{"id":22464,"date":"2020-06-19T21:26:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-19T21:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arknews.org\/?p=22464"},"modified":"2021-04-05T17:01:46","modified_gmt":"2021-04-05T22:01:46","slug":"somebody-is-out-here-doing-something-portraits-of-protest-in-arkansas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/19\/somebody-is-out-here-doing-something-portraits-of-protest-in-arkansas\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Somebody is out here doing something\u2019: Portraits of protest in Arkansas"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

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Since George Floyd\u2019s murder on May 25, the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, Little Rock\u2019s Racial & Cultural Diversity Commission and other groups concerned with social justice have called for specific police reforms, including \u201ccommunity oversight with teeth.\u201d Peaceful demonstrators have stopped traffic on major thoroughfares, shut down Walmart stores and faced arrest.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Brian K. Mitchell, assistant professor of history at UA Little Rock, believes we are witnessing \u201cthe second modern civil rights movement.\u201d A scholar who studies race and ethnicity, African American history and urban history, Mitchell is struck by what he is seeing now. \u201cThere\u2019s a hopeful feeling that something more lasting will happen in this movement.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Across the state, from Bentonville<\/a> to Crossett<\/a>, thousands of Arkansans have taken to the streets in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and to protest police brutality. Some are seasoned organizers. Some are first-time protesters. Some have served on task forces, met with elected leaders, received death threats. They are racially diverse, and they span generations. And they have decided, despite a pandemic that put them at risk when gathering, to keep coming out.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Here are a few of their stories.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Daniella Scott. Photo by Beth Crenshaw.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Daniella Scott<\/strong>
<\/strong>Harrison<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

By Anita Badejo<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

As a young adult in San Francisco, Daniella Scott never felt a need to protest.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cYou\u2019re used to people protesting things all the time,\u201d Scott said of her progressive hometown. \u201cI never worried about it because [I thought], \u2018I don\u2019t have to protest because somebody else can do it for me.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Now a resident of Harrison, the 39-year-old is one of the most recognizable activists in her rural, conservative community. A protest she organized on Thursday, June 4, in response to the murder of George Floyd drew around 125 people to the town\u2019s courthouse square.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cWhen I moved out here, I realized nobody was going to do the protesting for me,\u201d Scott said. \u201cI had to do it for myself.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Growing up, Scott\u2019s father, a white Army veteran who was married to a Black woman, taught Scott and her seven siblings that they couldn\u2019t trust the cops, that most white people \u2014 including their own grandparents \u2014 were racist. Scott carried that knowledge with her as she made her way across the country, before settling in Harrison in 2011 on the recommendation of a friend.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cShe just said it\u2019s just a quiet place to live and a nice place to live and a cheap place to live,\u201d Scott remembered. \u201cShe said there\u2019s no people of color here. And I was like, \u2018Well, I\u2019ve lived in situations like that before, I can handle that.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It wasn\u2019t until Scott had already moved that her friend divulged that the town is also a haven for the Ku Klux Klan, whose national director lives only 15 miles away.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cAnd then I felt uncomfortable,\u201d Scott said. \u201cHow do I know who\u2019s Klan and who\u2019s not?\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Scott eventually found her community: \u201cthe Democrats,\u201d she said, laughing. She met her now-husband and started taking classes at North Arkansas College. She found that for the most part, locals were \u201creally nice.\u201d Overt racism was rare. It was the microaggressions that got to her, like when people would tell her \u201cthey don\u2019t see color.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cI absolutely hate that. It drives me nuts,\u201d Scott said. \u201cBecause if you don\u2019t see my skin color then you must not think of me as a human being.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In late 2013, a rash of now infamous white supremacist billboards began popping up alongside the highway in town. \u201cI didn\u2019t hardly leave my house for two years because I was so scared,\u201d Scott recalled.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Not long after, she was invited to join the Harrison Task Force on Race Relations, a volunteer group that meets regularly in service of repairing the town\u2019s reputation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Then, Donald Trump got elected president, and meetings didn\u2019t feel like enough anymore.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In 2017, Scott founded Boone County Indivisible, a chapter of a national movement that resists the policies of the Trump administration. Many of their early protests were aimed at racism. \u201cWhen [the Klan] would have one of their hateful protests, we would do a peaceful, loving protest,\u201d Scott said. \u201cThat\u2019s what I call them. Peace and love protests to show that Harrison\u2019s not this racist place that everyone thinks it is.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Before the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, Scott\u2019s largest protests drew around 20 people. On June 4, she knew something was different when she began getting calls an hour before the protest was to begin. \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe it. I was like, \u2018Oh, my God, what are we gonna do with all these people?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

