On May 2, 75 people gathered at Curtis Hixon Park in Tampa to stand in solidarity with the Baltimore Uprising. Chanting “Black lives matter” and “Fists up, fight back,” they marched through downtown streets to the main headquarters of the Tampa Police Department.
In front of the police department, activists lined up with tape over their mouths, holding sheets of paper bearing the names of Black people killed by police: 23-year-old Rodney Mitchell in Sarasota, Florida; 18-year-old Sheneque Proctor in Bessemer, Alabama; 22-year-old Rekia Boyd in Chicago; 25-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore; and 50-year-old Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina.
In a quiet, heartwrenching display, activists covered their hands in fake blood while Bay Area Activist Coalition member Ashley Green spoke about the lives that had been taken by law enforcement. For each person, a bloody palm print was placed against the sheet of paper. Activists lay on the sidewalk silently for several minutes in the sun to honor their memory.
After a speakout in Lykes Gaslight Park, activists returned to Curtis Hixon Park, where they marched through the Mayor’s Mac & Cheese Throwdown. There, at least a thousand people, mostly white and well-to-do, met the Black Lives Matter movement face to face.
Liberation spoke with three participants to hear their thoughts on Baltimore, the Black Lives Matter movement, and police brutality and racism in Tampa.
Mike Gomez, who works at The Well, a faith-based community resource center, spoke about his experiences living in Tampa and the future of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I’ve seen racial profiling, harassment, stop and frisk, biking while being Black, all of that. In my experience, living in Tampa Heights a couple streets down from Robles Park, what’s been going down in that neighborhood has been horrible. Police are an occupying force there,” said Gomez. “The fact of the matter is, every time the police are there, they continue to harass these people. They continue to not let them live a normal life. I remember when I first moved here I lived by William’s pharmacy, I left within five months to another place because police kept raiding my apartment building. They were there every single day breaking into people’s houses without warrants.
“That was my first taste of Tampa. Even just a couple months ago, I was posted in my backyard and I see this Black dude booking it through the alley, just running for his life. Cops came right behind him with Tasers and flashlights, ready to go, just hunting him down. A cop stopped and I asked him, ‘Hey, what was the whole point of that?’ He blurted out, ‘We decided to stop him on his bike and he just took off. So we ran after him.’ The other cop looked at him like “Shut up, don’t tell him anything.
“That right there. This guy can’t even ride his bike, maybe going down to his mom’s house or whatever. I’m not going to take my time and talk to these oppressors. I don’t have time for that. Nobody has time for that. Especially if you’re a Black man nowadays, well, since the past 400 years. That’s like looking at death right there, a possibility. Any time you see that badge—that symbol of death—and those flashing lights as a person of color, whether Black or Latino or an oppressed person, you don’t want to stay there and wait to see what’s going to happen with your life.”
“I think the next step [for the movement] is more involvement, more data,” said Gomez. “We need more data on who they’re arresting, how many convictions are happening and how many arrests and detainments. We can look at these statistics for better ways to keep police accountable. Now, in my opinion? We don’t need police. I think the community should handle its own. The police are here to protect property. We don’t need that. The people don’t need that. I think we’re smart enough and can be organized enough to do that. But right now, keep them accountable. Body cameras, investigations, data statistics on each cop. I think that’s a good direction until grander solutions can occur.”
Katie Fox, who is from Washington, D.C. and now a student in Tampa, has many friends on the front lines of Baltimore. Because she couldn’t support the Baltimore Uprising directly on the ground, she came to the solidarity rally.
“I believe in the power of the force of attaining justice by any means necessary,” said Fox. “I do appreciate the people who are calling it an uprising, because honestly, this is not happening because people want to be violent or because they just have something innate in them that wants to cause damage,” continued Fox. “This is happening because people are terrified and they fear for their lives and the livelihood of their families. ‘Riot’ and ‘uprising’ and all of these words are trying to explain a sort of fear that people have for their livelihood, and a very valid fear and anger that needs to be expressed for there to be positive change.
“Myself, I don’t believe that we can have change in a system that was built on the oppression of a people based on their race. I think that system is going to have to be completely dismantled for a new system to be put in place. Very logically, we cannot change a system based on oppression to be non-oppressive if we keep the same base. Our police force in this country actually started as a way to control roaming slaves, whether freed or not, trying to acquire freedom. The police force, at its base, cannot serve the people. And we cannot keep thinking that it will serve anyone if it doesn’t serve everyone.
“I think we can see with all the movements that started since last August and Ferguson that these are not exclusive to police brutality but that sadly the genesis, the spark that started the fire, had to be police brutality,” said Fox. “There are a slew of issues that affect marginalizedpeople and in each one of the movements around the country, depending on the area, different ones have come up. In the Tampa Bay Area, the tragedy that happened to Brittany Overstreet a few months ago has sparked a movement around the public school-to-prison pipeline, the incrimination of children and students. There are also issues with housing and food scarcity. A huge percentage of the population lives in a food desert, these invisible and falsely constructed racial lines that keep certain people from access to resources. So I think that police brutality was the catalyst and uniting force for a lot of these movements.”
Liberation also spoke to a young Black woman who, like Fox, has many friends in Baltimore and came to the protest to support them. She asked to remain anonymous.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” she said. “So when there is no accountability, there exists corruption. When you have built a system that has no rules, then that can turn really good people into really bad ones. Our country was founded on a system of checks and balances simply because they understood the concept that people need to be checked with power and that power needs to be shared for it to remain good, and you have to remain accountable to the people. When a system no longer is accountable, that system turns bad. So with protests across the country, you are seeing people waking up and getting fed up with people having absolute power.
“The Black Lives Matter movement is a call for validation. Throughout history, our country has built a system that basically says through its actions that black lives don’t matter. So by people chanting ‘Black lives matter,’ that’s a chant for them to realize the power of their life and saying that they are equal. This movement is people taking back control.
“We were at a town hall meeting a few days ago and it was brought up that power is never given away, power is taken,” she said. “So with all these movements now, you are seeing people crying for balance and people taking that balance, because when somebody has too much power the only option is to take it. Which is why protests are necessary. So these are movements of balance, to hold people accountable to standards they should have always been held to. I think it is beautiful. If the people appointed to serve the people do not serve the people, then it is the people’s responsibility to hold them accountable, to keep the power with the people. Now the power is coming back to the people with these movements and protests, and also all the behind the scenes stuff too. We’re everywhere and we’re educated, which is beautiful.”
