‘Enough is enough.’ Sarasota protest draws hundreds who send message on police brutality
Hundreds in Sarasota braved the rain in a Wednesday evening protest advocating for police reform in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.
For hours and miles, the group wound through downtown streets and neighborhood roads, calling for local law enforcement to be held accountable for brutal acts of violence.
“Enough is enough,” said Natasha Clemons, who spoke at a planned news conference outside Sarasota City Hall, calling for the deputies involved in her son’s death to be held accountable. “I want and I demand those officers to be fired. I want them to be prosecuted.”
Protesters began their peaceful demonstration in downtown Sarasota around 3 p.m. and continued well into the night. Officers with the Sarasota Police Department and the Florida Highway Patrol did not confront marchers. Instead, they redirected traffic as demonstrators occupied intersections and roadways.
The march headed from downtown to Newtown, and past the place where, in 2012, Rodney Mitchell was fatally shot by Sarasota County sheriff’s deputies during a traffic stop. Two months later, the agency ruled that the shooting was justified.
Clemons, Mitchell’s mother, has been advocating for justice in her son’s case ever since. Her calls were reignited after a series of nationwide protests sparked by the killing of Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in Minneapolis after ex-officer Derek Chauvin was seen on video kneeling on his neck for about nine minutes.
Organizers chanted the names of Mitchell, Floyd and others who have died as a result of what they call police brutality. To honor Floyd, two marchers re-enacted Chauvin’s kneeling technique while hundreds in the crowd chanted “I can’t breathe,” a phrase that has become a rallying cry in the movement’s fight against violent policing.
Hours later, the group marched down the center of U.S. 301 and huddled around a median in the rain. On the concrete platform, leaders and participants of the march passed a megaphone from hand to hand and shared ideas about what it might take to create meaningful change in society.
Policies that excuse and allow discrimination against people of color must be removed from our society, said a 29-year-old woman who declined to be identified out of fear of retaliation from local law enforcement.
“I’m not just here for police reform. We want people held responsible for their actions, but a lot of institutions have systemic racism built-in because that’s what our nation was built on,” she said. “It leaves black people behind. I’m marching for justice reform, in general.”
Clemons recalled a different style of policing from some officers in her youth that she said made the community more comfortable with law enforcement.
“I knew genuine officers. They weren’t quick to take us to jail. They were able to chastise us, and we were comfortable with them,” Clemons explained. “They would let us know what we’d done wrong.”
Clemons said that she is now ready to take the community’s issues with law enforcement to Tallahassee.
“It’s been eight years, so they’ve had time to change,” Clemons said. “The only thing that’s happened is more lives have been taken.”
Organizers of the march showed appreciation for those attending a protest for the first time. But the effort to make change can’t stop there, they said.
“We do this consistently. It’s a lifestyle for us,” said Deedra Zee, a leader of the Sarasota-Manatee Black Lives Matter Alliance.
Zee called on allies of the movement to amplify black voices. She also likened the Black Lives Matter movement to how firefighters do their jobs.
“When there’s a fire, firefighters don’t spray water at all the houses, only the one that’s on fire,” she said. “All those houses matter, but the one that matters now is the one that’s one fire — and black lives are on fire.”
Other speakers called for action in people’s private and political lives — supporting black artists and businesses, showing up at local government meetings, researching the history of racism in the United States.
Organizers say another protest is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. Thursday at Marina Jacks in downtown Sarasota.
This story was originally published June 4, 2020 at 4:22 AM.
