said the best way to support Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro is to stay up to date with their social media, where they share events and fundraisers.
They also hosted a Defund Police Rally outside the Phoenix City Council chambers on Wednesday demanding that the council allocate $3 million to the Office of Accountability and Transparency and Civilian Review Board.
— Alana Minkler
The Rev. Jarrett Maupin with All Black Lives Matter Arizona
The Rev. Jarrett Maupin organized a protest May 28, where he could be seen speaking and walking at the front of a line of protesters in the streets of downtown Phoenix and leading the group to the Arizona state Capitol, where people then confronted police.
Maupin has been a vocal and active civil rights leader in the Phoenix area since 2005, proving especially adept at attracting media attention through his punchy soundbites and gimmicks. For example, he once rolled an empty casket near City Hall, convincing onlookers and reporters that it contained the body of a woman killed by police.
However, his tactics, including reports that he has charged people for his civil rights work, have made him a divisive figure in the city’s activist community.
Maupin parted ways with the Black Lives Matter group in the city in 2015 after he participated in a series of staged use-of-force police exercises as part of a television news story. Maupin, in the story, said he learned that citizens should comply with officers’ orders, a statement that some thought undercut the movement.
In 2016, Maupin led a protest against police violence through downtown Phoenix that spiraled out of his control. Protesters attempted to walk onto Interstate 10 and were met along Seventh Street by a line of police in riot gear. That standoff ended when police fired pepper spray and bean bags into the crowd. Three people were arrested.
Maupin has been a civil rights activist for hire, at times staging protests for the benefit of business interests. He admitted in a 2016 Republic interview he does not disclose when he is acting on behalf of the community and when he is acting on behalf of corporations.
Maupin often becomes an advocate for those involved in high-profile police situations. In 2019, for example, he served as the spokesperson for a family, including a pregnant mother and her daughter, who were held at gunpoint in an apartment parking lot.
But some of those he has helped have accused him of charging them for those efforts or pressuring them for cash. One grieving mother whose son was killed by police shared with The Republic a string of text messages Maupin sent her asking for $1,300. Maupin also, as part of a plea deal in which he pleaded guilty to a federal felony charge of lying to law enforcement, was ordered to pay back two people who had paid him.
Maupin has denied the allegations, saying he only charges for incidental services not related to pure civil rights work.
Though he carries the title of reverend, Maupin does not regularly lead any congregation.
— Richard Ruelas
Sandra Aispuro and Devaughn Jones
As thousands march for George Floyd in downtown Phoenix, a smaller uprising is happening outside the city center. West of Loop 101 and far from the downtown crowds, 21-year-old Sandra Aispuro has rallied a group in Goodyear Community Park for five nights in a row.
“It’s been so beautiful to see people of all ages. I see little kids, I see grandparents, everyone. Everyone’s out there now,” Aispuro said.
Aispuro is new to leading protests. She said only three people showed up to a protest she organized last year, but this week is different. A small crowd of about 20 people on Sunday has grown bigger every night since. More than 100 people showed up to protest Wednesday, she said.
The turnout is remarkable for a community that Aispuro said doesn’t often raise its voice. She wants the gathering to bring awareness to Dion Johnson’s death and other lives lost at the hands of law enforcement.
“I notice a lot of people in Goodyear think it’s just something about George Floyd, but it’s really on a grand scale,” Aispuro said. “We need justice.”
Aispuro said she initially faced some resistance from community members when she first began organizing. Her flier was removed from a neighborhood Facebook group and some commenters said they were wary of inciting looting and violence, she said.
Every night so far has been peaceful, Aispuro said. Protesters gather in the park, listen to speeches, and walk down nearby streets.
Devaughn Jones, 22, has also stepped up to help organize the events. Jones, who is black, said he didn’t attend the first protest out of caution. “I didn’t want anything to happen to me because of who I am,” he said. He joined in on later nights.
The two have coordinated with other protesters to draft a list of goals. They want all police officers to wear body cameras. They also want to help protesters register to vote. Despite their leadership, Aispuro and said the protests are now an organic, collaborative effort among many.
“The people that are spreading the word out are the ones that are making it happen at the end of the day,” Jones said.
— Helen Wieffering
Pariese and Bridgett Lewis
Pariese Lewis threw herself a birthday party, sorta.
