'How long?' Kansas City protesters join nationwide anger, despair over black deaths
Instagram images of scenes Saturday at the Country Club Plaza by Ethan Robertson
An uprising of new anger on old embers swept across Kansas City over a hot weekend, both unnerving and steeling a community already shouldering the pandemic’s strain.
Crowds notable for their diversity swelled to hundreds upon hundreds in an outcry sparked by the death of George Floyd, a black man, who suffocated under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer, seen in this New York Times video compilation.
Cries of “Black lives matter!” and “I can’t breathe!” rose from angry but mostly peaceable demonstrators in the Country Club Plaza by day, yielding to more aggressive, more youthful anger by night.
New distress under COVID-19 had been building as lower-income communities and communities of color are suffering disproportionate pain in the number of lost jobs, lost housing, lost education as well as disproportionate numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths.
After Saturday night’s demonstrations on the Plaza became confrontational, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas installed an 8 p.m. curfew Sunday, but crowds of mostly young adults carried on the growing protest. Police declared that the protest became unlawful and clouds of teargas again fell upon the crowds.
“I know folks are hurting, but please, no matter our pain or anger, let’s make sure we all get home safely,” Lucas urged on Twitter Saturday. “I know we have a lot to fix and work on. Let’s do it together. I’m in. But, let’s not have more hurt tonight.”
Sunday, in a joint press conference with Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith, the mayor lamented the violence and destruction, saying, "That's not what this is about. What this is about is making sure that we can find justice and build justice in our community," Lucas said. "Let us hear your voices.”
“You know what, I'm a black man in America, too” Lucas said, “so I understand a lot of it.”
But five arrests Friday night were followed by 85 arrests Saturday night.
Smith, at the Sunday press conference, said the police want to be involved in the work of repairing Kansas City’s and the nation’s pain and called for an end to more destruction.
“We want to be involved and we want people's voices heard,” he said. “We are happy to do it. It's part of our job and we like to do it," the chief said. "Stop destroying our community. Stop destroying our reputation as a community.”
Through the weekend, church leaders and voices including journalist Leonard Pitts saw America’s black community worn from what is now 55 years since the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. promised a foreseeable dawning of justice — “How long? Not long . . . because truth crushed to Earth will rise again.”
By Joe Robertson/LINC writer