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SALT LAKE CITY — Around 60 people gathered Sunday afternoon in Salt Lake City to rally against Friday's not guilty verdict in the high profile Kyle Rittenhouse case.
Rittenhouse was acquitted of all five charges — including intentional homicide, reckless homicide and attempted homicide — brought against him after he shot and killed two men and injured another during a 2020 protest after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
The jury's decision divided many Americans who either saw Rittenhouse as a vigilante or a patriot acting in self-defense.
Attendees held signs saying "Rittenhouse: Racist Killer," "Cops and fascists given license to kill in the USA!" and "The whole system is guilty," while listening to speeches from leaders of local activist groups.
"Anti-blackness allowed Rittenhouse to walk free," said Rae Duckworth, operating chairwoman of the Black Lives Matter Utah chapter.
While the three victims were all white, Duckworth said they were allies "marching to amplify the issue of Black Lives Matter."
"(Rittenhouse) murdering them and getting away with it is showing that his ideology of white supremacy is still being held at a higher standard than even white bodies," Duckworth said, adding the ruling wasn't unexpected to her.
Speakers at the rally claimed that Rittenhouse provoked the violence by coming to the protest with an AR-style rifle and should not have been able to argue that he acted in self-defense. They also led the crowd in chants of "No justice. No peace," "Black lives matter every single day," and "The people's verdict: Guilty."
The Party of Socialism and Liberation Salt Lake, one of the event's organizers, said in a Facebook post advertising the rally that the ruling "effectively hands a license to kill to right-wing vigilantes, who will now feel even more empowered to terrorize people in the name of 'law and order.'"
Other protests and rallies were held across the country Saturday, and more are expected.
