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Community Service, Teach-Ins, How Protestors in RVA are Moving Beyond Marches

Mallory Noe-Payne
/
RADIOIQ

 

 

After months of demonstrations against racial injustice, the Black Lives Matter marches in Richmond have become more infrequent. But that doesn’t mean protestors aren’t still active in other ways. 

 

Music blares from a speaker across the street from Mosby Court, one of Richmond’s public housing neighborhoods. Organizers have set up a table and tent. There’s a cooler of cold waters, popsicles, and bags of household supplies. 

“Tell all your friends,” says one man as he hands out plastic bags to people wandering over. “You can have a mask as well, have a blessed day.” 

Kevin Wallace came over from across the street to pick some stuff up. He rifles through the supplies: soap, deodorant, toothbrush. 

This event was organized by a group called the 381 Movement. Melody Peebles explains their name. 

“Dr. Martin Luther King, he and Rosa Parks, they boycotted on the Montgomery bus for 381 days,” she says. “And so (we at) the 381 Movement we want to protest and just be out in the community giving back for 381 days, and then another 381 days. It doesn’t stop, you know what I mean?” 

It’s about keeping the movement sustainable, and long lasting. Which means thinking about what comes next. 

The young leaders were part of this summer’s Black Lives Matter marches in Richmond. But since then they’ve also hosted school supply drives and community clean ups. Justice Peebles founded the group. He’d been out night after night in Richmond protesting police brutality. Then he and others were victims of that brutality -- tear gassed. 

It's good to have people marching, but it's better to have people building a community. It takes both.

“I think that just made us stronger and made us more unified, being in the trenches with each other,” Peebles says. 

He adds that marching was a great first step,  and that they’re still doing it, but organizing community events like this is part of their next step. w

“It’s good to have people marching, but it’s better to have people building a community. It takes both,” Justice Peebles says. “How do uplift the community? How do we reach out and get policies changed? How do we build policies?”  

Events like this are also another option for those not comfortable taking to the streets. 

Vinicius Desouza is one of the volunteers helping out today. He protested some during the day this summer. But at night he felt threatened by the police presence and the possibility of violence. 

“Because there were a lot of things happening...tear gas and rubber bullets being shot at people, people throwing things at police provoking them to do something,” he recalls. 

As a Brazilian-born immigrant he was afraid of how an encounter with police could go wrong. But he knows what it’s like to face discrimination and he wanted to support the BLM movement. 

“I want to be a part of that. Cause I would want someone to stick up for me,” says Desouza. 

The same goes for Bryce Yancey. He’s a father and didn’t want to take his kids out to march at night. Instead he has his daughter here with him today. He wants this predominantly Black community to know they have white allies. 

“It’s the least we can do I guess to come out and bring some stuff and hand it out and make them feel like they’re not alone,” says Yancey. “I think that’s probably the biggest takeaway for me is that they feel like they’re not alone and that people that look like me are here for them.” 

Community service events are just one way protestors have moved beyond marches. Another group called Reclamation Richmond holds weekly events to teach about police abolition. They’ve held the teach-ins consistently all summer.  

Chimere Miles recognizes the importance of marches and protests in raising awareness. But as summer fades, she says it’s time to start employing other tactics. 

“That’s the time to be drafting up those letters, those are the times to be making those calls to your policy makers,” Miles says. “So that when it’s time to make a move everybody’s informed, engaged, and ready to go.” 

Much of that kind of mobilization is also happening right now, as state lawmakers continue to meet and discuss concrete policy reform in response to this summer’s protests.

 

 

 

Mallory Noe-Payne is a Radio IQ reporter based in Richmond.
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