What began as a counter-protest to a ‘Back the Blue’ pro-police demonstration in Brighton Tuesday became a rally exclusively in support of Black Lives Matter, organized by Allston Brighton For Justice, a new neighborhood advocacy organization.
“Our community needs to uphold messages of the importance of Black lives and the harms of police brutality,” organizer Christine Varriale said. “We wanted to give our neighbors an outlet to support Black Lives Matter, especially when residents ‘back the blue.’ We couldn't be silent and let a movement whose origins are racist and anti-Black be unopposed in our neighborhood.”
Pro-police protesters had planned to demonstrate outside the Brighton police station on Washington Street Tuesday evening and buy dinner for the officers working that night, according to an online post in a neighborhood Facebook group. By the time the hundreds of counter-protesters gathered a block away at Cunningham Park, the protest had already been canceled, due to an uproar from the community.
Brighton resident Liz Betancourt said she was happy to see an organized protest in her own community. “People of color here, we are marginalized within this community, with rent prices, job opportunities, all of that,” she said. “It shouldn't all be about Nubian Square — yes, we need Nubian Square, but we also need people in little areas like this that are predominantly white.
“We still wanted to make sure we came out and showed some solidarity as a neighborhood with Black lives and a number of movements that have been happening across the city,” organizer Ricky Meinke said. “Allston-Brighton is a predominantly white neighborhood in Boston, so a lot of these messages are new for a lot of folks.”
Allston-Brighton is made up of 66 percent white residents and less than five percent Black or African-American residents, according to census data. That’s part of the reason why Varriale, Meinke and other residents say they organized Allston Brighton For Justice, as a way of formalizing their support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“We also didn't want to put more pressure on Black leadership whose bandwidth is already being used so much across the city in terms of organizing,” Meinke said. “And we still want to make sure we could denounce the message that other white residents were upholding in the neighborhood and making sure folks knew that that was not the way of so many of our residents.”
With no one to oppose them, the crowd marched down the block to the police station on Washington Street, where seven police officers stood on the steps looking down at the chanting crowd. Organizer Sarah Iwany read the names of officers who have complaints filed against them, recited the salaries of those officers, and recited racial disparities in arrests, as documented by city data and the American Civil Liberties Union. After remarks, protesters sat and lay on the ground for a silent “die-in” for eight minutes and 46 seconds — the amount of time Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the neck of George Floyd.
Before the crowd marched to Oak Square and peacefully dispersed, Roxbury-based activist Ernst Jean-Jacques stood before the steps of the police department and gave the protesters a call to action.
“I ask you to think of one thing you’re going to do when we leave here,” he said. “This is cool, but we need to do one more thing. I’m physically tired of just yelling, we need to go out and vote.”
Ernst gestured to the officers standing atop the steps before turning back to face the crowd.
“These gentlemen have bosses too,” he said. “We need to start at the top and go to the bottom.”
