‘This is what community looks like.’ Crowd sends message on march down State Line Road
At least 100 people gathered at Weltner Park in Prairie Village on Saturday night to call for justice, equality and solidarity.
After speakers addressed the crowd, the group marched down State Line Road chanting “Show me what community looks like. This is what community looks like.”
During the event, aptly named “State Line March,” crowds were largely positive early in the evening. As the group marched south toward Leawood, drivers at a QuikTrip waiting for the protesters to pass honked in support. A Wendy’s employee clapped as protesters passed.
But not everyone welcomed the group. One resident near 85th Terrace said “Stay on the main street,” to the crowd. Another man made a shooing motion to the crowd. During the march back to the park, the same residents were standing outside — this time, speaking with two police officers.
Earlier in the evening, while the crowd gathered in the park, the Rev. Randy Fikki of Unity Southeast Kansas City, asked everyone present to give themselves a hand.
“By showing up today, you are showing that lives matter, that Black lives matter, indigenous lives matter, people of color matter,” Fikki said. “Every human being matters.”
Later in the evening, as the crowd paused at a parking lot on State Line Road near West 86th Terrace, Fikki told the crowd, “This is a movement not a moment.”
Attorney and activist Stacy Shaw, with two people bearing the Kansas and Missouri flags behind her, told the crowd she had been afraid since she was arrested last week. She said fear is the “most effective weapon that political leadership and the police and federal agents have against us.”
She’s been maced repeatedly, she said. And now, “I’m not afraid,” Shaw told the crowd, who cheered for her.
“You cannot call us terrorists because the foundation of America started with an American revolution,” Shaw said. She later added: “And the mayor and the city council care more about a statue, more about a window, than they do about the flesh and blood right here.”
Shaw, who was arrested at a protest in Overland Park last week, said she sang freedom songs in the cells as she thought of Sandra Bland, a Black woman who was found hanging in a jail cell three days after being arrested in a 2015 traffic stop. Shaw said that if anything happened, she wanted the camera in her cell to record her singing about freedom.
She said that when talking about revolution, people need to understand the definition.
“We are talking about activity or movement designed to effect fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation,” Shaw said, referring to the dictionary definition of revolution.
The protest was organized by The Miller Dream LLC, Shaw, the White Rose Society, Love Thy Neighbor, No Justice No Peace OP, Wall of Moms KC, Black Rainbow and OneStruggle KC.
Shortly after 8:30 p.m., protesters marched back to the park. On the way, Shaw led the crowd in singing: “We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” They later swapped out “freedom,” for “equity,” “freedom,” “Black lives,” and “peace.”
Around 9 p.m. at the intersection of 85th Terrace and State Line Road, the crowd stopped in the crosswalks and took a knee for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in honor of George Floyd, who died after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck. Protesters were asked to hold their breath for as long as they could. And when they ran out of breath, they were asked to yell, “I can’t breathe.”
The sound of voices yelling that phrase filled the night.
‘We stand with protesters’
An open letter published this week on Change.org by Prairie Village resident and Rockhurst University English professor Jameelah Lang called for Prairie Village residents to stand with Black Lives Matter and support peaceful protests.
“We stand with protesters who bring awareness to racial injustice, structural oppression, and police brutality in this country,” Lang wrote in the letter.
The letter also discussed the arrest of four at a July 25 protest in Overland Park, where one man was charged with battery of a law enforcement officer.
Lang said on Friday that she hoped her neighbors would show up Saturday evening. She said neighborhoods like Prairie Village historically have been shielded from race issues. Lang said she wants her neighbors to see the protests as a conversation, not an attack.
“Those of us who are people of color are not acting in a vacuum,” Lang said. “We’re responding to over 400 years of oppression.”
She said that in neighborhood forums, people have expressed discomfort with protests.
“Confronting racism is uncomfortable and that’s OK. We need that discomfort if we ever hope to move past this moment where Black men are being choked by police officers in broad daylight in our country in 2020.”
This story was originally published August 1, 2020 at 8:25 PM.