On a whim, the 34-year-old whipped up a flyer, posted it to Instagram and crossed her fingers. Three days later, on May 30, she had about 300 people following her through downtown Phoenix, chanting, “Black Lives Matter!”
It just happened to be her birthday. “I did not want to celebrate my birthday today, I just wanted to put my focus on this cause,” she said.
Then somebody mentioned the big secret and everyone at the rally stopped to sing to her. Embarrassment aside, she felt this moment was too big to ignore.
“The motivation was all of the unfortunate situations that have happened in various communities over this year, alone,” she said Saturday.
Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. Dion Johnson. George Floyd.
“It’s like OK, we have to step up and do something,” she said.
Lewis is naturally soft-spoken, so her mother, Bridgett Lewis, took charge as the voice of the march and rally, leading the call-and-response chants. She was also her daughter’s chief supporter.
“She’s an amazing young lady,” Bridgett Lewis said.
She described her daughter as a woman of integrity and told a story from her teen years.
“She was on the bus, on her way to school, she finds a wallet that had $200 in it,” Bridgett Lewis said. “Didn’t have any phone numbers in it or anything, but we saw the kids’ ID.”
They ended up driving from central Phoenix to Peoria to return the money.
“She always had that do-right spirit,” Bridgett Lewis said.
Pariese Lewis plans to stay involved in the growing social justice movement. She’ll attend more rallies and maybe even help organize more. But she has bigger plans, too.
“The movie ‘Just Mercy’ that really struck a chord in her,” Bridgett Lewis said. “She’s getting ready to go to law school.”
— Greg Moore
Armonee Jackson with NAACP of Arizona
Armonee Jackson, 22, helped organize protests on May 31 in downtown Phoenix, where she and others riled up the crowd of thousands but also kept them peaceful, with everyone leaving before curfew and no arrests that night.
Since then, supporters took to social media to publish art and posts in praise of Jackson, and her phone has been going off “nonstop,” she said on Instagram.
But before protests started nationwide a week ago, Jackson was already involved in the community as a civil rights activist.
In May, Jackson graduated from Arizona State University with a bachelor’s degree in justice studies. Jackson was also president of ASU’s NAACP chapter and still serves as president for the Arizona NAACP youth and college division.
She is also a community involvement chair of the Metropolitan Sun Section of the National Council of Negro Women.
On Tuesday night, Jackson held a live Instagram question and answer session online. One user thanked her for being an icon in the community.
“No need to thank me,” Jackson said in response. “Like I always say, God put me in this position for a reason. I’m just blessed to be 22 years old doing what he put me on this Earth to do. Thank you for standing ten toes - I appreciate it.”
Jackson said in her Instagram live video that policy is what’s important moving forward.
“It’s definitely putting policy in place and ensuring that we’re holding local officials accountable for the things that are happening within our respective communities, because this isn’t just a black issue — it’s an issue within all communities,” Jackson said in the video.
She is planning to lead another protest in Scottsdale at 6 p.m. Sunday and another June 14.
— Audrey Jensen
Reshauna Striggles
While she didn’t lead a protest, she did coordinate a made-for-photos moment during a protest June 1 that drew much attention.
Striggles stood between a line of police officers in riot gear and at least 100 kneeling protesters in a lot near Sixth Avenue and Adams Street. The situation could have turned sour in minutes as the statewide curfew was about to begin.
She turned between protesters and officers, between people kneeling and standing, and used her megaphone to negotiate demands for the protest to end. She said one man suggested an officer take a knee, so she got three officers to agree and they did, kneeling as the crowd applauded. The crowd dispersed right after.
“My immediate call to action was safety, education and strategy,” Striggles said in a phone interview with The Arizona Republic. “If you’re going to be a protester, these are the things that you need to know how to do.”
Striggles, 28, has been active at the protests with a group she informally calls “protest patrol,” which tries to help people who have been arrested or hit with pepper spray or tear gas. She supports Black Lives Matter, but is not officially affiliated.
“There were zero injuries tonight. There were zero arrests tonight. There were zero kids who were missing tonight,” Striggles said. “I feel like it was a success, and I’m glad I was able to convince some of the police to kneel down with us.”
