‘Don’t sit back in silence’: 10th day of KC protests brings march near Swope Park
The Rev. Randy Fikki of Unity Southeast Kansas City, a church near Swope Park, said members of his congregation have been protesting at the Plaza since demonstrations began 10 days ago.
But on Friday, they began asking “why here?”
They decided to take their voices to another part of the city, away from the shopping plaza where thousands have gathered over the past week to protest the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police office Derek Chauvin.
About 60 people who gathered early Sunday afternoon in front of the church marched about a mile down the sidewalk to and from Prospect Avenue. The temperature was in the low 90s. A man rode past on a bicycle, fist raised in the air.
Protesters stopped to take a knee beneath a shady tree. A woman in a nearby house stepped onto her porch and listened as Fikki described Floyd’s death as a modern day lynching.
“The concrete was the rope,” he said. “The knee or the gun was the noose.”
The group continued down the sidewalk until they reached a bridge over U.S. Highway 71. They held their hands up as cars drove by.
All stood in silence for nearly nine minutes to represent the time the officer kept his knee on Floyd’s neck. Many holding their breath. When each finally took a gulp of air, they quietly said “I can’t breathe.”
“To know that somebody was on your neck, on your back, pressed against the concrete,” protest organizer Gregg Hollins, 32, said of Floyd. “You don’t realize how long eight minutes and 45 seconds is.”
When Fikki announced they were two minutes in, Hollins, a football coach at North Kansas City High School, said his arms were already burning.
“What were they thinking?” someone said nearby.
Monique Flenoy, 42, brought her 8-year-old daughter, Alyssa, to Sunday’s protest.
She told Alyssa about the 1965 march in Selma, Alabama. She explained that it’s similar to what they are doing.
“We stood up for something to make your voice heard,” she said, her daughter beside her. “Don’t sit back in silence. Stand up for one another and that’s what’s going to keep us all together.”
As the group returned to the church, a protester near the back picked up trash along the road.
“Thank you for your service,” a driver stopped at a light hollered out his car window.
“This is what community looks like,” the protester replied through his mask.
This story was originally published June 7, 2020 at 4:42 PM.
