Local demonstrators share what they saw
There are the photos showing water and milk being used to douse the effects of pepper spray in Bridgeport, the tense scene outside the New Haven Police Department and the footage showing how thousands shut down Connecticut highways this weekend.
Here are the stories of a few of the thousands in Connecticut who joined the nationwide demonstrations in response to the death of George Floyd, who was killed while being arrested by police in Minneapolis last week.
Bridgeport: ‘I can’t even put it into words’
In the photograph, the man’s eyes are closed and his mouth open as hands of people just out of frame pour water over his face, running down his bare chest in rivulets.
Moments before, the man had been peppersprayed in the eyes as a crowd of around a dozen
protesters tried to enter Bridgeport police headquarters on Congress Street Saturday afternoon, recalled Danielle Wedderburn.
“They weren’t crying,” Wedderburn said, reached by phone on Monday. “They were actually pretty calm.”
Protesters used bottles of milk and water to rinse their eyes. “I did this for you guys,” she recalled one of the men who had been hit told her. “Show people what’s happening.”
“You don’t want to make anyone feel like a victim, you don’t want to exploit anyone ... but I think because of the situation at hand, people said ‘no, look, take pictures. make sure this gets out,’” Wedderburn said.
On Saturday, a spokesman for the city of Bridgeport acknowledged police used pepper spray after protesters broke through barricades and entered police headquarters.
“Protesters forcefully moved farther into the facility when BPD deployed pepper spray to deter breach into headquarters,” said Scott Appleby, the city’s director of emergency communications and emergency management. “The use of this tactic was announced twice with the request for protesters to exit before being disseminated. There were no serious injuries caused by the spray and the individuals left the facility to return to the demonstration outside.”
The 25-year-old freelance photographer said the protest started peacefully when she arrived at McLevy Green around 11 a.m. that morning.
But by the time marchers protesting for Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis after an officer knelt on his neck for several minutes, made their way to police headquarters on Congress Street, tensions boiled over.
Protesters demanded Chief Armando Perez come out and speak to them — which he did, Wedderburn recalled, but after around five minutes of shouting from the crowd, Perez walked back into the building.
“Once he went back inside, that definitely sparked some anger in a lot of them,” she said. A group of 10 to 15 protesters made their way inside the station through a barricade set up by police. The protesters outside ran, and when they regrouped, learned several men had been pepper-sprayed, Wedderburn said.
Later, she picked through the more than 500 photographs she had taken of the protest, including those documenting the aftermath outside the police station. “It was really an overwhelming thing,” she said.
She converted the photos to black and white because she felt it captured “rawness” of what transpired, and later published them on her Twitter and Instagram.
“I feel ... I can’t even put it into words,” she said. “We’re documenting history and it’s really important to capture that.”
New Haven: ‘I needed to find joy’
Karen DuBois-Walton, executive director of Elm City Communities (the New Haven Housing Authority), said marching Sunday with her husband and two sons was “cathartic and mobilizing and energizing … heartbreaking and uplifting” after the “rage and anxiety” she felt watching the video of Floyd’s killing.
“It was just amazing to see how it evolved from posts to become this amazing showing of thousands of people, all aspects of the Greater New Haven community walking and sending a powerful message,” she said Monday.
“Certainly, every black mother’s fear … is getting the call” that her husband or sons are the victims of police brutality,” she said. Joining her on the march were her husband, Kevin Walton Sr., and their sons, Kevin Eric Walton, 24, and Kaleb Walton, 20.
“I really felt like I needed to find joy. I needed to find connection,” DuBois-Walton said, after Floyd’s “lynching” by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, with three other officers standing by.
“This was a moment when we walked as four among other people,” she said. “What came forth was such generosity. People getting out of their cars, people honking in support,” despite not being able to get to their destinations.
She said she hoped Mayor Justin Elicker would look at the use of pepper spray against protesters at the police station Sunday night as “an opportunity for reflection” about the use of force and “what police are allowed to do, empowered to do. We need to chart a new path.”
When DuBois-Walton was a Yale University student in the 1980s, students occupied Beinecke Plaza in protest against apartheid in South Africa and forced their way into Woodbridge Hall, where the Yale president’s office is located, tactics like using pepper spray were not employed.
Elite Yale students are treated differently than those with “black and brown bodies,” she said.
“What if they had come into the lobby” of the police station? she asked. “What if they had sat there all night? It’s a public building” with no access beyond the lobby. “We can redefine how we engage in communities,” she said, because use of police force is a continuum and the death of a person of color “can’t happen here until it happens here.”
Stamford: ‘There was passion and tension’
U.S. Rep. Matt Blumenthal, D-Stamford, was among those who walked from Harbor Point to the Stamford police station on Sunday. Blumenthal said he was “unsure what would happen,” but felt an “obligation” to participate.
“As we walked Washington Boulevard, passing cars honked in support,” Blumenthal said. “The organizers were clear the march was an open platform, and made space for women of color and young people to speak. There was passion and tension.”
Blumenthal was particularly moved when he saw Police Chief Timothy Shaw kneel with the protesters outside the department’s headquarters.
“The moment Chief Shaw took a knee with protesters was among the most powerful I’ve witnessed in politics,” he said. “The march was about fellowship, healing, and advocacy. It made me proud of our community. I hope it will set the tone for the conversations and work to come.”
