Paul Bass Photo
Allison Batson at Sunday’s “Peace Rally” at City Hall.
State Sen. Gary Holder-Winfield challenged young African-Americans protesting the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner to prevent future recurrences — by becoming prosecutors.
Holder-Winfield issued the challenge from the steps of City Hall before a crowd of 250 New Haveners at an NAACP “Peace Rally” organized to protest police violence in Ferguson, Missouri; Staten Island, N.Y.; as well as Cleveland, Phoenix and Seattle.
“We have to walk out and access the power that has always been there,” Holder-Winfield declared.
“That’s right!” came a response from the crowd.
“Black lives matter,” Holder-Winfield declared. So did other speakers. The crowd took up that chant, too.
It was the third rally in three days in New Haven, mirroring similar demonstrations in cities across the country. Five hundred law students and others held a silent “die-in” shortly after noon on Friday; hundreds more demonstrators stopped downtown traffic for two hours at a another rally that evening. (Click here and here to read Aliyya Swaby’s accounts of those two events.)
“I’m not going to speak about the new laws we’re going to create,” said Holder-Winfield, who in fact helped create a law aimed at limited racial profiling of black and Latino drivers and is working on an expansion to cover other forms of profiling. “I’m going to talk about power. Power to change the system that has existed. The young people here, you have a role to play. And that role is to access that power.”
Holder-Winfield’s voice cracked with emotion as he spoke on the City Hall steps Sunday afternoon about how the Brown and Garner cases reflect the reality of living as a black man in America, and how the black community has the ability to change that reality.
“I haven’t left my house a day in my life without ID in my pocket, because I felt like that’s at least one thing I could do to protect myself. And I’m known in this community,” he said. He continued describing an age “when from the instance of your birth the system of justice views you as a criminal bound to prove your innocence, even when victimized because of your skin, when parents must arm their boys and girls with the talk—The Talk— about respectability, before they leave the house knowing their child may encounter someone in the uniform of the state and not return …”
“Your role is to become the prosecutor. We go into law thinking we have to become public defenders to defend our people. We can defend our people when we decide that those who act against us must be charged!”
The potential future prosecutors Holder-Winfield addressed were looking right at him: The Yale, Southern Connecticut State University, University of New Haven, Quinnipiac, and local high school NAACP chapters helped organize the rally and brought out their members.
“That could have been a child from Hillhouse, WIlbur Cross, or Career,” NAACP Youth Advisor Kevin Walton told the crowd in reference to the deaths of young black men like Brown and Trayvon Martin.
Like Holder-Winfield, Walton called for the young people present to become prosecutors — as well as teachers and police officers. He called as well for cops to wear body cameras (read about that here) and for independent investigations, rather than internal police investigations, of fatal shootings by police. He said those measures would protect not just victims of police violence but the “many” good officers on police forces.
Greater New Haven NAACP President Doris Dumas, the event’s emcee, also spoke of organizing interfaith dialogues in New Haven in coming months.
She said young people’s voices need to be heard in the discussion. Many of the event’s speakers were NAACP youth leaders, including Kaleb Walton (pictured), Maia James, and Jamir Esdaile of the NAACP’s Youth Council.
In contrast to the tense scene at protests in other cities, no uniformed cops were visible at Sunday’s event. The only member of the department visible was Chief Dean Esserman, pictured in civilian clothes at the far left of the above photo.
And Mayor Toni Harp was among the speakers, applauding the rallies in town and commending the New Haven police for not overreacting to being spat upon and taunted. She noted that a majority of the current police academy class is black or Latino, which means the force will increasing “look like New Haven.” The next challenge is to convince more women to become cops and firefighters, she said.
Harp’s presence and the cooperation of police signal that “we are going to be working together in New Haven,” Dumas remarked. “New Haven is a unique city,” added Holder-Winfield. “New Haven is a city where protest and activism are a part of what we do.”