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A crowd of hundreds gathered in Kenosha on Saturday for a march and rally against police violence, nearly a week after an officer shot Jacob Blake, leaving the 29-year-old black man paralyzed.
Music played through a loudspeaker and someone played a guitar and sang a spiritual as the event began with the atmosphere of a community event.
Adria-Joi Watkins / AP
Adria-Joi Watkins poses with her second cousin Jacob Blake this past September. She is recovering from being seven times in the back by an American police officer.
Members of Blake’s family, Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, US Representative Gwen Moore and other community leaders were expected to speak.
“We are heartbroken and enraged, but we are firm in our demand for justice,” said Tanya Mclean, a friend of the Blake family who helped organize the event, in a statement.
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He said the Blake shooting is not an isolated incident, but part of a “brutal and racist system.”
“We are here to demand an end to police violence and systemic racism in Kenosha,” Mclean said. “No more partial reforms and useless committees. No more band-aid solutions on gunshot wounds. The time for transformative change is now. “
Kenosha Police Officer Rusten Sheskey and two other officers were responding to a domestic abuse call Sunday when Sheskey shot Blake seven times in the back. Blake is paralyzed from the shooting, his family said, and is recovering in a Milwaukee hospital.
The shooting, which was captured on cell phone video, sparked new protests against racial injustice and police brutality, just three months after George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police triggered a wider settling of accounts. about race.
Protesters have marched through the streets of Kenosha every night since the beginning of the week, escalating into riots with damage to buildings and vehicles.
On Tuesday, two people were killed by an armed civilian. The National Guard commander said on Friday that more than 1,000 Guardsmen had been deployed to help keep the peace and more were on the way.
Aniyah Ervin, a 16-year-old from Kenosha who is black, said Saturday that the week has been surreal.
Although she is part of a group that held protests against racial injustice over the summer, she said there was a feeling that police brutality was not a problem in her community, which teens call “Ke – Nowhere.”
Ervin said the Blake shooting “shows it can happen anywhere.”
Will Turner, who is black, said he brought his two sons from Madison to the march to “show them the power of peaceful protest.”
Investigators have said little about what sparked the Blake shooting.
The Kenosha Police Union said Blake had a knife and fought with the officers, putting one of them in a headlock, as two attempts to stun him with a Taser were unsuccessful. State investigators have only said that officers found a knife on the floor of the car.
In the cell phone recording recorded by a passerby, Blake walks from the curb around the front of a pickup truck to the driver’s side door as officers follow him with guns in hand and yell at him.
When Blake opens the door and leans into the truck, an officer grabs his shirt from behind and opens fire. Three of Blake’s sons were in the vehicle.
The man who recorded the video, 22-year-old Raysean White, said he heard police yelling at Blake: “Drop the knife! Drop the knife! “Before the shots broke out. White said he didn’t see a knife in Blake’s hands.
Ben Crump, an attorney for Blake’s family, said Blake did nothing to provoke the police and called for Sheskey’s arrest and the firing of the other two officers.
