Gov. Gary Herbert denounced the death of George Floyd as “brutal and inhumane” on Thursday in a joint statement issued alongside the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Human Rights Commission and the Multicultural Commission.
Herbert called the two commissions in for an emergency meeting Wednesday and at one point was brought to tears.
The statement called for taking an active role in eradicating racism. Protesters asked for the same thing as hundreds gathered Thursday afternoon during the first of two rallies planned for Capitol Hill.
“We are here to make the necessary call for us all to work together, to help one another, to listen intentionally to those who feel unheard, to be braver and better, to create the solution for such a time as this, and commit to eradicate racism from our thoughts, words, deeds and actions,” the joint statement said.
It also gave some support to the protests happening across the country.
“We know that America’s ‘sin’ of racism is still too prevalent,” the joint statement said. “People from marginalized communities who suffer everyday indignities and who now march to protest the deeply rooted historical and systemic oppression are looking to each of us to say in words and actions, ‘no more.’”
Thursday afternoon’s protest over the death of George Floyd, a black man who was killed in Minnesota by a white police officer who knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes, is the fourth in four days in Salt Lake City. It is the fifth since Saturday, when demonstrators flipped a police car and another vehicle — belonging to a man who aimed a bow and arrow at demonstrators — and set them on fire. The man with the bow and arrow, Brandon E. McCormick of Taylorsville, was charged Thursday with three felonies and a misdemeanor.
The closure of the Capitol building pushed the early crowd across the street to the Salt Lake City Council Hall. Police were present while National Guard troops and vehicles were posted around the rest of Washington Square, including in front of the Capitol, which had been defaced by graffiti during Saturday night’s protest.
Addressing Thursday’s crowd, a speaker named Jenny, who declined to give her last name, noted the city had a cleanup plan in place before the protests ended.
“They already had a crew in place. In a matter of hours this building would be cleaned up. But how long is it going to take for the system to be cleaned up?" she asked. "What measures have been put in place to clean up the corruption?”
Muna Omar, an activist who started Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Utah, also spoke to the early crowd. She questioned the quick response of the government to quell the protests but its slow response to COVID-19. The coronavirus has affected minority communities in greater numbers than white communities.
“This moment is different though, because for once we’re ready to take this step together. I think we’re finally seeing that they do not have our backs and they do not give a [expletive] about black lives so we have to fight for them every single day,” Omar said.
“I just think that the way that they mishandled COVID-19, how they neglected us, there was zero support, zero leadership, 100,000 people died, 40 million are unemployed and that speaks volumes about where their priorities are,” she added. "How is it we were only given $1,200 but corporations received a mass bailout and the police budget exceeds $100 billion every year.”
Officers arrested 46 people, and 21 officers were treated for injuries, mostly heat-related, in Saturday’s protest. An additional 18 protesters were arrested in Monday’s protest, and one person was arrested by Utah Highway Patrol trooper for violating Salt Lake City’s 8 p.m. curfew during Tuesday’s demonstrations.
On Wednesday, after curfew was lifted, protesters stayed out until 10 p.m., and Salt Lake City police reported zero arrests.
Since Saturday, Salt Lake City’s protests have been almost entirely peaceful. Speakers at events have called for nonviolence and said those who damage property or are disrespectful should leave.
Diane Bahati even began Wednesday’s demonstration at City Hall by leading a chant of “peaceful protest.”
Ahead of Thursday’s protests at the Capitol, the American Civil Liberties Union and the local Black Lives Matter group released a statement condemning SLC Mayor Erin Mendenhall’s curfew. The groups said it quashed people’s rights to protest, hindered the change activist sought and scared people. They equated it to a suppression of free speech.
The statement specifically said black, brown, immigrant and refugee SLC residents feared retribution if they left their homes amid the curfew, even for approved reasons. It added the curfew was achieved using “police-state tactics such as emergency alerts and low-flying helicopters.”
They contrasted how SLC’s minority populations felt with how the “[r]esidents of the predominantly white or otherwise insulated neighborhoods of Salt Lake City felt free to violate the curfew order without risk of arrest and freely enjoyed the very public spaces that the curfew forbade."
As remedies, the groups suggested actions for Mendenhall and city administrators to take. They include: recognizing the Salt Lake City Police Department has a problem of racism, attending sensitivity training, focusing on police de-escalation, dropping all charges against protesters, overhauling the Police Civilian Review board, expanding voting access on Election Day, ceasing to criminalize the homeless community, removing and firing all officers who are accused of excessive force, banning using rubber bullets on protesters, and issuing an apology.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
from The Salt Lake Tribune https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/06/04/hundreds-protest-near/
Post a Comment