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SALT LAKE CITY — Protests in Salt Lake City on Tuesday took on a harsher tone, calling for defunding police rather than acts of unity with them and seeking the release of protesters jailed in recent rioting in the city.
“We need to stop asking cops to kneel with us,” Daud Mumin, one of the event organizers, exclaimed through a microphone. “For us to put our communities of color at risk ... by asking them to kneel with us, to raise their fist, is a disappointment, and you’re on the wrong side of history.”
No longer hampered by rain, the crowd swelled to about 1,000 by 7 p.m., chanting “black lives matter” and “no justice, no peace” outside of the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building, as people spilled out onto the street. The initial protest nearly doubled in size as a crowd marching down from the Capitol gathered at the federal building after pausing to kneel at the intersection of 100 South and State Street.
Organizers took turns at the megaphone, listing off the names of people of color killed by police and calling for the nationwide dissolution of police departments.
The protest was organized by the Salt Lake chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. The group’s mission is “to carry out the struggle for socialism inside the United States — the center of world capitalism and imperialism — and establish a new revolutionary government of working and poor people,” according to its Facebook page.
“We will no longer be slaves to this state,” said Mumin as the crowd cheered. “People are chanting, ‘This is what democracy looks like’ — no, this it what fighting fascism looks like.”
Among the group’s requests — which include defunding the Salt Lake City Police Department and civilian investigations of officer-involved fatal incidents — is the release of the dozens of people arrested since the May 30 protest-turned-riot, which resulted in 21 officers receiving medical treatment, a destroyed police cruiser and widespread vandalism.
Arrests during the riot netted 46 people, and a string of charges followed, including two women who were charged Tuesday for throwing rocks through a window at the Matheson Courthouse.
“Say yes to police and prison abolition,” Ermiya Fanaeian, a local LGBTQ activist, yelled through a microphone to a raucous crowd. “‘Radical’ is not a dirty word.”
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Protesters have made their pleas; police say they are listening, so what happens next?
Local, Utah and federal leaders have proposed changes to law enforcement amid protests over racial inequity. Could this time be different from past moments like this in history?“This isn’t about reform, this is about change,” Joshua Chamberlin told KSL as he marched down 200 South. “The police are supposed to be protecting the people, they work for us ... but right now it isn’t protecting me, as a black man.”
Chamberlin, who wore black shirt with “I CAN’T BREATHE” printed in bold lettering, recalled instances where he felt targeted by police because of his race. A Holliday native, he was only 13 when he said police almost arrested him and his brother while they were walking home from a school play.
“People don’t know that that happens. People don’t know that racism is embedded in the system,” he said. “And until we see change, people like me and my little brother will have that fear every time we see police lights.”
Despite a few cruisers following behind the demonstrators as they marched, the initial police presence at Tuesday’s event was relatively light.
“I feel like we’ve gotten to the point where the protests are a little more peaceful,” said Aisha Steger, a protester who moved to Salt Lake City on May 30, the same day violent protests erupted in the capital city. “But I definitely have my guard up, we made an exit strategy if things get crazy.”
Steger said she hopes protests stay focused on the issues she is concerned about — cutting police budgets and ending what she says are racist tactics.
“I just hope people are here for the right reason, and it’s not just a bunch of kids here to live out their anarchist dreams,” she said. “If we’re just out here destroying things, it doesn’t help anyone.”
The protest dissolved at about 8:45 p.m. as the crowd circled through downtown Salt Lake City, through the Gallivan Center on Main Street, and back to the federal building. Two police cruisers temporarily blocked traffic on State Street as the crowd fizzled out. By 9 p.m. a small group from the Party for Socialism and Liberation was all that remained as organizers loaded speakers, megaphones, cases of bottled water and trash into an old Ford pickup, a bright red Che Guevara flag hanging off the back.