By 7 p.m., a crowd of 125 had packed Courthouse Square. They held up signs. They chanted \u201cBlack Lives Matter\u201d and \u201cNo Justice, No Peace.\u201d They knelt for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time Floyd was pinned to the ground under Officer Derek Chauvin\u2019s knee.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cWe got so many honks and so many thumbs up,\u201d Scott said. \u201cPeople that couldn\u2019t be at the protest were driving by with their own signs of support.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Among passersby, agitators were few and far between. Rather, the most obvious sign of objection could be found on the periphery of the square, where armed locals had planted themselves in case there was a \u201criot.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing to riot on the Harrison square,\u201d Scott said. \u201cIt\u2019s a bunch of secondhand stores. What are we gonna do, steal some thrift shop clothes?\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Scott had met with the mayor and the chief of police the day before. She appreciated their presence, especially in the face of so many \u201cguys with guns.\u201d At the same time, she agrees with calls to defund police departments. \u201cThey\u2019re too militarized,\u201d she explained. \u201cEven Harrison, Arkansas, has a SWAT team. Why?\u201d (The Harrison Police Department has a Special Operations Team.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Scott advocates community-based policing as an alternative. It\u2019s one of the many hopes she has, for her country and her community.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cI probably will never get 125 people to show up to a protest again,\u201d she said, \u201cBut maybe next time I\u2019ll get 30.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201c<\/em>I just want people to see that, you know, this town doesn\u2019t have to have the reputation that it has. That there are people out there who are willing to fight against that. Even if they don\u2019t say it out loud, even if they don\u2019t come up to me and personally thank me, maybe subconsciously it\u2019s seeping into their brains that, \u2018You know, somebody is out here doing something.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Anita Badejo is executive editor and co-host of Pop-Up Magazine, a touring live journalism show based in San Francisco. She grew up in Mountain Home.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Shay Holloway. Photo by Kat Wilson.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Shay Holloway<\/strong>
Fayetteville<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

By Stephanie Smittle<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Shay Holloway once wanted to be an FBI agent \u2014 the kind of mindhunter she saw busting perpetrators on episodes of \u201cCriminal Minds.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in why people do things, the way that they do them,\u201d Holloway said, \u201cand how the mind processes the world and its experiences. What makes people do evil stuff? What makes people do good stuff?\u201d

Now, you\u2019ll find her opposite the law enforcement side of the protest line, demonstrating against police brutality across Northwest Arkansas. She was on the town square in Bentonville on Monday, June 1, for a George Floyd demonstration that, technically, had been canceled. Rumors of white supremacy groups threatening to counterprotest had led the event\u2019s organizers to postpone.<\/a> People went anyway and Holloway made a spur-of-the-moment decision to join them \u2014 in part, she said, out of a sense of obligation \u201cto keep everybody focused on why we were actually there.\u201d There was chanting and dancing. A sousaphone player undergirded the chants, its bell covered by a poster that read \u201cBLM.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Earlier that day, news broke that the Arkansas Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Bentonville Historical Society had reached an agreement to relocate the square\u2019s Confederate monument centerpiece. Fashioned from granite in Barre, Vt., and shipped to Arkansas in 1908, the statue has been a point of contention for decades. For protesters that night, its planned removal to a private park was auspiciously timed. Despite the initial tone of the protest, the Benton County Mobile Field Squad, after issuing an order to disperse that Arkansas Times<\/em> contributor Autumn Tolbert reported was inaudible<\/a> from where she was standing, fired tear gas canisters and rubber bullets into the crowd.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Holloway, 25, is a resident of Fayetteville, where she got a degree in psychology and criminal justice at the UA. She grew up in Des Arc and moved to Beebe after her seventh-grade year. Holloway\u2019s American history classes put figures like Martin Luther King Jr. in soft focus \u2014 more \u201cI Have a Dream,\u201d less about Jesus being an \u201cextremist for love,\u201d as King wrote in his \"Letter From a Birmingham Jail.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cWe aren\u2019t educated for real in regards to our history,\u201d Holloway said. \u201cWe get fed a story that has been revised. How did slavery get started? Who has helped push this country forward? Who helped build this country up?\u201d She pointed to \u201cpushout,\u201d<\/a> the disproportionate rate at which Black girls in high school are punished or criminalized. She noted, too, policing\u2019s morally dubious origins. \u201cThe police were an organization that was created to catch slaves. That\u2019s another thing. In school, they teach you, \u2018These people are good people, these people are our heroes.\u2019 But they don\u2019t give us information to be able to make a discernment for ourselves about whether these are people who are working to help us.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Despite those gaps in her early education, Holloway said her time in Des Arc was comfortable. \u201cBut that comfort,\u201d she said, \u201ccame at the expense of my ignorance about the reality of being a Black person in America.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Today, Beebe\u2019s race demographics are about 90 percent white and just under 6 percent African American. \u201cIn school,\u201d Holloway said, \u201csometimes I'd be the only Black girl in my classroom. It would be awkward for me to sit in class and hear my white classmates talk about the rap music that they listened to. They looked at me to validate them in the stuff that they were saying, and I wouldn't say anything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

