New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Advocates: Protests could happen in CT
Concern after riots prompted by Minneapolis death
Protests, some violent, have erupted in Minnesota over the death of George Floyd — and some in Connecticut say it could very easily happen here.
“Ferguson wasn’t Ferguson until it was,” said New Haven state Sen. Gary Winfield. “To say, ‘I’m not like them’ means that you are lucky. It doesn’t mean it’s not possible.”
Floyd, a black man, was arrested by police in Minneapolis. A widely shared video showed Floyd facedown on the street, one officer with his knee on the
man’s neck.
“I cannot breathe,” Floyd says in the video. “It’ll kill me, I can’t breathe.”
Kerry Ellington, a community organizer, said she’s been working with a collection of grassroots organizations to count people who’ve died in police-related incidents Connecticut.
Ellington said they’ve counted at least 30 such incidents — including shootings, deaths in custody and death and injury sustained during highspeed chases — in the last three years,
“People are severely misinformed. If you’ve been paying any attention to the news in these last two years you would have seen rampant police violence across the state of Connecticut,” Ellington said. “It doesn’t always get reported so communities and families suffer alone.”
Protests in Minneapolis began Wednesday night and boiled into Thursday. Police fired tear gas into the crowd as stores were set on fire and looted.
“At some point, people speak back in the same language in which they’re spoken to,” Winfield said.
When asked why similar protests hadn’t sparked in Connecticut, Ellington said they nearly did, when police opened fire on a car in Hamden injuring a couple, Stephanie Washington and Paul Witherspoon.
“I think people were equally as enraged. I wouldn’t say that we are any different,” she said. “I would say that we are part of this thread, the network of resistance against police forces that are inherently violent.”
“This is not a matter of one bad apple, this is a systemic problem,” she said.
Winfield compared Floyd’s death to that of 19-year-old Mubarak Soulemane, who was killed by police in West Haven earlier this year, and other incidents of police-involved violence in Connecticut.
“From our perspective, it’s acceptable to do these things and it should not be,” Winfield said.
Ashley Blount, who works with advocacy organization CTCORE-Organize Now!, agreed.
“This hits very close,” she said. “There have been events of police brutality in the state of Connecticut. There are so many stories. We can go on and on with the hashtags. It probably has happened — we just don’t know about it. We haven’t seen it on camera.”
Blount said it’s doubly difficult for African-American communities considering the coronavirus epidemic which, by some estimates, is affecting black families at three times the rate of their white neighbors.
“Even amidst a global pandemic, black folks still have to shout, ‘Black lives matter,’ ” Blount said.
For Blount, it comes down to trauma — not just for the victims of violence but for the people watching it on television.
“To see violence invoked on someone who looks like you, time and time again, black folks are in need of a deep healing,” she said. “This is trauma.”
“The rage and the anger that is now coming from our community is necessary,” she said.
When asked if Floyd’s death — coupled with the effects of COVID-19 on black communities — would be a watershed moment, encouraging some kind of change, Ellington said no.
“It’s the same moment we are retraumatized with over and over again,” she said. “Unfortunately, this is not one moment. We have these moments continuously throughout our lives.”