Marching to a rally

More than 100 people carrying signs and chanting slogans marched down The Esplanade and into downtown Chico Saturday (Dec. 13) to show solidarity with protests that have taken place across the country in the past month over the killings of black suspects by white police officers.

“Black lives matter,” read several signs, announcing the theme of the march and rally to follow.

The protesters had gathered in front of the Chico Nut Co. warehouse at The Esplanade and 11th Avenue, where they were addressed by the march’s co-organizer Jaquan Sayres. The march was to be “nonviolent for a peaceful cause,” he said, to “bring awareness of the dehumanizing of people of color, and the militarization of the police.”

Sayres, 22, was born in San Bernardino and has lived in Chico for seven years. His local effort with co-organizer Theodore Ulsh joined those of Donnell Davidson, who’s been carrying protest signs off and on for the past few weeks in downtown Chico, and Mandi Ranalla, who organized a rally at the City Plaza with the help of the Chico Peace and Justice Center for later that day.

“The obvious motivation for me here is to bring awareness in our community because what is happening across the country is not an isolated event,” Sayres said. “To say that it can’t happen here is preposterous.”

The local movement is the result of the now well-known cases of Michael Brown of Ferguson, Mo., Eric Garner of New York City and 12-year-old Clevelander Tamir Rice, who head a list that seems to grow daily of black suspects killed by white police officers. The protests were initially triggered when grand juries in the Brown and Garner cases chose to not indict the officers in question.

“We just have to raise awareness on the police brutality that is increasing in our country,” Sayres said. “Everyone has the right to due process, the right to a fair trial, so it’s really important that we bring that to people’s awareness. Why do cops get special protection because they wear a badge?”

Sayres said he has had a number of encounters with local police, including one earlier that week. While he was standing on a sidewalk in Chapmantown near the Dorothy F. Johnson Center talking on his cellphone, he was stopped and questioned by a police officer.

“I am a law-abiding citizen but that does not stop the profiling,” he said. “I can’t stand on the street corner and talk on a phone to a friend without being asked if I work at the Dorothy Johnson Center or why I’m standing there talking on the phone? If that wasn’t an issue, I wouldn’t be doing this march.”

Participants traveled south along the median between the northbound lane of The Esplanade and the frontage road. As they walked, more joined and took up chants such as “No justice, no peace,” and “I can’t breathe,” the latter in reference to the death of Garner, who repeated those words while being held down by New York City police officers.

They crossed The Esplanade at Chico High School, filled the southbound lane where it turns into Broadway and continued their walk to Fifth Street, all the while followed by a Chico police SUV.

By the time they made it to the City Plaza, the crowd had grown to more than 100.

“We made it and no one got arrested,” exclaimed a pumped-up Sayres to the cheers of those gathered.

The officer who’d been following them parked his vehicle across Main Street in front of the police substation. When questioned about the event, he said he couldn’t really comment to the press while on duty, but also said the marchers did nothing to warrant arrests.

Many stayed in the park holding their signs for the next few hours, waiting for the rally to begin, which it did just as the sun was setting. Sayres was one of the first to address the gathering, which had grown to perhaps 250, and he described the march.

“It was very good, very peaceful,” he said. “Actually the police were there and they were very respectful to us expressing our First Amendment rights.”

Despite what he had said earlier in the day about being questioned in Chapmantown, Sayres said it was time to “get past just thinking that all cops are bad, that they are all out there to get us.”

“We did this march to see how law enforcement would react to people standing in support, and they were very supportive of us,” he said. “I feel very good about Chico in the sense of how they handled it today, but as a black man in Chico, I still feel that there needs to be a lot of work done.”

Irma Jordan, president of the Butte County NAACP, said her organization was in full support of the nationwide protests.

“We’re standing in solidarity with thousands across the nation with our hands up and our breath short,” she said to the plaza crowd. “We stand for the right and not for the wrong. For the Michael Brown family and the citizens of Ferguson who are some of the most diligent, persistent people I’ve ever seen enduring demonstrations and protesting.”

Law enforcement officers should face the same legal consequences as the average citizen, she said, adding that progress is getting made in Butte County.

“We have reason to celebrate because we have a good working relationship with our law enforcers in Oroville and we are working on this throughout the county,” she said, referring to an effort that began four years ago called BSC, which stands for building safe communities through law enforcement.

“We’ve talked about it and soon all law enforcers throughout Butte County will have body cameras,” she said. Indeed, Chico Police Chief Kirk Trostle has said that his department is looking for ways to fund body cameras, which have risen as a portal to police transparency, and will do so when able. “We have had a head start, so to speak,” Jordan said about the dialogue that’s begun.

Her comments were greeted with enthusiastic applause.

Standing near the rear of the crowd was Butte County Supervisor Larry Wahl, who said he attended the rally out of “curiosity.”

“The nationwide news aspect is troubling to me,” he said. “I think that it’s being overplayed, quite frankly. These isolated, coincidental incidents that are not related to each other have prompted something that who knows where it’s going to lead?”

Toward the end of the rally, 19-year-old organizer Ranalla called for a moment of silence, which was followed by a woman singing a rendition of “We Shall Overcome,” the song that became the anthem of the 1960s civil rights movement.

“Every one of us has something to say that deserves to be heard and demands to be heard,” she said.