Plus, he noted, he got a chance to speak face-to-face with law enforcement leaders from Louisiana, where he had only days before been incarcerated, a brush with the law he described as “unpleasant”. Both city leaders appeared from inside city hall to cheers and began trying to talk to the protesters. Spivey-Spinner asked. “It’s automatic, somebody will die tomorrow”. “And that’s not acceptable whether you like them or don’t like them”. Clearly, confronting the cops with a hostile attitude hasn’t been helping.
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Spivey-Spinner said the current breakdown in race relations with police comes out of fear. “And so with any group there’s going to be situations, challenges, things that a person won’t agree with, but I think it’s more important to look at the whole rather than the individual”. “Everybody wants to go home at night so I think some trust needs to be built”.
Police say they will be well resourced and prepared to act if the rally turns violent. “You can’t except somebody from Solvay to come and work on the north side when they know nothing about our neighborhoods”. We are Americans, not white Americans, not black Americans, not brown Americans, and if we don’t wake up there will be No Americans.
At the end of the rally, the group formed a circle and several Elkton police officers, including Chief Matthew Donnelly held hands while Brown spoke.
“When I say all lives, I mean police lives, the civilian lives, our future lives, the lives that we’re living today”, she said. “But the America I know – the America I saw this week – is just not as divided as some folks try to insist”.
These demands were the basis of what turned a peaceful protest into a disruptive one.
“Not just these last three shootings, but this has been going on for years and people are just now beginning to record them”.
Kathy Watson, an Elkton resident, said she came to the protest because her two daughters wanted to participate and she wanted to make sure they were OK.
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Protesters say they hope that kind of partnership and unity with police spreads across the country.