Shelton: ‘I’ve sat back silently for long enough’
Chants of “enough is enough” and “Black Lives Matter” filled the air around Huntington Green Sunday as dozens joined in what has become nationwide protests of Floyd’s death.
Longtime Shelton resident Michel’le Sanders said she helped organized the protest, which came together in less than 24 hours, because, as someone who grew up in Shelton, she has experienced racism in her own hometown.
“I’ve experienced it at school, from strangers and just once from a police officer. I’ve sat back silently for long enough,” Sanders said. “They say change starts at home, and this is my home, so it’s where I felt I could help start to make a change. Not all people in Shelton are racist, and it isn’t a vast majority, but the ones who are racist make it bad enough.”
Saunders, her husband Breon at her side, joined more than 120 people for the Shelton rally. The protesters, most donning face masks, gathered in the Green for speeches, then moved along the grassy area near the road, holding signs and chanting to the sounds of people honking their horns in support.
“I can’t thank them enough for supporting the cause because ‘Black Lives Matter’ and the statement isn’t that they matter more or only black lives matter, but that black lives matter also,” Sanders said.
New Haven: “We’ve seen time and again people being brutalized”
Kerry Ellington’s community organizing isn’t her 9-to-5, it’s her life as a black woman.
Alongside her day job at New Haven Legal Assistance, Ellington uses her connections in the community to help lead movements such as Sunday’s protest against police violence on black people.
“There was a mass of people who wanted to take action in this moment not just for George Floyd,” Ellington said. Floyd was a black man killed by Minneapolis police May 25.
“While we’re in solidarity with George Floyd and the national movement, and this transformative moment, we also have police violence and George Floyd every day in Connecticut. Our point was to lift that up. It wasn’t just a protest. This was about addressing the culture of policing and working to dismantle that.”
Ellington said the crowd came with demands specific to Connecticut and New Haven related to incidents of police force on black people.
At one point in the protest New Haven police officer pepper sprayed participants, including Ellington, after they tried move past the line of officers to enter the building.
“I think we needed to see that reality yesterday,” Ellington said. “New Haveners and people across the globe needed to see the city that brands itself as embracing community policing and peaceful protests, and we’ve seen time and again people being brutalized. Yesterday was symbolic. It became less about our demands and more about our residents who should be able to come, enter a public building, to speak to their mayor and not be treated as if we’re not his constituents.”
Ellington said being sprayed became the moment of the day that captured their reason for protesting in the first place.
“The momentous moment symbolized and signified everything we’ve been suffering as community under policing in the state,” she said.
Ellington started organizing first on issues of inequality for black and brown students in New Haven schools. She was motivated to move into social justice work after a close friend was shot by police.
“I’ve never been paid to do this,” she said. “It’s a grassroots effort. It’s a true community collective from relationships on the ground of people who have consistently shown up to protest against these issues.”
Ellington has worked with People Against Police Brutality, the Connecticut Bail Fund, Black Lives Matter New Haven, Hamden Action Now and other organizations on policing issues.
“We’re all doing this work collectively, but some of us take the charge on to do the work,” she said. “But I don’t look at it technically like work, because this is something people have to do to survive.”
Norwalk: Walk along I-95
Kadeem Roberts, a member of the Norwalk Common Council, joined the demonstrators who organized on Connecticut Avenue and walked to the police station, stopping traffic on Interstate 95 along the way.
“The experience (Sunday) was monumental,” he said. “It spoke volumes within the city of Norwalk and the United States of America. To see us actually go and protest peacefully and in solidarity with those affected by police brutality, it meant a lot. I’m African American and I know people that have been through this. I believe some cops need to be re-trained. Stuff like this should not happen. The people we believe to protect and serve us, we’re supposed to trust and we get nervous around them.”
New Haven: “I felt it was my duty”
Hamden Councilman Justin Farmer, D-5, stood in the front line of protesters at the New Haven Police Department on Sunday. He was pepper sprayed.
Farmer was all day at the protest for George Floyd and other black people killed by police. Down Church Street, onto the highway and eventually police headquarters, he stayed until around 12:30 a.m. after officers had gone inside the building.
“I felt it was my duty,” he said. “If anything would have happened I could use my position to help.” Farmer is running for state senate in the 17th district.
Farmer said policing issues have been pivotal to his community activism as a man of color with a movement disorder — Tourette’s.
“If people want to sit on the sidewalk all night let them do it,” he said. “If people are frustrated let them do it. But when police are receiving these people’s stories behind a face and riot shield, I don’t see how that message can get through.”
Late in the evening, some of the officers pulled back the body shields and several officers were talking with protest participants.
“It was the police standing down to a situation they shouldn’t have to stand up to,” Farmer said. “Not everything is a threat. You can protect the community by listening.”
Protest observers criticized the crowd for gathering in such large numbers during the coronavirus pandemic, but Farmer said Sunday’s protests were as much about the pandemic as it was about racism in the country.
“The message was if you only care about only some of us, you care about none of us and when we say no one is safe until we (black people) feel safe, even though it might seem like a threat, it’s not and with COVID-19 you seen why it’s true.”
Black residents and other people of color have been disparately effected by the coronavirus pandemic medically and socioeconomically.