On Aug. 21, hundreds of people came out to Seattle’s Pratt Park in the Central District for a rally in solidarity with the uprising in Ferguson against racism and police murder. The protest, organized by the Martin Luther King County/Seattle NAACP, featured a number of speakers from the community, including Rev. Harriet Walden of Mothers for Police Accountability and Gerald Hankerson, current Seattle NAACP chapter president.
Rev. Walden, the opening speaker at the rally, talked about the militarized police force in Ferguson. She explained the history of the federal program that is providing military equipment to local police forces. “They spent $163 million on equipment, instead of on jobs.”
Speaker Rashad Johnson of Youth Undoing Institutional Racism said, “There will continue to be many more Mike Browns if we don’t do something.”
Following many spirited and powerful speakers, Gerald Hankerson brought the rally to a rousing conclusion. A former prisoner himself, he talked about how the police lie, about almost everything–“They lied about me!” Hankerson described the role of the police as protecting the property of the rich, and repressing the poor and oppressed.
Liberation News spoke with rally participants. Fourteen year old Terran explained that he was there to show his support “for what’s going on in Ferguson against all the corrupt police and government.”
Devlin Dinish stated, “As an African American male, a young one, I think its important that I show support about something that’s going to effect me and other young Black males in the future.”
Terry Rogers Kemp expressed the view that the killing of Mike Brown is emblematic of racism in the U.S. in a more general way. “I’m concerned over all with the treatment Black people in America receive. It’s not just the police department but so many aspects of our institutionalized society has a low expectation, a friend of mine would characterize it as a low value, since there is no value on our Black skin since slavery has been dispensed with, we have no value it seems.” She went on to voice the pain and anger heard from so many Black mothers: “I have a little boy, and I have already raised a young man, and I have had to teach them the ways of the white world, how to behave, in terms of not just the police but when they walk into a grocery store. I shouldn’t have to teach them those alternative type instructions to live. Life isn’t fair but I have the right to try to make it so. Even if I don’t, then die trying.”