She says her earliest memory of racism is from her elementary school years. She\u2019d stayed at a white friend\u2019s house overnight, and found out later that her visit was a topic of conversation between her friend\u2019s mother and aunt, the latter of whom was ostensibly concerned about the two kids\u2019 friendship. \u201cThose experiences made me think about my little sister,\u201d she said. \u201cI don't want people to make statements for her that are, in essence, derogatory because she\u2019s a dark-skinned girl.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Today, she feels a responsibility to speak up. Holloway was at the protest June 2 in Fayetteville, too. Cops kneeled with protesters in silence for 8 minutes to memorialize the death of George Floyd. Police stood on the stage behind the demonstration\u2019s speakers, hands folded at their waists, sans riot gear. They\u2019d kneel again near the end of the protest, prompting a spate of Facebook photos with genial captions: \u201cExactly what we needed,\u201d \u201cThis is where change starts,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m so proud of my community.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Holloway, like many others that night, had a different reaction. \u201cThe first word that came to my mind when I saw that picture: skeptical. That demonstration was a demonstration for show.\u201d The police were \u201csaving face,\u201d she said, doing \u201csomething to counter the feelings and energy that was swirling around in Bentonville.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Holloway worries that the core sentiment behind the Floyd demonstrations is being eclipsed by optics meant to garner favor for a law enforcement system that, seemingly overnight, appeared to develop a taste for community collaboration.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cColin Kaepernick kneeled because of police brutality,\u201d Holloway said, \u201cThe Lady Razorbacks kneeled<\/a> [in November 2016] and they got death threats. Kneeling is not gonna change who you are as a police officer and a person. How do I know that you think this is for real? What are you gonna do differently? How can I know for sure that I can trust you?\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Holloway works at a daycare now. She\u2019s long abandoned the FBI aspirations; working with kids, she says, is the most impactful way to effect systemic change in society. She hopes to go to graduate school to become a clinical psychologist for juvenile delinquents. In the meantime, she said, she\u2019ll be looking for ways to directly impact her community. For starters, she\u2019s launched a fundraiser on her Facebook profile to raise $1,500 to be distributed to three Black families in the Fayetteville area for clothes and food during the summer months.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cA lot of people right now are really emotional about Black people getting killed, but Black people have been<\/em> getting killed,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got work to do. We've gotta fix the system that has been in place for hundreds and hundreds of years, that was never designed for equality. We have to do more than just march.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Stephanie Smittle is culture editor for the <\/em>Arkansas Times and an advocate for The Natural State's rich history of musicians and artists.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Deairra Griffin. Photo by Ebony Blevins.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Deairra Griffin
Cabot<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

By Delilah M. Pope<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Young, Black and protesting, Deairra Griffin looks a lot like thousands of people across the U.S. who have taken body and voice to the pavement to protest police brutality after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, who was killed in March in Louisville, Ky., when police executed a no-knock warrant and stormed her apartment, shooting the 26-year-old unarmed emergency room technician at least eight times. At 23, organizing a march of about 300 protesters through Cabot, Griffin has distinguished herself as a leader.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