— Helen Wieffering
Khiry Wilson and the W.E. Rising Project
Khiry Wilson often stands in front of large crowds — usually, he emcees weekly at local clubs in Scottsdale as “The Real Khiry,” and has also toured across the U.S.
This week, Wilson, 29, stood in front of thousands in downtown Phoenix, but not as an emcee.
Wilson teamed up with Jazlyn Geiger, Ed Amaya, and several other people who have been protesting police brutality in downtown Phoenix.
After more than a week of protesting, Wilson, Geiger, Amaya and several other organizers started The W.E. Rising Project, which has organized several protests in downtown Phoenix. The organizers have been seen speaking to crowds and encouraging crowds to keep moving instead of confronting officers.
Wilson and Geiger stood with Phoenix police Chief Jeri Williams when she addressed the crowd of protesters Friday evening, a move some have supported and others have criticized.
Wilson is from Atlanta and said he moved around a lot as a military child. In various places he’s lived, Wilson said he has seen and experienced police brutality.
Last week was the first time Wilson participated in protests and “spoke his heart out,” he said.
“Now that people are really fed up, are tired of seeing people die on screens, especially people of color … the whole world is standing up for one person who has passed away and we’re tired of it. I’m happy to be on the front lines of this one,” Wilson said.
Wilson said he wants to see mental
health checks, longer training requirements and body cameras for all police. In addition, Wilson said rubber bullets should be prohibited, closed investigations on police should reopen and more thorough background checks should be conducted on police.
“Police chose to go blue,” Wilson said. “Other people didn’t choose to be black, Latino, white, brown, Asian … I think for the most part, treat us with love and kindness and we’ll treat you with love and kindness back. There should be no reason for a war against people, especially when they’re people themselves.”
— Audrey Jensen
Karrington Valenzuela
Karrington Valenzuela, also known as drag entertainer Nevaeh McKenzie and the 2015 Miss Gay Arizona America, is pushing members of the LGBTQ community to support black people by protesting, donating, or educating themselves.
Using his drag persona as a platform to promote the protests, 32-year-old Valenzuela said he was hesitant to participate in the protests at first, because “as a Latino, gay man, I have never experienced black-LGBTQ or black experience at all … I didn’t want to impose and disrespect the space of what the Black Lives Matter movements were doing.”
But as protests went on, Valenzuela said he thought more about how Marsha P. Johnson, a black transgender activist, “started and initiated the Stonewall Riots in 1969, which then perpetuated the civil and equal rights movement for LGBTQ members of our community,” Valenzuela said.
“I really want to encourage the LGBTQ community — whether it’s at home, in donations and advocacy, or whether it’s on the streets — that we stand and support the black community because they stood by us,” Valenzuela said. “So it’s important that we stand up and support black men and women and show our support and solidarity.”
Valenzuela posts protest information, links and resources on his social media platforms, along with his motto, “get informed, get involved, get vigilant.”
“I don’t think it’s enough to just post “Black Lives Matter,” he said. “I think we have to guide the community on resources.”
Valenzuela was asked by Armonee Jackson, the NAACP youth and college division president for Arizona and civil rights activist, to speak out at a protest in downtown Phoenix on Sunday.
“I didn’t want to get up there and comment on an experience that I know nothing about, because that’s not my place,” he said. “But what I can do is stand up and express solidarity and let everyone there know that the LGBTQ community is going to stand beside them.”
— Audrey Jensen
Kenneth Smith
Instead of going to school when he was 6 years old, Kenneth Smith’s mother told him he was taking time off to march for Arizona to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a holiday.
Arizona was one of the last states to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so Smith’s family marched for years in Phoenix. It took nine years for the state to recognize the day as a paid holiday.
Now his life has come full circle, said Smith, who teaches history and is a dean at a charter school in Avondale. This week, Smith, now 37, explained to his 6year-old son why he is still marching.
“I was taught from a very young age that equality is where it’s at,” said Smith, who has also participated in marches to support women and teachers in Arizona.
Thousands of people showed up Friday evening to participate in Smith’s Unity March for PEACE — but this was not a protest, it was a march for unity and solidarity, said Smith, one of the event organizers.
“I believe that the majority of our country, our state ... people in general that just live their daily lives really want to unify, but are afraid of stepping out of their box or their label to do that, and allow themselves to stay in that box and those labels which are keeping us separate and not together as a people,” Smith said.
