“You know they’re out there by the sound of the helicopters,” someone says.
It’s true, protest actions this past week in St. Petersburg are audibly traceable anywhere near downtown by the distinct hum of the news helicopters overhead. The sound of the daily procession through the city demanding, “Black Lives Matter!” It’s Sunday afternoon, 2 p.m., maybe 200 people meet in front of St. Pete’s City Hall and march down First Avenue North to the recently minted $78.5 million dollar police station. City leadership, if present, is not obvious.
“What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!”
Protesters are peaceful, they hand out cold bottles of gatorade and water, everyone wears a mask. Hand sanitizer and granola bars are plentiful. People hold signs that say: Stop Killing. Defund the police. Say his name. ACAB.
“Who’s streets? Our streets!”
Tuesday afternoon, heat rises from First Avenue North’s traffic-less road as protesters march from the police station and turn south down 16th Street. Born and raised in St. Pete, this is 25-year-old Muriel Thomas’s first protest action.
“We just want our voices heard,” she tells Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “Anyone of us could be the next victim. I just got tired of seeing that.”
St. Pete’s police chief Anthony Halloway and Mayor Rick Kriseman went outside to speak with protesters for the first time Tuesday afternoon after four days of marches.
“I see where he’s coming from,” Muriel says of Holloway, “But at the same time, I do believe that peacefully is the way for us all. And that means them, too.”
News helicopters follow the group. Cars join behind, traffic slows so protests may proceed. Derby babes skate through the march’s edges, holding signs, chanting, “If we don’t get no justice, we don’t get no peace!” Cynamon Thomas, a local protester who’s Native American Apache, is here to stand in solidarity.
“My people have been put down for hundreds of years and subjected to genocide,” she tells CL. “I stand with them as an indigenous person in America, we need to abolish the police state.”
At night things seem to get less peaceful and the official record of information from the city and it’s police department seem to be less trustworthy. In the morning on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook, people share videos of protesters silent on their knees suddenly having to run from smoke bombs from the cops in St. Pete. People screaming as chaos ensues and cops descend in what feels like surreal footage. Police say its protesters provoking, protesters say that’s some bullshit.
"We’ve been peaceful for four days,” says Cynamon. Late Sunday night there was a brief barrage of smoke bombs, flashbangs, and non-lethal rounds. She points to a deep red mark on her arm, “that’s from one of the bullets ricocheting. Luckily, I was on my roller skates.”
“No justice!, No peace!,” the protesters say. A Black man in acid wash jeans and an open black silk-robe looking shirt with white birds printed on it runs through the crowd with a bullhorn, his voice and energy seemingly endless. Terron Gland, 31, started helping organize daily peaceful protests this week after George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police. Peaceful daily actions are the goal. Montgomery’s Bus Boycott lasted 381 days, he notes.
“Black people are being peaceful, and I plan these actions during the daytime purposefully to keep them peaceful,” Terron says. “I wanna see solidarity from the community, from police, legislators and local officials.”
Tuesday’s meeting with Kriseman and Holloway only illustrated to Terron how much daily marches are needed.
“They came out and kneeled with us, but I don’t really think they care about our community,” he said. “So we’ve got to get out here everyday and show them every day. It took four days and we finally got the chief and fucking mayor to talk to us.”
His advice to those in the community is simple: “Get out here now, especially black people,” Terron says. “White people already out here, if we don’t get our own skin color out here then nothing’s gonna change.”
The march goes down 16th Street, picking up people along the way, stopping traffic past John Hopkins Middle, eliciting support from car horns, neighbors and businesses near Campbell park. Stopping at 15th Avenue South to kneel, the sister of one of the three girls that died in 2016’s high speed car chase takes a moment to collect herself. She holds a banner with the three girls’ faces on it.
“Ashaunti Butler, Dominique Battle and Lanaiya Miller were killed by the police. They stole a car, but they were killed by police and now they don’t want to do nothing about it,” she says, her voice breaking. “15, 16 and 16. They gotta stop.”
“When are we gonna do this? Every goddamn day!,” the protesters say.