As a Lonoke County native, Griffin, who is new to organizing, has an intimate knowledge of Cabot and the surrounding area, and she feels a specific calling to protest in small, rural communities like her own.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cIt\u2019s cool and all, protesting where the majority of the population is Black, and where the majority of the population will support you, but it\u2019s a whole other ballgame to go somewhere you\u2019re probably not wanted,\u201d Griffin said. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t be that you\u2019re not wanted there because of the color of your skin, but that\u2019s just the reality of it. And it\u2019s just the reality that a lot of people do not want to face.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Cabot, the largest city in Lonoke County, is known for its schools, sports teams and its proximity to Little Rock. It has never shaken its reputation as a white flight town. For this reason, Griffin and her friend Brianna Perkins chose to protest there.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Griffin and Perkins attended the first night of protests in Conway, on May 31, and they felt that if a protest could happen there, it could happen in Cabot. On Thursday, June 4, they marched with protesters past the Cabot City Hall and police department, and through the main stretch of town they tried to replicate the same route the Ku Klux Klan took at a rally in 2017.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In the days leading up to the protest, Griffin says she and Perkins received death threats. They received Facebook messages from white men sharing pictures of large trucks, some boasting about their guns. Griffin told protesters that though it was her intention to have a peaceful march, she couldn\u2019t guarantee that they would be able to pass through peacefully because she didn\u2019t know who would show up to try to stop them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cNobody thought that the KKK was coming to burn stuff down, even though they have a history of burning stuff down,\u201d she said. \u201cBut when I asked to peacefully march, everybody automatically saw a riot.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

What she and Perkins expected to be a protest of about nine people grew to more than 300, and when news of the protest spread and was dubbed a riot by a member of the Concerned Citizens of Cabot Facebook group, she reached out to the Cabot Police Department for protection for herself and for the protesters she intended to lead.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

On protest day, she brought up the rear of the group when it became obvious that protesters were getting caught up reading one particularly inflammatory sign from a counter-protester. She made sure her group stayed focused and finished their route without incident. After the threats of violence on social media, the theme of the protest became, \u201cHands up, don\u2019t shoot,\u201d a rallying cry that developed after the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. In Cabot, Griffin said, protesters marched with no specific demands of the city other than that law enforcement and citizens respect their right to be there.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Griffin said the town set up numerous water stations along their route, and the group, which included a number of white allies in addition to members of the Jacksonville NAACP, was accompanied by the Cabot Police Department. Cabot\u2019s mayor, Ken Kincade, spoke to the group. In a statement released before the event, he said: \u201cIf we take an honest look at our town\u2019s past, we have to acknowledge the fact that we were labeled a racist community at one time in our history and part of that stigma still lingers today.\u201d

Marching that day, Griffin said she left feeling \u201cpowerful ... it was amazing.\u201d Moving forward, she plans to join her local NAACP. She wants to empower Black communities and oppose the non-inclusivity and racism of many rural Arkansas towns. Rather than calling herself an activist, she said she is just a person with a message: \u201cIt is impossible for all lives to matter until Black Lives Matter.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Delilah M. Pope is a writer in Little Rock. She is a former Harding University Ronald E. McNair scholar and <\/em>Oxford American intern.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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LeRon McAdoo. Photo by Ebony Blevins.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

LeRon McAdoo<\/strong>
Little Rock<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

By Frederick McKindra<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Speaking before a crowd on the Capitol steps on Sunday, June 7, LeRon McAdoo demonstrated the abilities he\u2019s honed over the past 30 years as a hip-hop MC and radio personality, as an educator, and as an activist and community organizer. When he called on protesters not to again press \u201csnooze\u201d in the wake of America\u2019s latest national outrage over police brutality directed at Black men, the crowd full of high school and college-age youth, wearing cloth masks in the battering 90-degree sun, raised their voices to offer shouted affirmation that Black Lives do indeed Matter.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

McAdoo, 49, a seasoned veteran of community organizing and activism, seemed ready for whatever the circumstance called for. During the recent protests, McAdoo has been a participant, an organizer and an adviser as new activists have stepped forward to organize rallies and demonstrations. Of the younger organizers he\u2019s talked with, McAdoo said, \u201cOne, I want to recognize them and tell them how proud I am that they\u2019ve engaged with the struggle against the system, and two, I want to show them that it just didn\u2019t start with them.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

His first brush with working collectively to channel outrage at a system of power came during his junior year of high school, when Pine Bluff High refused to allow students to stage a Black History Month assembly because it hadn\u2019t been scheduled far enough in advance. McAdoo remembers school officials relaying this announcement during an impromptu assembly and feeling confused by the hypocrisy. \u201cThis announcement made all of us say, \u2018If you can call this assembly, then you can call an assembly for us to have a Black History program.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

That incident sparked a passion in McAdoo for community organizing. He was involved with drug-and-gang-prevention programs in Little Rock through the \u201990s; the Million Man March; protests for the Jena Six in Jena, La.; Hurricane Katrina relief; and Black Lives Matter efforts, both in 2014 and today.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

