EDMONTON PROTESTS
Support surges for end to racism
EDMONTON Thousands of people attended a protest triggered by the death of George Floyd, a black man, in the custody of Minneapolis police.
A Fight for Equity protest on Friday was the largest in-person gathering in Edmonton this week with people peacefully protesting at the Alberta legislature. Early estimates pegged the size of the crowd at more than 10,000 people.
Supporters gathered with signs and masks, covering the legislature grounds as far as the eye could see, spilling onto the ring-road around the building and up on the hillside. They listened, cheered and chanted as speakers took to the stage.
Sierra Jamerson, a singer and solo vocal artist, was one of the opening speakers. She switched between singing and speaking in prayer. She said her ancestors told her to attend Friday’s protest.
“My ancestors came to Canada in 1910 from Texas and Oklahoma, and they created the black settlement of Amber Valley, in Athabasca. There were only one or two settlements that made it because by 1911, they had faced so much racism and persecution in the Prairies and so much widespread opposition to their being there, that the federal government banned black immigration until the ’60s,” Jamerson said after her speech.
“During the time of the Underground Railroad, Canada was supposed to be the place of freedom, but it was not. There were Klansmen, and attacks and burning down of homes and farms, and they lived in fear the same way that they did down in the Deep South.
“And so everything that I do follows the arrow of what will bring healing and what will bring honour to the people that came before me. And that will bring a spiritual understanding and support to the people in my community and the children that will come after us.”
George Floyd was killed May 25 when a Minneapolis police officer held a knee to his neck during an arrest. Derek Chauvin, J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao were responding to a call about a counterfeit $20 bill when they arrested Floyd. In a troubling video, Chauvin can be seen with his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes. Floyd can be heard saying “I can’t breathe” repeatedly.
All four officers have been charged in his death.
Dulu, a spokeswoman for the rally organizers, who did not give her name for fear of retribution, said she was happy so many came to speak out against anti-black racism, and wanted people to know young black people, many of them from the LGBTQ community, made it happen. “We want change. We want the police to recognize what’s happening and see the power that we have,” she said.
Alana, also with the group, said it was especially encouraging because of “the deep history of anti-black racism in this country.”
“What I really want from this is action. Action in ways that isn’t centring yourself, that doesn’t include fragility, action when you know to take a step back and process your emotions and not project it onto the people who have known about anti-blackness their whole lives.”
“Also know that although this may be new to you, this struggle, this historical oppression, isn’t new to black people, and isn’t new to the world. It’s been situated through historical and even ongoing perpetual structures that need to be challenged and looked at.”
An hour into Friday’s protest people were still streaming into the legislature grounds. There was also a line up of honking cars down 106 Street. White Xs were painted into the grass for physical distancing and volunteers passed out sanitizer, masks and water bottles.
A speaker asked the crowd to take a knee and they followed, raising fists in the air. After a moment of silence, they chanted “Black lives matter.”
Vehicles passing by honked their horns. Organizers had encouraged people who could not come due to COVID-19 to join a caravan from the Glenora Building to the Re/ Max Field.
Minutes before the rally began, a white man in the crowd with a bicycle glanced toward an approaching black family, his eyes fixated on a child in a stroller. As the family got closer, he lunged toward them, reaching down to touch the back of the stroller.
The woman flinched and tried to move away. The man moved closer and as he touched the back of the stroller his intention became clear: he had noticed the stroller’s latch was unlocked. He clicked it into place to keep the child safe.
— With files from Lauren Boothby and Sarah Bugden