The University’s Black Student Alliance held a Rally Against Police Brutality and Media Misrepresentation Friday in reaction to the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, where an allegedly unarmed black teen was fatally shot by a police officer. Students from many organizations on Grounds were present to support the cause.
Attendees walked around the Lawn, starting at Old Cabell Hall and stopping at various locations to hear different members of the BSA and other speakers talk about instances of police brutality and racism both in general and in Charlottesville specifically.
BSA Political Action Chair Aryn Frazier, a second-year College student, said the recent police brutality in Ferguson was not an isolated incident.
“What happened in Ferguson could happen anywhere,” Frazier said. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We’re here today to demand that it does not happen again.”
BSA Vice President Shanice Hardy, a fourth-year Batten student, read aloud the names of victims of police brutality in the past 10 years.
Kiara Redd-Martin, a representative from local social action group Operation Social Equality, also spoke during the rally. She questioned the Charlottesville Police Department’s actions in certain situations involving the arrests of black Charlottesville residents.
“Where was the heavy media coverage about the militarization of our police forces?” Redd-Martin said. “Where was the outcry to blast our police department for racist and biased police practices in our city? There was none.”
The Daily Progress reported recently that Charlottesville and Albemarle have received a combined $500,000 worth in equipment through the Department of Defense’s Excess Property Program since 2006. Charlottesville also received nine pistols, 26 rifles and 11 shotguns through the program, Charlottesville Police Captain Gary Pleasants said in an email.
“While we stand here today in solidarity, I want you to ask yourself, ‘is so-called officer safety so important that we will accept a police state?’” Redd-Martin said. “Charlottesville is the happiest city to live in according to whose standards?”
The representation of African-Americans in the media was also a major concern of some speakers. Third-year College student Vendarryl Jenkins, President of the University’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, expressed frustration about how media outlets portray black individuals as the embodiment of “evil and wickedness.”
“It is perhaps a brazen and audacious claim, but I stand before you today and proclaim that the media has served as a demonizing force of African-Americans,” Jenkins said. “[The media] serves to prevent the harmonious integration of all people by reinforcing the fears that maintain our division.”
Jenkins said the media presumes that white is associated with innocence, while black is associated with guilt.
“I demand the end to the inhumane character slaughter of my people,” Jenkins said. “The media will not continue to justify the denial of life for my brothers and sisters while I sit silently.”
In response to the media’s alleged misrepresentation of African-Americans, the rally’s leaders led the crowd in a chant, saying “show me in my cap and gown.” The crowd also chanted “black lives matter” while moving in between locations during the rally.
Second-year College student Eden Zekarias, former BSA political action chair, said the advancement of black people in society too often comes through fighting.
“[To] abolish slavery, Apartheid, colonization, Jim Crow — it was all done through the shedding of black blood,” Zekarias said. “Every time we have been resilient to their hatred. Every time we have fought for freedom. … We keep on fighting because we have no choice.”
LaTaSha Levy, a post-doctoral fellow in the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies at the University, spoke at the end of the rally and encouraged student leaders present to come together and organize for the cause.
“We can’t keep coming out here, and marching, and talking and praying without getting organized,” Levy said. “One thing that we’ve seen since these incidents is that people are getting organized. Young people do care, young people are organizing, young people are fighting back, so we shouldn’t allow people to tell us that we aren’t doing anything.”
The BSA called upon all of those present and all University members to speak out against police brutality and media misrepresentation before events similar to those in Ferguson happen in Charlottesville.
“It can never be enough until every single person in this group, in all of U.Va., in all of Charlottesville, in the entire nation, in the world remembers the blood that is shed almost everyday in the United States,” Frazier said. “Remember that we are worthy of life, … that our blackness is not inherently dangerous.”
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