McAdoo said the most significant changes he\u2019s seen throughout his organizing career have been the methods of spreading information to people. \u201cThe first thing that happened was the advent of hip-hop music,\u201d he said. \u201cAnother turn was when emails and things started circulating. The next was the #blacklivesmatter hashtag. I noticed a change, or an uptick, at those three points.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Networks of organizers have also become more sophisticated. McAdoo has long received training and insight from organizations like the Poor People\u2019s Campaign, Black Lives Matter, the National Association of Black Social Workers, Highlander Research and Education Center and Alternate ROOTS, a collective that explores intersections between activism and art. His activism has been inspired by local organizers like Robert \u201cSay\u201d McIntosh and Rev. Hezekiah Stewart, as well as the Little Rock Nine, Janis Kearney, Daisy Bates and the NAACP.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Because he sees himself as an experienced protester today, he works to make sure a throughline exists between generations of community organizers and activists. McAdoo has the unique ability to offer insight and advice, perhaps most importantly on creating a concerted response once the initial emotional fervor cools. On Sunday at the Capitol, McAdoo reminded protesters that one of the most important steps in their protest was recording their demands and joining them to those of other like-minded efforts. \u201cWhat will have to happen is a stepping back and an assessment. It\u2019s something we definitely have to be more intentional about. And this is just the first leg, this particular leg of the continuum, this particular leg of the race.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Frederick McKindra was born and raised in Little Rock. He was a 2017 BuzzFeed Emerging Writer Fellow.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Latoya Garza. Photo by Matt White.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Latoya Garza<\/strong>
Batesville<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

By KaToya Ellis Fleming<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

For 8 minutes and 46 seconds \u2014 the length of time a Minneapolis police officer kept his knee on George Floyd\u2019s neck \u2014 Latoya Garza stood before a hushed and kneeling audience at Riverside Park in Batesville and recited the names of Black men, women and children who have been killed in recent years due to acts of police violence or racially motivated shootings. There were nearly enough names to fill the time.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cMan, it hit home for a few people,\u201d said Garza, the event\u2019s organizer. Batesville\u2019s Peaceful Protest, which featured a diverse panel of presenters who offered prayers for unity and speeches advocating for people of color, looked more like a picnic than a protest. A mixed but mostly white crowd \u2014 Batesville is a mostly white town \u2014 gathered on the grass around the pavilion. Some carried homemade signs, their messages ranging from heartbreaking \u2014 \u201cAm I Next?\u201d \u2014 to uplifting. One brightly decorated poster declared that \u201cColor is Not a Crime.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The feel-good atmosphere of the rally was precisely what Garza was aiming for. \u201cI can\u2019t look at the feedback [on social media] without tearing up,\u201d she said. \u201cIt has been a roller coaster of emotions.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Garza, 38, is a nurse who often works 16-hour shifts at a local nursing home. A month ago, she wouldn\u2019t have imagined she would be organizing a protest in her hometown in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. She was pushed into the spotlight when a friend spearheading the event dropped out unexpectedly and delegated the planning to her.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Though the role of leader is one the busy mom fell into by chance, Garza fully embraced the opportunity, taking the reins and garnering an immediate outpouring of support from the community. She is grateful, she said, for having been put in the position because of the broader insight she gained in the process. \u201cWe\u2019re all very sick and tired. We have to make a change, so if that means I\u2019ve got to get out of my comfort zone to do so, then that\u2019s what it means.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It also didn\u2019t hurt that there was so much enthusiasm from the people in town. By the time Garza got word that she was in charge, the original event post had been shared more than 40 times and 100 people had signed up to attend. More than triple that number would show up at the Saturday, June 6, protest. The encouragement was overwhelming, but Garza hopes the event touched the more close-minded folks, too. \u201cI really hope that this opens up their eyes to see why we feel the way that we feel.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It was important to her that the Batesville protest was a nonviolent, peaceable occasion not driven by anger. \u201cI want Batesville to lead by example,\u201d Garza said. \u201cGreat strategy will always overcome physical force. We\u2019re going to be little David and we\u2019re going to defeat Goliath. With one stone.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Her passion to protest, Garza said, is fueled by the countless victims of police brutality in the United States. \u201cThis is our home,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is ridiculous. This is injustice. And it needs to be fixed.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

KaToya Ellis Fleming was the <\/em>Oxford American\u2019s 2019-20 Jeff Baskin Writers Fellow. She is currently at work on her debut nonfiction book, a bibliomemoir titled \u201cFinding Frank.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Terry Engel. Photo by Matt White.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Terry Engel<\/strong>
Searcy<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

