San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Marchers hit the streets in Alamo Heights to protest
About 300 unite to have voices heard in mostly white suburb
The ongoing protests against racial injustice wound their way to an unlikely area Saturday morning: Alamo Heights.
Roughly 300 marchers came out to peacefully voice their intolerance for social inequality and systematic oppression, joining the wave of protests that have swept the country in the last week or so.
Saturday’s march started at the Shops of Lincoln Heights and headed south a little more than a mile to Alamo Heights City Hall. Marchers later returned to the shopping center.
Participants were predominantly white, a reflection of the demographics of the city with more than 8,600 residents. Census figures show that less than 3 percent of the city’s population is black or African-American.
Shannon Mariotti, 43, a Southwestern University political science professor, organized the event in just a couple of days with a group of friends who live in Alamo Heights.
“We think you protest where you live; you march where you live,” said Mariotti, donning a red mask. “We didn’t want people in the Alamo Heights neighborhood to think that racial justice and racial injustice were only a concern for people who live downtown. It affects us all.
“There are a lot of white people who live in Alamo Heights; it’s a majority white community,” she added. “Part of what we wanted to do was just work against white silence and remind people that these days, being silent is its own kind of violence.” Mariotti brought her 6-yearold son Walter, who sported a New York Islanders cap and blue mask.
Organizers had a modest goal of letting residents who don’t
necessarily think about social justice see that many of their neighbors care about the issue.
Some drivers who passed the marchers tooted their horns in support. Residents came out along the route to film marchers with their cellphones.
Alamo Heights Police Chief Rick Pruitt estimated that 250 to 300 people participated in the march. Police cars blocked off the inside lane along Broadway to protect marchers, who largely remained on the sidewalks.
Before the march, Lexi Qaiyyim, a member of Young Ambitious Activists and a ubiquitous figure in the Black Lives Matter protests in San Antonio, led those gathered in the shopping center parking lot on a variety of call-andresponse chants for marchers to shout, including “no justice, no peace,” “hands up, don’t shoot,” and “say his name, George Floyd.”
Floyd’s May 25 death while in police custody in Minneapolis has sparked protests throughout the country.
“We really want to keep everything here completely peaceful,” said Qaiyyim, 24, who was working as a model and actor before the pandemic. “We don’t want to give anybody any reason to not support us.”
Bryan Stanton, 35, who is moving from Leon Springs to Alamo Heights, where he teaches theater at the high school, joined the march to support “all people.”
“Our country was founded and grown on racist ideas,” Stanton said. “It’s about time we get them changed. It’s about time everybody came together to support a group that has been downtrodden for years.”
At City Hall, East Central High School history teacher Anthony Sanchez, 25, led marchers in a chorus of “Happy Birthday” for Breonna Taylor, the Kentucky emergency medical worker who was shot and killed March 13 when officers burst into her home while serving a warrant in a narcotics case. She would have been 27 on Friday.
“She cannot be here with her family,” Sanchez said, speaking through a megaphone. “Her parents cannot hear that voice anymore. And that is a scar in this country that we cannot remove. But we want Breonna Taylor to know that we are here for her. We know she is watching. And because we know she is watching, I want everybody to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Breonna Taylor.”
When the tune ended, Sanchez said he wanted to make certain no more lives are taken.
“Are you going to let that happen?” he asked the crowd.
“No!” they shouted in unison.