THOUSANDS RALLY FOR RACIAL JUSTICE
Protest organized by Phoenixville Area High School students
“I’m tired of all the killing.” — Carolyn Phillips, Phoenixville instructional aide
“When you are black in America, you are seen as a threat.” — Nakialere Beasley, Phoenixville High School student and organizer
“We need to break the silence and the violence of 400 years of oppression.” — McKenzie Hodges, Phoenixville High School student and organizer
» Mirroring events across the nation, more than 2,000 people gathered in the borough Friday to protest police brutality, march for racial justice and demonstrate how to protest peacefully.
What made the event more remarkable is it was organized entirely by a group of Phoenixville Area High School students — Glidera Garner, Nailah Green, Nakialere Beasley, McKenzie Hodges and Isaiah Pelzer.
With little more than a flyer, a social media presence and an idea, the students gathered more than a thousand people at the corner of Main and Bridge streets and then marched them peacefully six blocks up Main Street to Reeve’s Park where they held a rally.
“We were able to do more than just a post,” Pelzer told the crowd at Reeves Park.
“We were able to gather peacefully,” he said, adding, “and the police are with us because they want to be part of this.”
That’s true, said Phoenxiville Police Chief Thomas Sjostrom.
“When they came to us and said they wanted to do this, we said ‘what do you need,’” Sjostrom said as he watched the students speak.
Saying he found their oratory “impressive,” Sjostrom added “we want them to be heard. This is what it’s all about.”
And heard they were.
But first, they were silent. The event began with signwielding protesters meeting on all four corners of the intersection of Bridge and Main streets in downtown Phoenixville.
As police directed traffic and kept protesters out of the streets, Garner used a bullhorn to move everyone into a nearby parking lot where the first thing all were asked to do was kneel silently in memory of George Floyd.
Floyd is the unarmed black man who died at the hands of Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin while handcuffed as Chauvin knelt on his Floyd’s neck and Floyd said: “I can’t breathe.”
For eight minutes, Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s
neck. And it was in sad recognition of that, that the crowd knelt in that Pheonixville parking lot, all completely silent.
As is increasingly the case in an era of ubiquitous camera phones, Floyd’s death was captured on camera and the image has been burned into the minds of millions.
All four officers involved have been fired and all four now face criminal charges, but that has not stopped the outrage which has flared up across the country, and across the world.
Once the kneeling was over, so too was the silence.
Using call-and-response chants with phrases like “say his name: George Floyd; how long? Eight minutes” the crowd moved onto Bridge Street, which police had closed to traffic.
As the march moved up to Reeves Park, it seemed to take on more people and it stretched at least three blocks as it wound its way up the hill in humid, 80-degree heat.
Among those out to march were many members of the school community, including Superintendent Alan Fegley, and students could be heard shouting out the names of favorite teachers they had not seen in weeks due to the coronavirus-imposed school closure.
Instructional aide Carolyn Phillips, wearing a bright red sign that read “a change has to come, justice for George Floyd,” said she came out to “support the students.”
“I’m tired of all the killing,” she said.
Also on hand was Phoenixville High School Principal Craig Parkinson, who said he too wanted to support the students, but also “I want to be part of the much-needed change in this country.”
Change may indeed come if the energy and passion the students showed Friday is what’s needed.
“We need to break the silence and the violence of 400 years of oppression,” Hodges told the crowd.
“People get upset when we say ‘black lives matter’ and they think its a
The crowd responded warmly to the student speakers on the stage in Phoenxiville’s Reeves Park during Friday’s rally. black and white issue, or a black and blue issue, but we all bleed the same color,” she said.
“We can’t go buy Skittles,” Hodges said in reference to the death of Trayvon Martin, who was killed in Florida in 2012 by George Zimmerman.
“We can’t sleep in our beds,” she said in reference to Breonna Taylor, an EMT who was shot in her own Kentucky apartment when police mistakenly burst in on a drug raid.
“And we can’t go to the store,” Hodges said in reference to Floyd’s destination when he was stopped and killed by police.
“What we can’t do is be silent,” Hodges said.
Rachel Asalton, a white student who joined the other speakers on the stage, quoted Muhammed Ali and said “it is a privilege to learn about racism rather than experience it your whole life.”
“Your fight,” Asalton said, “is my fight.”
Beasley, who struggled to contain his emotions and confessed to not being a fan of public speaking, was supported by the crowd who said “take your time” and “you’ve got this.”
He said his parents did not give him the “birds and the bees talk,” but rather had to school him on how to prevent being killed by police when confronted.
He fell to his knees to show the position a friend of his had taken at a recent rally. With her hands up “she said don’t shoot officer, don’t shoot.”
She was shot in the face with a rubber bullet.
“When you are black in America, you are seen as a threat,” Beasley said.
“The police are with us because they want to be part of this.” — Isaiah Pelzer, Phoenixville High School student and organize
“We want them to be heard. This is what it’s all about.” — Phoenixville Police Chief Thomas Sjostrom