By Heath Carpenter<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In 1978, Terry Engel watched from a Burger King in Tupelo, Miss., while a Ku Klux Klan motorcade passed by on its way to burn a cross in front of a Ramada Inn. More than 40 years later, he carried this memory to the Searcy courthouse, where he and his family protested racial injustice June 3-4.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Growing up in Tupelo, where he attended segregated schools until the fifth grade, Engel, 59, says he was \u201csheltered\u201d from the racism around him; he never heard the names Emmett Till or Medgar Evers, never learned about lynchings, never knew of the civil rights workers murdered just down the road in Philadelphia.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cMy friends and I used pejorative terms and told jokes with watermelon and fried chicken punchlines,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the time I wouldn\u2019t have thought of myself as racist, but looking back on it, I was.\u201d He describes his parents as \u201cregular\u201d Tupelo lower-middle class white people. His father was a handyman. \u201cWe were taught to not do harm, but to be separate. We didn\u2019t associate with Black people.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

When he was in the eighth grade, his football team integrated and he started to make friendships with Black schoolmates. Church was also a catalyst for a broadening worldview. In junior high and high school, he began pondering biblical teachings more closely and questioning the willful segregation of churches.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

His senior year, the Klan motorcade competed with counter rallies and a Black boycott of white businesses. He recalls finding a Klan tabloid in the school library advertising paramilitary camps to train Christians for the fight for racial purity. A Black student caught him looking at the pamphlet in the library. \u201cI made eye contact with him, and the expression on his face ... I can\u2019t describe it, but it was clear that to be associated with this, or even to be curious about it, was a bad thing.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

After graduating with a degree in forest resources from Mississippi State University, his first job was as a foreman at a factory in Georgia. There, he refused to fire two Black union employees on false pretenses and was demoted to the graveyard shift, where he made friends with a Black colleague. \u201cWe had conversations late at night about how our kids would grow up without all the racial baggage,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Engel eventually quit the job after refusing to fire another Black employee under similarly dubious circumstances. For a time he ran a crew maintaining power lines, working and living with an interracial team. Later, building power lines for the Tennessee Valley Authority, he listened to older Black men who worked for the TVA in the 1960s talk about being bused out of sundown towns in Alabama and Georgia to places that would house them safely. He had a \u201cgradual awareness,\u201d he said. \u201cI learned to accept that I was raised in a racist community.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Engel eventually left the TVA to begin a graduate program in creative writing at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he read Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. He was in a cohort of liberal-minded students from other parts of the country who would ask probing questions about race and Mississippi. For the first time, he had to \u201cexplain to outsiders, here\u2019s how people down here think, how I grew up thinking, and wrestle with how it\u2019s not right.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

He joined the faculty at Harding University in Searcy in 2001. Today he is chair of the English Department. He decided to participate in the Searcy protests for several reasons. \u201cI wanted to support my daughters, who felt strongly about Black Lives Matter and who wanted to express a voice,\u201d he said. He also felt it was important for white people in Searcy to support the Black organizers. \u201cI don\u2019t think of myself in any way as a white savior, that my being there validates their voice \u2014 I don\u2019t think that for a moment,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to be an encouragement.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

He added: \u201cPart of it was seeking forgiveness for my past in a very deliberate way.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Heath Carpenter is the author of \u201cThe Philosopher King: T Bone Burnett and the Ethic of a Southern Cultural Renaissance.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Kymara H. Seals. Photo by Joshua Asante.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Kymara H. Seals<\/strong>
Pine Bluff<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

By Micah Fields<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

When activist Kymara H. Seals decided to organize a demonstration in her longtime home of Pine Bluff, she proceeded with equal parts caution and commitment. She was determined to lead a response to the systemic racism and police brutality that affects Black lives throughout the United States, but she knew she couldn\u2019t do it alone.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cI wanted to get a pulse on Pine Bluff,\u201d she said. \u201cI wanted to see if people were ready. And they were.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

