Darrissa Carter-Daye wasn’t standing with thousands of people on Spring Garden Road in downtown Halifax Monday evening because she wanted to.
“It shouldn’t be why am I attending this, but why do I have to attend something like this?” Carter-Daye asked.
“I shouldn’t have to be coming out here and have to stand up for my people, their rights and their right to live.”
The 23-year-old woman’s comments come a week after George Floyd, a black man, died after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. The officer, Derek Chauvin, ignored Floyd’s cries that he couldn’t breathe.
.@DericoSymonds says let George Floyd’s death be the last. “No more.” pic.twitter.com/xzKROMRREk
— Nicole Munro (@Nicole__Munro) June 1, 2020
Floyd’s death was captured on video and it, along with Regis Korchinski-Paquet's death, has since sparked days of protests in the United States and Canada.
But Lynn Jones, an African Nova Scotian leader and activist, said the number of people in attendance at Monday evening’s peaceful protest, Take a Knee to Make a Stand, was something she had never seen before.
“Many of us elders have been in the fight for a very long time and sometimes when you’re in that fight, you really think it’s all for naught because you really don’t know if anybody’s listening or if anybody thinks they can make a difference and then you come to something like this,” Jones said.
Sharisha Benedict, who organized the event with her cousin Catherine Wright, said she wasn’t expecting such a large turnout.
Thousands of people, including some Halifax Regional Police officers in uniform, took a knee on Spring Garden Road and observed a moment of silence for people of colour who unjustly lost their lives.
Applause and chants were heard in waves as word made its way from the speakers in front of the Park Lane Mall to people further back in the crowd.
“I never expected the response, but that’s what we need. To keep the conversation alive, keep talking and to keep holding people accountable,” Benedict said.
“If you feel like you’re being discriminated against, say something, and if you see something, say something. You have a voice to speak out.”
Some of the signs in the crowd read, “Silence = compliance,” “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor” and “Privilege is when you think something is not a problem because it’s not your problem.”
DeRico Symonds, who has led peaceful protests calling on Halifax Regional Police to ban street checks after a report stated black people were almost six times more likely to be street-checked than white people, said the rally showed Halifax is paying attention to racism, but action on it needs to go beyond rallies.
Symonds encouraged people to ask politicians what they’re doing for the black community and people of colour and to vote accordingly.
“Do not let the deaths be in vain. Do not go home and do nothing,” Symonds said.
“We cannot go on to continue and tolerate this stuff anymore. The stuff that we’re doing right now, the speeches we’re having right now, the marches we’re doing right now are going to affect people and generations of people we have not met yet.”
Carter-Daye echoed Symonds’s thoughts.
“This is not another rally or trend on Twitter or something for people to talk about and then pass off two seconds later,” she said.
“This is something that needs to change and we need to make the change happen now. People’s lives are at stake here.”
