It was part protest, part picnic. The young couple sat on the grass at Juilliard Park while their children, 1 and 5 years old, climbed on their parents as if they were playground structures.
This was around 6 p.m. Saturday, during the open mic session of a 24-hour Black Lives Matter protest that had begun six hours earlier at Doyle Community Park, and would soon migrate to Old Courthouse Square, where protesters planned to stay the night.
The couple, Devin and Telena, preferred not to give their last names, due to the political nature of the event, which drew some 150 people to Juilliard Park. They said they hadn’t been to any of the earlier protests held in Santa Rosa since the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed May 25 in Minneapolis. Floyd died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
But it was important to the family to be at this demonstration, said Devin, who believes that these are momentous days in the history of this nation. “It feels like we’ve been given an opportunity to address issues that have been in our system for 400 years,” he said.
“My daughter’s been wanting to come to one of these marches since we told her what happened to George Floyd.”
“She thought ‘march’ meant there would be a marching band,” added Telena, while fishing graham crackers out of a handbag. “But she’s still happy to be here.”
Once the open mic ended, attendees were encouraged to attend a half-dozen “classes,” including “City Budget Explained,” “Know Your Rights” and “Street Medicine 101,” conducted by EMTs Eris Cambron and Ted McDolan, who held their audience rapt by providing tips such as:
“Arterial bleeding is bright red, and spurting.”
“Remember, if you get tear-gassed, no milk, no Maalox” in your eyes. “Just water or saline. And keep blinking.”
While this knowledge was definitely valuable, it really wasn’t that kind of protest. The event was long on civility and education, short on the raw passion characterized by a few other demonstrations in recent weeks.
In the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s death, “there was a lot of anger, and rightly so,” said Alea Sanders, 24, a paralegal and one of the organizers of the event that began at noon Saturday and was scheduled to end at the same time Sunday, with a brunch in Old Courthouse Square. “And people should still be angry.”
As emotions are less raw, she said, “We’ve been given some great opportunities to educate ourselves” on issues that will the sustain momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Foremost among those issues, at this protest, was Santa Rosa’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year, and the police department’s hefty share of it.
While it was called a protest, the event felt more like a combination of seminar and sleepover, with chanting, signs and music. At 4:30, the protesters began migrating from Doyle Park to Juilliard Park, a mile west. Around dusk they embarked on a silent, candlelit march to Old Courthouse Square, a half-mile north, to honor minorities killed by police.
At the north entrance to Doyle Park, a 20-year-old named Sascha, who declined to give his last name, had parked his father’s mini-bus. Protesters who intended to spend the night in Old Courthouse Square could stash their sleeping bags and backpacks with him.
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Santa Rosa's 24-hour police reform protest features seminars, speeches, overnight camp - Santa Rosa Press Democrat
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