Churches part of 6th day of rallies against injustice
The sixth evening of protests in Phoenix sparked by the killing of George Floyd played out in two parts: one quiet, one loud.
A march put together by three Phoenix churches drew a crowd of about 1,000, including many pastors, to a downtown church. The crowd was led on a walk for less than half a mile to the Arizona Capitol for a public prayer.
About a mile away, groups of protesters gathered outside Phoenix City Hall, swelling to a crowd of thousands that marched through downtown Phoenix for hours.
While one event focused on prayer and reflection, leaving some in tears, the other culminated in a moment in which a young black man lay down on the ground at the feet of a line of Phoenix police in riot gear and screamed “I can’t breathe” repeatedly for minutes.
Both protests remained peaceful and dispersed shortly after the 8 p.m. curfew.
And for the second night since the protests began, officers made no arrests, according to spokeswoman Sgt. Mercedes Fortune. The lack of arrests were a change from Saturday and Sunday, when Phoenix police declared the protests an unlawful assembly and arrested more than 300 people.
Prayer and tears at the Capitol
Caitlin Clifford arrived at the churchled protest holding two signs she had drawn herself, one saying “Justice for Big Floyd” around a color drawing of Floyd surrounded by flowers, and another saying “Run with Maud,” showing a colorful Ahmaud Arbery smiling in a tuxedo.
She said the church-led protest was the first one she had attended out of the past six evenings.
“I was scared. I was scared of getting arrested. I was scared of being hurt. So I haven’t participated,” she said. “Just with everything I’ve seen on the news, with cops firing rubber bullets at people, I was afraid. And so I wanted to stay somewhere that I thought would be more peaceful and that the police would be a little more respectful.”
Few police officers were in sight during the march, when protesters sang “Amazing Grace,” or near the Capitol, where someone had previously set up a small black box, a microphone and speakers for the church leaders who spoke.
The protest at the Capitol was organized by three Phoenix churches — Roosevelt Community Church, Redemption Church Alhambra and All Souls Phoenix — which have many black and Latino attendees, said Dennae Pierre, whose husband, Vermon
Pierre, is a pastor at Roosevelt Community Church.
“Our hearts are broken over the continued violence against black lives,” Pierre said.
By late Tuesday afternoon, the Capitol had been surrounded by fences, razor wire and bollards. Protesters gathered along the Capitol’s lawn and on Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza.
“Our state is a very politically divided state and we have a history at times that the church is part of that, the evangelicals are a part of contributing to saying hurtful things against people of color, dismissing pain towards both African Americans and our Hispanic community,” Pierre said.
“And I think there’s just been this growing desire to be like, you know what — we are people of faith and we identify with a God who came near the suffering and broken and those in the margins and we really feel like this is a moment in which it’s important to say we’re going to be different,” she continued. “We’re committed to coming together and working towards real, not just like personal sorrow and change, but institutional.”
Pierre said organizers informed law enforcement ahead of time about their plans to protest on Tuesday. Police appeared to escort the group to the Capitol and no officer was seen in riot gear, which was worn by most police during other protests in the last week.
“It is not an anti-police movement, it is anti-police brutality,” Pierre said. “And as people are kind of critiquing the rioting that’s happening, we want to make sure that we communicate that peaceful protest is a significant part of change.”
The church-led protest included moments of softness and reflection. Melissa
“We are people of faith and we identify with a God who came near the suffering and broken and those in the margins and we really feel like this is a moment in which it’s important to say we’re going to be different. We’re committed to coming together and working towards real, not just like personal sorrow and change, but institutional.”
Dennae Pierre
Hubert, deacon and director of community outreach with Redemption Church Alhambra, asked the crowd in front of the Capitol to kneel while she read the names of recent victims of police violence. She began with Dion Johnson and finished with Floyd.
“We hear you, George, we hear your cry; you can’t breathe, we can’t breathe, one part suffers, we all suffer,” she said, while most attendees got down on their knees and a couple cried.
Thousands march through streets of downtown Phoenix
More than 1,000 people met outside Phoenix City Hall and began marching through downtown Phoenix by 5:30 p.m. People kept joining, with the crowd swelling to fill Jefferson Street and Central Avenue for an entire block.
On many corners, people handed out water bottles to the crowd — it was 106 degrees as of 6 p.m.
Jazlyn Geiger, a 23-year-old Phoenix resident, used a megaphone to lead and hype up the crowd throughout the march.
“What I would like to see happen within Arizona is the man who did shoot Dion Johnson dead is held accountable, he is arrested, and we see him on trial. Not only that but reopen every case everybody was wrongly convicted and murdered,” she said. “Change starts with going backwards to right every wrong.”
Johnson, a 28-year-old black man, was shot and killed by an Arizona Department of Public Safety trooper in his vehicle on Loop 101 at Tatum Boulevard on May 25. The trooper was not wearing a camera.
Eventually, the crowd stopped near Phoenix Police Department headquarters. Some kneeled in front of a line of officers in riot gear and chanted “Take a knee,” but the moment never came. It had happened Monday night, when three officers kneeled after a woman negotiated that, if they did, protesters would go home.
A man lay at the feet of officers in riot gear outside of police headquarters.
People chanted, “Take off your riot gear, I don’t see no riot here,” to the line of officers, while other police could be seen looking down from the roof of the headquarters.
Hundreds were still in the streets as the clock struck 8 p.m. on the state’s third night of curfew. They quickly dispersed. Police vehicles dotted nearly every corner and officers directed traffic for people to go home.