Carlisle residents add their voice to George Floyd protests with rally on Public Square

• Charles Thompson/PennLive
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  Thompson has covered state government for The Patriot since 1999. Prior to that, he had covered various Cumberland County municipalities and school districts. Thompson lives in Carlisle with his wife, Beth, and their two children.

(Carlisle) – Several hundred people from Carlisle and surrounding communities converged on the Square Saturday evening to add their voices to protesters around the nation for police reforms and racial justice in the wake of the May 25 death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died while in police custody in Minneapolis.

The racially-mixed, inter-generational crowd lined the West High Street corridor with signs and banners, encouraging passing motorists to either honk in support or just to bear witness to the fact that there are voices for changes in small-town America, too.

“I love this, man,” said James Perkins, a Mississippi native who moved to Carlisle about 15 years ago. “More white people out here than black people, and that’s exactly what we need… Because we (black people) can’t win the fight alone. It’s going to take everybody to do that.”

Names of the growing list of people of color who have died during encounters with rogue police officers or self-appointed vigilantes were scrawled in a roll of sorrow on the South Hanover Street sidewalk in from of Cumberland County’s historic Old Courthouse, a building which in silent acknowledgment of America’s painful racial history, bears scars from a Civil War skirmish in July 1863.

And an open-mic period gave an impromptu list of speakers a chance to encourage everyone present to work together for change.

The day was boisterous, with splinter groups taking off at one point for a march to the Carlisle Police station on Lincoln Street, and another small group occupying one of the lanes of travel on busy West High Street for a few minutes with a simulated die-in. But for the most part it was peaceful, with no violence and only a handful of sharp verbal confrontations.

Organizers put down a chalked roll of sorrow in front of the Old Courthouse bearing names of people of color who have died at the hands of rogue police, self-appointed vigilantes, or in hate crimes.

Carlisle Police appeared to keep their distance through the day. No officers from the borough or the county sheriff’s department were seen at the protest, though with a network of surveillance cameras posted throughout the downtown it was possible they were performing crowd control from a distance.

Mayor Tim Scott, who is Carlisle’s first black mayor, said that was by design and out of respect for the event.

“The plan was to keep a very low profile with our police department. We just wanted to step back and let them exercise their Constitutional rights.

One recurring theme was a call from African-Americans present for active help from their white friends and allies to bring about progress, especially as this movement tried to evolve from street demonstrations to tangible action.

“I’m still talking to my white community right now because we know… if you all want laws changed. You all know how to get things done. So we need you all to start that movement legally. Because you all are not going to be victimized for it. You all are not going to be attacked for it,” said Shani Zuri, a 35-year-old Brooklyn transplant who came to Carlisle about six years ago.

“We need you to write letters. We need the community organizations – the Y, the football team, the soccer team, Dickinson, the schools – … we need you all to be on the front lines for that. I appreciate all of you being here. I just need you to go further with it. Right?”

Others talked about broader changes like ending what many consider the “over-policing” of predominantly black neighborhoods, and even addressing the daily indignities that many black people say they routinely endure, like the African-American man birdwatching in New York’s Central Park who had the police called on him because he asked a woman to leash her dog.

Amari McFadden, a 15-year-old who will be attending Carlisle High School in the fall, said it’s mightily important to have protests like this in Carlisle.

“This isn’t just us protesting because George Floyd died,” McFadden said. “It happens everywhere. It doesn’t just happen in Minneapolis… Everyone’s tired of it.”

McFadden said even in Carlisle, he’s felt the good and bad sides of policing. He’s enjoyed getting to know some of the officers, he said, who have joined he and his friends playing basketball at various times in the borough’s Memorial Park.

But McFadden said he’s also seen officers stop and question he and some of his minority friends when they’re just sitting around, when groups of white kids are “ding-dong ditching,” slang for ringing a doorbell and running away before the resident can answer, or doing other things and they are seemingly left alone.

“So there’s good cops and bad cops. It all depends on their day, because they have bad days too.”

Saturday’s rally, the third such show of support in Carlisle in a week, was organized by a group of friends operating under the moniker “Solidarity in the Square” who were looking for a way to take a stand against racial injustices of all kinds.

“These people (of color) deal with this stuff every day. Even if we don’t hear about it. Even of we don’t see it, it’s here. It’s everywhere,” said Maddy Brown, a white woman who was one of the organizers. “So we wanted to bring out as much support for change as we could.”

Zuri said her overall experience in Carlisle has been “pretty decent,” but “I feel like every day, I have to know that I’m a black woman every day. I don’t ever forget that. When I’m walking down the street, if somebody looks at me a certain way, I’m not wondering if they’re having a bad day. I’m wondering if that happened because I’m black.”

She said this week’s demonstrations are welcome affirmation that more of those people than she might have suspected do in fact have her back. Now she wants them to take the next step, be more vocal about, and join the push for change.

“We need to make sure that our voices are heard through you, because you have the connections so to speak. You know the judges. You know the lawyers. They’re going to listen to you. So you all have to use that. Don’t say you care about us, don’t say you love us, and then you’re not helping the cause.”

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