After posting a call to action on social media, Seals, 50, received overwhelming support from community leaders \u2014 namely, Pine Bluff Mayor Shirley Washington, Democratic state Rep. Vivian Flowers and attorney and advocate Michael McCray. On Thursday, June 4, Seals\u2019 planning resulted in a peaceful assembly of well over 100 attendees, most of whom arrived and remained in their vehicles throughout the event, parked in orderly rows outside the Pine Bluff Civic Center. Participants covered their windshields in signs and sounded their horns for the impassioned conclusions of speeches and chants, \u201chonking applause.\u201d Some listened from the open air of their cars, while others \u2014 whether they were present or not \u2014 tuned in to a livestream of the rally that was broadcast on Deltaplex News\u2019 KDPX-FM, 101.3, the \u201cVoice of the Delta.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Just over a month before the gathering, Seals had buried her grandmother, the matriarch of her extended family, who died in a Pine Bluff nursing home from complications caused by COVID-19. On the evening of the Pine Bluff Solidarity Rally, Seals ascended the front steps of the Civic Center feeling the swirling emotions of grief, anger and hope. Wearing a shirt that read, \u201cLEGALIZE BEING BLACK,\u201d she hosted a series of dynamic speakers, from teenaged spoken-word performers to local officials.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Seals inherited her activist ethic from her mother, a career educator and equity coordinator who dedicated a lifetime of service to her community of Hamburg. Seals fondly recalled her first act of public service at age 9, which began when she was roused early one morning after a tornado had ripped through their town, leaving many of her neighbors injured and homeless. \u201cWake up,\u201d her mother said, ordering a young Seals to get ready. \u201cThe Red Cross is in town. We\u2019ve got work to do.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In addition to both of her parents, Seals cites a host of iconic leaders as inspirations, including Fannie Lou Hamer, Shirley Chisholm, Harriet Tubman and Barbara Jordan. She has kept these women, among many others, in mind throughout her fight for equity and justice, from her role as an NAACP voter fund staff member to her current position as policy director at the Arkansas Public Policy Panel. Most of all, she is committed to battling racism and fighting for justice on a local scale, in her own community of Pine Bluff, which she has called home for more than 30 years.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cBefore I began planning this event,\u201d she said, \u201cI knew there were others like it around the state. But I told myself, \u2018I can\u2019t march with them in Little Rock until I march in Pine Bluff.\u2019<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cI wanted to be very careful, both in our messaging and our precautions due to the virus. Our demonstration had three objectives: to join the national outcry for justice for the murder of George Floyd, to speak out against police brutality in the Black community as a whole, and to stand with the movement arguing that you cannot achieve social justice without economic justice.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

When Seals speaks, she carries the penetrating quality of a seasoned organizer. She also displays moments of optimism and levity. You can hear her smile, for instance, when she lists the tracks she hand-picked for the rally\u2019s playlist \u2014 her \u201cmovement songs\u201d \u2014 recordings like Sam Cooke\u2019s \u201cA Change Is Gonna Come,\u201d Marvin Gaye\u2019s \u201cWhat\u2019s Going On,\u201d and Common and John Legend\u2019s \u201cGlory.\u201d In the next moment, though, she transitioned into the unflinching tone of analysis:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cLet me be very clear,\u201d she said. \u201cThere is racism here. There is a power structure in Pine Bluff that does not want us here. But Pine Bluff is silent no more.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Since the June 4 rally, Seals says she\u2019s secured meetings with Pine Bluff Police Chief Kelvin Sergeant and other city officials who she hopes will lend a patient ear to the community\u2019s demands for systemic change. She emphasizes the importance of challenging more white allies to stand up, to listen and to empower those around them to do the same. She wants more Black and Brown people to show up, too, and enter the discourse for equity, to hold their cities and towns accountable for injustice. She knows there is a long road ahead, but she is confident in the momentum building across the country.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cWe want to turn our pain into power,\u201d Seals insists. \u201cWe\u2019re frustrated, we\u2019re tired, we\u2019re hurt and we\u2019re angry. And we\u2019ve got work to do.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Micah Fields received the <\/em>Oxford American\u2019s 2018-19 Jeff Baskin Writers Fellowship. His book about Houston\u2019s story of development and storms is forthcoming from W.W. Norton.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Drekkia Writes. Photo by Brian Chilson.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Drekkia Writes and Tim Campbell<\/strong>
Little Rock<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

By Lindsey Millar<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

After Drekkia Writes saw the video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd\u2019s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, she worried how she could explain Floyd\u2019s death to her young nieces and nephews in a way that didn\u2019t make them afraid. \u201cHow do you make sure that they don\u2019t start to feel that their skin is a curse?\u201d she wondered.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Writes (her professional pseudonym), 26, teaches poetry and creative writing to address mental health needs in children. She contracts with schools, including the Little Rock School District and the Pulaski County Special School District, to \u201cteach children to be better comprehenders and communicators.\u201d She works especially with at-risk youth. \u201cI tell them they can be anything they want to be, that their skin is beautiful, that their hair is magical because it can change forms. I sow seeds in kids,\u201d she said.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

