Progressive News, Opinion, and Analysis
In the most heated NBC 10 Wingmen segment in some time, Rob Paquin and I debate the Ferguson protests with Bill Rappleye.
News, Weather and Classifieds for Southern New England
If the protesters in Tuesday night’s Ferguson March in Providence hadn’t marched out onto the highway and blocked traffic, the most confrontational and controversial action of the evening would have been the burning of an American Flag in front of the Providence Public Safety Complex. After the flag starts burning, protesters noticed a silhouetted figure in the windows of the complex, raising a fist in solidarity. Then, towards the end of the video, as the protesters try to decide what they should do next, someone suggests blocking the highway…
Here’s a fuller video, which includes the protesters arriving at the Providence Public safety Complex to see a phalanx of police officers guarding the entrance.
Attentive RI Future readers might recognize Adrienne Jones in this clip. Adrienne was fired from the Providence Hilton for her efforts in trying to organize a union there.
And for people who enjoy 70 minutes of jittery, random, nonstop imagery: Here’s all 71 minutes of the actual march, from the beginning, right up to the marches entry into the Public Safety Complex parking lot.
This was the most complete coverage you’re likely to find, anywhere.
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Providence Public Safety Commissioner Stephen Pare said there were between 400 and 600 protesters in Providence last night, and “100 or so” who occupied and shut down Interstate 95 southbound for between 15 and 30 minutes.
“When we started getting reports they were heading down the the highway,” he said, “we had some concerns about those efforts. We were with the state police. Once we learned they were heading to the highway there were additional troopers who responded.”
There were 4 or 5 activists arrests by state police, he said, and two arrested by Providence police – which had more than 50 officers on duty prepared to respond to the incident.
In an wide-ranging interview he spoke about the dangers of shutting down an interstate, the John Prince assault accusation and the potential for Providence police officers to wear body cameras, which he supports.
Highway shutdown
John Prince
In September, unrelated to Ferguson protests in particular, DARE activist John Prince says Providence police officers prevented him from videoing them and took his camera. Pare avoided speaking about Prince’s complaint because it under investigation. But he did talk about how the investigation happened, and conceded the process leaves something to be desired.
Body cameras
Activists in Providence want police officers to wear body cameras. Pare says he supports the idea, and says within three to five years officers will wear body cameras as a matter of course, as they now have cameras in their vehicles. He says they often help police exonerate themselves.
More than 300 people (a conservative estimate, I think) marched in Providence Wednesday night to protest the verdict in Ferguson, MS that exonerated the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black man. Last night I photographed an emotional crowd filled with righteous anger, but it was a crowd that was, to my eyes, entirely nonviolent. Sure they were loud, they occupied space and they were confrontational, but they were peaceful.
There’s going to be a lot of discussion in the next few weeks about the protests in Providence held in the wake of the verdict of the grand jury in Ferguson, MS. There will be discussions about systemic racism, police profiling, protesting tactics, flag burning, highway blocking and the rising tide of a politicized youth movement with an agenda quite different from that of the previous generations.
But what of the voices of the protest? I can’t claim to have any special insights. I can only present what ten of the 400 to 500 protesters said that night, before the protest started. Think of me working here as a megaphone, amplifying their voices.
This is what Democracy looks like.
“I’m tired of turning on the news and seeing people get shot down for something that is not right…”
“This is a lesson for all of us in our community: Stop killing our people!”
“I’m here because it’s time for colonialism to end. It’s time to have an honest dialog about the history of the United States of America, about how it’s built on a system of injustice…”
“I’d just like to show respect to a few other names that are on the list of slain, young black men by police officers…”
“Young people, get into politics. Call your local officials. Let them know what troubles you. Then vote! Then, run for office….”
“That’s literal and metaphorical. We want to surround our youth with the protection they need to survive in this capitalist system…”
“The images the media is trying to portray of him [Michael Brown] is a total lie. I knew him. He was totally a gentle giant.”
“We’re all affected by this because we found out about it on social media. CNN’s not telling us all of it. We’re seeing it live, we’re seeing it on Instagram, we’re seeing it on Twitter…”
“We can change everything with this power that we have. We have new tools that they didn’t have the last time we had to do this, in the sixties. We have grandparents who are alive now who are saying, that this looks the same, but it’s in color…”
“I want to take this moment to talk about the statement ‘Black Lives Matter.’ When I heard this list of names being read out earlier, it was all black, cisgender men… It is crucial that we honor not just the black men who have been killed, but also the black women and girls…”
This is my take. I was there, this is what I heard and saw, but there were hundreds of perspectives at last night’s Ferguson Rally in Providence, so don’t think of mine as definitive. I’ll do more than one piece on this, but I think it makes sense to start near the end, with the protesters jumping over the fence and descending onto the highway, Route 95, where the protesters blocked southbound traffic for about twenty minutes.
After a long march, we found ourselves at the Providence Public Safety Complex, where police officers blocked the entrance, and the protesters proceeded to demonstrate outside. After doing chalk outlines on the pavement like those drawn around murder victims, and after burning an American Flag, (which would surely have been the most controversial moment of the night, had the protesters not taken the highway) there was a small moment of silence as the protesters tried to reach consensus as to what to do next.
Someone said, “We could block the highway.” It sounded like an afterthought.
The statement electrified the crowd.
Almost immediately the crowd dispersed, and a significant number of them, between 100 and 150 by my count, crossed the street towards the highway, jumped the fence, and descended onto the highway en masse.
I might have followed, but I was burdened with a backpack, a video camera on a tripod, and a still camera around my neck. Also, I wasn’t entirely sure I could climb back.
I saw the protesters successfully block southbound traffic, and watched as they attempted to block northbound traffic as well. A state police car appeared almost immediately, and as more and more troopers arrived, they managed to keep the north bound lane clear. I watched from a patch of grass that runs along the outside of the fenced highway, about the width of a sidewalk.
A police officer unsuccessfully tried to tell those on the legal side of the fence that they had to move away, but I held my place, because I was trying to get the incident on video. I was warned several times that I would be arrested if I stayed where I was, but I was breaking no laws. (and was not arrested.)
Down below, on the highway, the protesters were confronting the police. I was told the following by a person who was down there, a white male:
“It was crazy. There were like five of us, three white guys and two black guys. The police, when they came at us, went right after the black guys. They weren’t interested in me at all, and I was right there.”
The police started to make arrests. I’m not sure what the criteria for who was arrested and who was not. I saw at least two people being arrested, but I was constantly being jostled by fence hoppers (now passing both ways) and being pushed from behind by police officers attempting to clear the fence, so I apologize for the shaky footage.
Soon the police corralled the protesters off the highway and then shouted and yelled for them to get on the other side of the fence or be arrested. The police officers were either very angry or pretending to be. There was only a certain speed at which that many people could hop over a fence, and screams and threats were not going to make it go any faster.
After the highway was cleared, I learned that six people had been arrested – four by state troopers and two by Providence police. One young man wearing a white hoodie, was pointed out by the police, who proceeded to surround and restrain him, over the protests of the crowd. The officers put the young man into the back of a police cruiser, but the opposite window of the cruiser was rolled down, so the man jumped through the window and made a run for it.
Here are my photos:
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@creativemedia7 tweeted out this amazing collection of protests across America tonight calling attention to racial injustice in light of a Ferguson grand jury decision not to charge a police officer for killing Michael Brown.
