By Allison Perrine | Photos by Patrick Olivero
RED BANK – A passionate call for justice and equality permeated the air in Red Bank Tuesday as at least 500 protestors young and old marched through borough streets supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.
The march, organized by Calvary Baptist Church and the Count the Children organization, sent the crowd from Marine Park to Count Basie Fields with signs in hand, chanting messages like “Don’t Shoot,” “No Justice, No Peace” and “Black Lives Matter.”
“This gift of breath and life does not come with requirement of being born to any certain ethnicity, nor does it require you to be born a certain skin color,” said Pastor Kenneth McGee of Calvary Baptist Church. “But I’m afraid in this current society African Americans and other minorities have never been seen or viewed as individuals, for we are still regarded and referred to as animals and are deemed expendable as if we did not matter. I stand before you today to tell you that Black Lives Matter.”
Most of the event was held at Count Basie Fields, where protestors filled the bleachers and listened to speeches from community members. Volunteers set up a voter registration table, and snacks and waters were provided. Most protestors wore masks and kept a distance from others in the stands.
And while the speakers were from different backgrounds and upbringings, they shared one common goal – to end police brutality and demand equality for people of color.
“We live in a system that seeks to distract. We live in a system that seeks to divide,” said Kerwin Webb, president of the NAACP Greater Red Bank Area. “And the unaffected Americans say nothing. But there’s something different about this moment. There’s something different about this time. There’s something different about these deaths because we are done dying.”
Webb thanked everyone who came to the march, but stressed that marching is not enough. Talk to politicians, push religious leaders to do something, he said passionately. “If this is just a photo-op for you, we don’t need you.”
Mayor Pasquale Menna took part in the march, as did members of the borough council. At Count Basie Fields, Menna asked the crowd to take a knee with him during a moment of silence to honor Floyd’s life, the black Minnesota man who died when a white police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes during an arrest. Later, the crowd took a knee for 8 minutes and 46 seconds to honor Floyd.
“In the stillness of that silence while we were kneeling together, we remember not just one victim so graphically displayed in our own living rooms on television, but we also recall the anonymous, the nameless, the unrecognized victims of systemic racism,” said Menna.
Robin McGee, first lady of Calvary Baptist Church, shared some of her fears as a parent of two black young men.
“I fear that our sons and daughters won’t come home safely when they leave the house because racism is outside their front door. I fear because our sons and daughters wear hoodies when they leave the house and somehow that’s threatening,” she said. “I fear because some that are supposed to serve and protect have fear themselves, so brown-skinned citizens are treated as hostile and are met with preconceived notions and guns drawn.”
Closing out the nearly four-hour protest was Larry Hamm, chair of the People’s Organization for Progress. He gave a passionate speech about holding racists accountable, demanding justice and teaching black history in schools.
“Every 28 hours a black person is killed by the police. When the sun goes down today there will be another name added to the list,” said Hamm. “What is the origin of police brutality? It begins with the laws passed in Colonial America that said a master had the right to take the life of his slave because you could not convict an owner for killing his property.”
“The police brutality that we experience today is the extrapolations of the origins of police,” he said.
The protest was peaceful from start to finish. Before the march started at 3 p.m., Pastor McGee made sure to ask the crowd to be peaceful and to thank the Red Bank Police Department for everything they are doing. Police Chief Darren McConnell took part in the event and several officers walked with protestors to Count Basie Fields at the front of the crowd beside McGee and others.
The article originally appeared in the June 11 – 17, 2020 print edition of The Two River Times.