After Floyd\u2019s murder, Tim Campbell, a second-year student in the Clinton School of Public Service\u2019s master\u2019s program, said he felt compelled to get people together and organize. He reached out to Writes, whom he knew \u201chad a strong community sense,\u201d and together with another friend, they organized Little Rock\u2019s first peaceful demonstration in the wake of Floyd\u2019s death, on May 30.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Campbell, 27, grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s on Wolfe Street in Little Rock, which he said \u201cwas probably considered one of the worst neighborhoods in southern America at the time.\u201d He has an early memory of police officers storming his house with guns. \u201cI remember my mom yelling out, \u2018Don\u2019t shoot my baby!\u2019 because I moved or something. I remember the militance.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

But he also has a different childhood memory of Little Rock police. \u201cI remember seeing police officers on bicycles,\u201d he said. They would stop and talk with him and other kids and give them some kind of snack or treat. \u201cWe felt like we knew police officers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

A graduate of Little Rock Central High School and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Campbell is the first in his family to receive a high school or college diploma. Several of his family members have been caught up in drugs and violence. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say that I had role models,\u201d he said. \u201cI had people that were doing things that I knew I didn\u2019t want to do.\u201d He spent two and a half years after college in West Africa in the Republic of The Gambia with the Peace Corps, where he said he learned community organizing skills. He called himself lucky to have traveled beyond Little Rock and to have gotten a broader sense of what police officers can be. For friends and family who never left Wolfe Street or other parts of inner-city Little Rock, Campbell said, they may only know the LRPD as a militant presence.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Tim Campbell. Photo by Brian Chilson.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It was in that spirit that Campbell and Writes and others, who have taken on the name The Movement, hosted a second rally, \u201cThe Big Step,\u201d in solidarity with local law enforcement officers. Little Rock Police Chief Keith Humphrey and Pulaski County Sheriff Eric Higgins, both of whom are Black, marched in the June 10 event.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Campbell and Writes have been sought out by city and state leaders. They and other organizers have met with Governor Hutchinson twice, and Writes has met with Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. Campbell was appointed to Governor Hutchinson\u2019s Task Force to Advance the State of Law Enforcement in Arkansas, which will review state law enforcement practices and procedures and make recommendations to the governor on how they can be improved.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Writes said her group is promoting civic activity, encouraging Black people to vote and to run for office. \u201cWe\u2019re not represented enough, so we don\u2019t have a voice,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need more Blacks and people of color to get in positions of power. We need people to continue to be the mayors, representatives, senators, policemen, prosecutors and DAs.\u201d Campbell plans to continue working in community politics after he finishes at the Clinton School.

Writes said, \u201cWe\u2019re not just jumping on this trending moment and forgetting all about it. We\u2019re going to continue to unify and not just be reactive, but be proactive.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Lindsey Millar is the founder of the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network and the editor of the <\/em>Arkansas Times.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This reporting is courtesy of the\u00a0Arkansas Nonprofit News Network<\/a>, an independent, nonpartisan news project dedicated to producing journalism that matters to Arkansans.<\/em><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Across the state, from Bentonville to Crossett, thousands of Arkansans have taken to the streets in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and to protest police brutality. Some are seasoned organizers. Some are first-time protesters. Some have served on task forces, met with elected leaders, received death threats. They are racially diverse, and they span generations. And they have decided, despite a pandemic that put them at risk when gathering, to keep coming out. Here are a few of their stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":22484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,10],"tags":[231,233,230,237,235,232,236,239],"class_list":["post-22464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-general","tag-daniella-scott","tag-deairra-griffin","tag-george-floyd-protests","tag-kymara-seals","tag-latoya-garza","tag-shay-holloway","tag-terry-engel","tag-tim-campbell"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018Somebody is out here doing something\u2019: Portraits of protest in Arkansas - Arkansas Nonprofit News Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/arknews.org\/index.php\/2020\/06\/19\/somebody-is-out-here-doing-something-portraits-of-protest-in-arkansas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018Somebody is out here doing something\u2019: Portraits of protest in Arkansas - Arkansas Nonprofit News Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Across the state, from Bentonville to Crossett, thousands of Arkansans have taken to the streets in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and to protest police brutality. Some are seasoned organizers. Some are first-time protesters. Some have served on task forces, met with elected leaders, received death threats. They are racially diverse, and they span generations. And they have decided, despite a pandemic that put them at risk when gathering, to keep coming out. 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