A fourth consecutive night of protests grew tense Sunday as demonstrators shouted obscenities at police officers and again marched through downtown Atlanta.
Hundreds of protesters gathered in and around Centennial Park on Sunday night to demonstrate against police-involved shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota. At one point, the event grew confrontational. Protesters marched directly through traffic and hurled obscenities at officers lined up shoulder-to-shoulder.
Many of the protesters, part of a peaceful rally in Centennial, had dispersed by 10 p.m., ending their night after City Councilman Kwanza Hall joined up and told them, “let’s just be safe, let’s be nonviolent and let’s keep working together.”
But another, separate group of a few hundred continued to march. Around 11 p.m., they made contact with troopers and police officers outside the state Capitol before eventually moving on. Organizers had urged marchers to avoid direct confrontations with police and to continue moving instead of lingering in front of police officers who were blocking them from going down major Atlanta thoroughfares.
As of 11 p.m., no arrests had been reported. Officials announced Monday morning, however, that three protesters were arrested.
Sunday night event's began around 7 p.m., when several dozen protesters quickly turned into several hundred inside Centennial Park.
Veronica Moore and her daughters, 8-year-old Aniyah and 5-year-old Mallonie, were among them. Both girls held colorful signs calling for peace.
“When we say no more, we mean forever,” Aniyah said.
Early on, an outsider approached a small group of protesters gathered under a tree near the park’s Olympic fountain. He called for violence against police officers, shouting “if one of them shoot at you, shoot back.”
The protesters either ignored him or stressed their nonviolent mission.
Connell McCall was wearing a shirt that said “screaming in silence.”
“The world wants African American people to act the way it always perceives them,” he said. “… But we don’t have to be like that. We don’t have to be belligerent.”
Protesters also marched around Atlanta on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. More than 10,000 participated Friday and police reported one arrest. Saturday night's protest, which bled into Sunday morning, was smaller but more tense, leading to 11 arrests.
As of 11:30 p.m., Sunday night’s rally was less confrontational by comparison. Among the protesters mobilizing were law school students and civil rights activists.
They raised their fists and sang the “Black National Anthem.”
Some carried signs simply saying “Freedom” and “We Deserve to Be Treated Equal.”
“It’s been a very rough week for our country,” said Shaun Moore of Lithonia, a law school student at Georgia State University. Asked about the fatigue setting in with police amid all the protests, Moore said: “I understand what they are saying, but we are also fatigued with the constant news we are seeing with people being killed.”
Kayla Bumpus of Atlanta, who organized the demonstration at the park, said she has witnessed police wasting resources at the demonstrations.
“They are doing stuff that is unnecessary,” she said.
Kevin Hairston, a U.S. Army veteran from Fayetteville, carried a homemade sign that says “I Served. Don’t Shoot.”
He glued to his signs photos of his six children, ages 6 months to 6 years old.
“I’m just thinking that if I get pulled over one day, what is going to happen to me and who is going to be there to raise my kids?” he said.
He had a ready answer for concerns about police getting tired patrolling the recent demonstrations.
“I understand they are getting tired, but we are getting tired as well,” he said. “They need to step up and do something about it as well.”
Hairston’s girlfriend, Jamilah Bowe of Fayetteville, said the demonstrations help police understand the protesters’ concerns.
“I understand them being tired, but they have to be fatigued to understand how tired we are,” she said. “As long as we are standing out here, they have to stand out here.”
The fatal shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana, she added, show that “for black people, they shoot first and think later.”
Irma Soto of Oconee County carried a “Black Lives Matter” sign, standing behind her daughter, one of the organizers.
“The fatigue comes in when you don’t understand,” she said of police. “Because they don’t understand, they get nervous and trigger happy. We have to do more of this to bring the awareness that everybody black is not a criminal. So don’t think that way.”
Local attorney Mawuli Mel Davis spoke passionately to the crowd gathered at Centennial, declaring the American justice system broken and advocating both for unity and for boycotts.
He also appeared to respond to comments made earlier Sunday by civil rights icon Andrew Young.
“The fact is,” Davis said, “nothing we’ve done in the past has been the answer. So I’m not telling any of these young people what to do and what not to do.”
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