But since protests and marches started more than a week ago, more people are starting to “look at their own selves and look at how we can unite,” Smith said.
The unity march was created by Smith and a co-organizer, Gizette Knight, to demand an end to systemic racism in Arizona, he said.
“We have a movement that says that, if somebody extends their power over you, it can kill you because of the color of your skin — that’s a problem, no matter what label you live in,” Smith said.
“... But in order to get behind it, you have to see the systemic part of it and how we got here. … There’s a lack of oversight that’s allowed that to happen, there’s a lack of recognizing and acknowledging racism within systems that’s allowed that to happen. No one should ever have to deal with what any of our African American male and females have in the last 10 years have had to deal with.”
Smith said marching is just the first step. Next, Smith said he wants to meet with lawmakers to make changes in policy.
— Audrey Jensen
Leaders from 3 Phoenix churches
A march put together by three Phoenix churches drew a crowd of about 1,000, including many pastors, to a downtown church June 2. The crowd was then led on a walk for less than half a mile to the Arizona state Capitol for a public prayer.
It was organized by three Phoenix churches — Roosevelt Community Church, Redemption Church Alhambra and All Souls Phoenix — which have many black and Latino attendees, said Dennae Pierre, whose husband, Vermon Pierre, is a pastor at Roosevelt Community Church.
“Our hearts are broken over the continued violence against black lives,” Pierre said.
By late Tuesday afternoon, the Capitol had been surrounded by fences, razor wire and bollards. Protesters gathered along the Capitol’s lawn and on Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza.
“Our state is a very politically divided state and we have a history at times that the church is part of that, the evangelicals are a part of contributing to saying hurtful things against people of color, dismissing pain towards both African Americans and our Hispanic community,” Pierre said.
“And I think there’s just been this growing desire to be like, you know what — we are people of faith and we identify with a God who came near the suffering and broken and those in the margins and we really feel like this is a moment in which it’s important to say we’re going to be different,” she continued. “We’re committed to coming together and working towards real, not just like personal sorrow and change, but institutional.”
“It is not an anti-police movement, it is anti-police brutality,” she said. “And as people are kind of critiquing the rioting that’s happening, we want to make sure that we communicate that peaceful protest is a significant part of change.”
The church-led protest included moments of softness and reflection. Melissa Hubert, deacon and director of community outreach with Redemption Church Alhambra, asked the crowd in front of the Capitol to kneel while she read the names of recent victims of police violence. She began with Dion Johnson and finished with Floyd.
“We hear you George, we hear your cry; you can’t breathe, we can’t breathe, one part suffers, we all suffer,” she said, while most attendees got down on their knees and a couple cried.
— Chelsea Curtis
MacKenzie Bey
Not all of the protests are loud. Twenty-year-old MacKenzie Bey is a proponent of the silent demonstration.
“I’m not part of a larger movement,” she said. “But back when I was at the University of Arizona, I was in a community of black students … we did a lot of silent sit-ins in front of campus to get more awareness and get the administration to hear us and see us,” she said.
Bey said she and her friends were protesting discrimination and that she’s applying the lessons she learned in Tucson to fight racism and police brutality. But she speaks out when it’s time. “A knee on the neck for 8 minutes?” she said of George Floyd’s death. “That’s inhumane. That is automatic murder. And Dion Johnson was murdered here in our backyards.”
Bey addressed a crowd of at least 250 people Saturday in front of the Arizona state Capitol.
“We’re demanding justice,” she said. “We want to be treated how the white people are treated when we are protesting. Everyone can be protesting peacefully for haircuts or for partying, and they’ll be fine. But we come out here and we protest to stop getting killed, yet, we’re getting shot. We’ll be gassed. And we are the ones who are arrested.” She was shaking.
“There’s so much fear,” she said. “There’s so much pain. I’ve been having nightmares and crying every day ... I don’t want us to be reduced to another hashtag. I’m tired of it.”
From there, she sat down to stage a silent, solitary protest, becoming part of a grassroots movement popping up at rallies, both peaceful and intense.
Whether meditative demonstrations catch on, she plans to keep doing what she’s doing.
“I’ve always wanted to make an impact on people’s lives,” she said. “This is a good time since everyone is at a breaking point.”