Approximately 150 protesters peacefully marched down Greenwich Avenue to the county police station on Sunday, turning the heads of several people who were eating at restaurants and waiting in line to enter shops, with their signs and chants of “no justice, no peace” and “Black Lives Matter.”
The protest, sparked by the death of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white police officer, is one of many that sprung up across the nation, some turning into riots. The group that organized this protest — Burst their Bubble — was founded last week in response to Greenwich’s June 1 protest over George Floyd’s death, Burst their Bubble Co-Founder Chelsea Rose said.
The march started at the Greenwich Town Hall and stopped for approximately an hour in front of the local police station, where organizers invited the protesters to share their thoughts about black americans’ struggles using a shared megaphone.
“Stay mad at the system until it changes, and don’t let this be the end,” Protester Erin Curtis said to the crowd. “Because even though you might have the privilege to forget about this in a few weeks or a few months, your black brothers and sisters don’t share that privilege with you.”
The protesters who spoke, using a shared megaphone, touched on systemic bias at-large in America, the need to engage in the legislative process, and keeping the movement for racial justice alive.
Another protester who spoke, Elijah Manning, criticized people who don’t believe in the systemic oppression of black people, who say they “don’t see race,” or who take issues with the George Floyd protests. Manning later pointed to redlining and gentrification as examples of systemic oppression.
“What you choose not to see, or choose not to hear are the yells that have been happening for generations on the injustices that have been holding communities down,” Manning said to the crowd.
“All you’ve done is deflected who we are as people, the struggle that we have continued to do our best to overcome, our fight to survive and thrive and be seen and heard,” Manning said. “We tell you how we feel. But you don’t care enough [or] believe it’s valid we should feel that way when we tell you.”
Chauncey Rose shared a personal story about living in Greenwich, in front of the Town Hall to kickstart the protest before they started marching.
After a fight with a bully, Chauncey, who came from “the streets” in the Bronx, said he realized he had to adjust to life in Greenwich. However, Chauncey said assimilating to Greenwich by “acting white” was oppressive, and stemmed from a lack of understanding between people.
“You have to talk a certain way. You have to use words that they use. You have to assimilate. That’s a survival tactic, and when we talk about systemic racism and white oppression, that’s oppressive. You can’t be you. You can’t say something a certain way without it being taken out of context because they don’t know you, nor do they care. That’s how I felt as a kid,” Chauncey Rose said, to the crowd’s applause.
Protesters who spoke in front of the police building also touched on the need to donate to civil rights groups, to call out their friend’s and family’s racist speech and to divert funding away from the police towards public schools and social programs.
“When people say defund the police department, we are not talking about getting rid of the police department,” Protester Faith Sweeney said to the crowd. “We are talking about building the social and emotional wellbeing of people in the community. And when you feel policed, that is not a feeling of stable emotion.”
After no other protester came up to speak, the crowd marched down the rest of the Avenue and circled back to Town Hall by going up Sound View Drive, continuing to shout chants and display their signs. The police escorted the group and directed traffic accordingly for the entirety of the march.
Aimee Booth, who graduated from Greenwich Academy in 2018, attended the March with her sister. Booth said she wanted to march sooner, but hadn’t been able to do so until today.
“I think it’s really grabbed the attention of people not participating in the protest … I think it’s really brave of [the organizers] to do it,” Booth said.
Stephen Boe, a student at Bowdoin College, stood up in front of the protesters at the police building and recited a spoken word poem reflecting on black americans’ struggles.
“And it is in this moment we must focus on moving as one, because one without the other is as good as none. So let’s stop being ignorant and face the fact as it is, that too many black people have died as just kids,” Boe said. “Black Lives Matter, damn right that’s a fact, so who was it that decided to put a target on their back?”
