Peaceful protest in Santa Fe draws hundreds carrying signs, singing

Santa Fe police showed up briefly after protesters took to the streets and marched to the downtown plaza and back, but left soon thereafter. After most of the crowd dispersed, about 50 protesters lingered and continued the demonstration at the intersection of Paseo de Peralta and Old Santa Fe Trail, shouting at passing vehicles, some of which answered back by honking their horns.

“I think everyone has had enough. There needs to be change,” said 17-year-old Abby Bay, one of the people who spread the word about the protest on Facebook. “What happened in Minneapolis, it could happen anywhere, even here.”

Lacking an organizer, several people stepped up to lead the crowd in chants of “black lives matter” and “I can’t breathe,” the latter words spoken by Floyd as a Minneapolis police officer pressed him to the ground with a knee to his neck.

“We’re standing up for the injustices against black people,” said Lonnica Montoya, who led most of the chants.

At one point, Montoya read the names of several dozen black citizens who have died at the hands of police.

Another woman, Amy Linquist, led the protesters in a song called “Somebody’s Hurting My Brother,” which she said grew out of the Poor People’s Campaign.

Protesters also carried signs, some reading “There’s power in Unity” and “Complacency = Complicity.”

Holding a sign that said “I can’t breathe,” Derrick Gomez was one of fewer than a dozen African Americans at the demonstration.

“What’s going on in Minneapolis with the riots and looting, and in Albuquerque with police and their guns, we’re here with just signs,” he said. “We have to stand up for what we believe in.”

Gomez, who grew up in Santa Fe, where fewer than 1% of people identify as black or African American, said he’s experienced racism all his life.

“It’s great to see the diversity here, especially here in New Mexico, where our culture is rich,” he said. “It’s moving that people here do care.”

Gomez said he hoped the protests being held across the country will make a difference and change attitudes about racism in America.

“As long as we continue, they have to listen to us at some point,” he said. “The moment we quit is the moment they win.”

ShadwKeepr on May 30th, 2020 at 16:52 UTC »

Wow, I'm actually proud of my state (or some people in it) for once

exoendo2 on May 30th, 2020 at 16:46 UTC »

Relevant to that sign, from MLKs letter from Birmingham jail:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

Squirtleburtal on May 30th, 2020 at 15:18 UTC »

Speak out against injustice