ONGOING OUTRAGE: ‘JOE MUST GO’
Crowd of protesters calls for Gale to resign
NORRISTOWN » Loudly chanting “Joe Must Go,” about 200 Montgomery County residents attended a rally to denounce comments Republican county Commissioner Joseph C. Gale made about the Black Lives Matter movement and protests in Philadelphia and called for his resignation.
“We’ve been dealing with racism in Montgomery County for many years. It is time that we demand change and it starts within the system. We can’t fight racism if we’re faced with a commissioner who is showing and displaying that he does not care,” said Marlena Green, of Norristown, who helped organize the rally held outside the county courthouse Thursday. “We’re here to show that we can be united as one and demand that we have some type of change.”
The diverse group of residents listened to multiple speakers and peacefully carried signs that read “White Supremacy Is A Sin, Black Lives Matter,” “Racists Must Resign,” “Love One Another” and “No One Should Have to Live In Fear of Those Sworn To Protect Them.”
“We are here to bring the voices of our diverse Montgomery County community
together. We need institutional and systemic change now,” said organizer Carmina Taylor, a lifelong community activist and former president of NAACP Ambler Branch. “We’re here to foster positivity and talk about how we want to keep Montgomery County accountable. That’s the bottom line.”
The rally was held at the same time numerous residents called for Gale’s resignation at a county commissioners’ board meeting. Gale refused to step down and has said he will not be “bullied” for exercising his First Amendment rights.
Participants traveled to Norristown from many parts of Montgomery County and the region to make clear they did not agree with statements Gale made earlier in the week about protests occurring in Philadelphia in the wake of the death of a handcuffed African-American man, George Floyd, while in the custody of Minneapolis Police.
In a June 1 statement entitled “Riots & Looting In Philadelphia,” written on county letterhead, Gale, the lone Republican on the three-member commissioners’ board, compared the Black Lives Matter group to “far-left radical enemy combatants.”
“In fact, nearly every major city across the nation was ravaged by looting, violence and arson. The perpetrators of this urban domestic terror are radical left-wing hate groups like Black Lives Matter,” Gale wrote.
“This organization, in particular, screams racism not to expose bigotry and injustice, but to justify the lawless destruction of our cities and surrounding communities. Their objective is to unleash chaos and mayhem without consequence by falsely claiming they, in fact, are the victims,” Gale continued.
Madeline McCoy, Kristin Marks, and Chris Chang, of North Wales, and Deanna Bongarzone, of Warrington, called Gale’s comments “insensitive.”
“I’m just here to tell him that this isn’t right,” McCoy said as the group of friends headed to the rally.
“I came out today because there’s been years and years of injustice, especially in the Norristown community. I think with the Black Lives Matter movement it’s a time to really recognize what’s been going on for so long and bring a change,” Marks said.
“I’m just here to finish the movement that MLK started,” Bongarzone added, referring to Martin Luther King Jr.
“I wanted to show solidarity and support,” Chang said.
Danielle Kwock Phillips, of Temple Law National Lawyers Guild, who also helped organize the rally, was amazed at how many people showed up with such short notice.
“This was planned in basically two days. I’m amazed at the diversity that we see. I’m just very impressed by Montgomery County, all types of residents from all parts of it coming out today,” Phillips said.
On numerous occasions during the two-hour rally, protesters chanted “Black Lives Matter.”
One speaker urged Gale to educate himself about the “actual principles of BLM” and said it’s not too late for him to change.
“Your actions mean that an unprecedented groundswell will remove you from office in two years. But there’s worse consequences than losing an election, it’s losing your soul,” the speaker appeared to address Gale directly.
Phillips said Gale’s comments are “very much connected to issues of systemic racism that we see in Montgomery County.”
“Joseph Gale represents the worst of that,” Phillips said.
“Though many people are here to simply get him fired, we are also here to point out what has been going on since they fired the two chief public defenders and what goes on in terms of racist inequalities in the courts and in the justice system,” added Phillips, referring to the county’s controversial February firings of public defenders Dean Beer and Keisha Hudson.
Green said the fact Gale wrote his comments under county letterhead “shows that Montgomery County is not for us.”
“So change has to start today with him. We’re demanding that he resign,” Green said.
Gale’s fellow county commissioners, Valerie Arkoosh and Kenneth E. Lawrence Jr., the Democratic majority on the board, have also denounced Gale’s remarks and stressed that Gale’s statement did not reflect the sentiments or opinions of the majority of the commissioners or of county government.
Arkoosh and Lawrence censured Gale for his comments during the commissioners’ board meeting on Thursday.