The march continues, horns honk in support that weren’t honking north of Fifth Avenue S, before. The guys working at Out Dat Doe Car Sales, cheer from the fenced car lot. Motorcycles rev their engines as the march turns east down 18th Avenue S. Protesters march past the Uhuru House and Enoch Davis Center as two little boys on a pink four-wheeler ride past pumping their fists in support.
“No Trump!,” protesters say. “No KKK! No racist USA!”
Local poet and writer DJ grabs the bullhorn at the intersection of 18th Avenue S.
“When I was little, my mom used to tell me how the cops arrested my uncle,” he says, “…my father, my grandfather. They arrested everyone who looked like me. I’m tired of being looked at weird, I’m tired of being looked at like a thug.”
“Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho!,” cry protesters. “These racist cops have got to go!”
It’s evening, Old Northeast Pizza’s delivery dude drops off a big stack of pizzas to protesters waiting outside of the police station. Each box has the letters, “ACAB,” inscribed on the inside. Folks cheer and take big bites of steaming hot slices. Terron’s been hit by a car during the protest earlier that day, a woman in a white Mercedes put her foot on the gas pedal as he was in front trying to get her through the march. She hit Terron and sped off. Police wouldn’t take a report, he says. It took an hour for a medic to come check him.
“It wasn’t that bad,” he says. “I wish those motherfuckers would come over here and do their job, that’s all.”
“We got it on video,” Terron says. “Trust me, they’ll be hearing about it.”
It’s sunset and a group of 100 or so protesters from 34th Street join the group already outside the police station, cheering, chanting: “Who’s lives matter? Black lives matter!,” say the protesters.
Everyone gathers on the police department’s exterior. Each person laying face-first on the ground with their arms behind their backs for the nine minutes David Chauvin had his knee to Floyd’s neck, killing him. There’s no sounds but the helicopter above and a single bird chirping. When everyone rises, their voices join: “Say his name, George Floyd! Say her name, Breonna Taylor!”
One or two herbal cigarettes are lit. "The cops ain’t coming out here anyway,” as a dude nearby puts it between sweet and heavy puffs. Pinellas Park’s Joker GangGang, the tattooed Joker look alike rapper, takes selfies with protesters. Cops have traffic stopped at each intersection along First Avenue North heading east, crotch rockets flank the march just in case.
“No Trump! No KKK! No racist USA!”
Inching towards the “nouveau-riche” St. Pete, those looking down from balconies above protesters marching downtown don’t cheer. Cellphones are held up quietly in response, bodies stand motionless. None rush to bang pots and pans in support from the plentiful new high rise condos that start at the low 400K range.
“Hands up!,” protesters say. “Don’t shoot!”
Ty, 25, remembers going to immigration actions with her mother in Ft. Myers as a kid. She was marching Monday when the march greeted snowbirds and tourists along Beach Drive.
“You should’ve seen these old white ladies on Beach Drive,” Ty, who would not give a last name because she works at a big cofffee chain, says. “If they’d been wearing pearls, they would’ve been clutching them!”
Protesters take a knee on Beach Drive, restaurant patios are flush with families, few masked, mostly looking on in confusion. A shitty white dude walks through the protesters who are kneeling silently, peacefully and says to them, “I want to throw up, this is disgusting, he didn’t mean to do it.”
“Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Racist cops have got to go!”
“Get off your phones,” Terron calls to the sidewalk gawkers. “Get out in the streets with us.”
He warns that while breaking windows might soothe some souls, “You have every right but everyone is filming and you’re probably gonna get got.”
The march goes up to Fifth Avenue N., back towards Central Avenue and then the police station. The protest is peaceful still, this reporter isn’t present for what happens next but two reporters are detained that evening, Tampa Bay Times reporters Jay Cridlin (in St. Pete) and Divya Kumar (in Tampa) are zip-tied by police even though press-badged and recognized by law enforcement. More videos of smoke, screams, late night confusion.
“Hands up! Don’t shoot!”
Wednesday afternoon, city leadership in St. Pete and Tampa make apologies, tell stories meant to warm hearts. They say they stand in solidarity with national movements. They call for peace.
“Hands up! Don’t shoot!”
Thursday in St. Pete’s Old Northeast neighborhood, Black Crow is reopening for the first time in weeks and last night’s action is the talk of sidewalk conversation.
“The cops kept creeping forward and got really close and we had to keep moving” says a dude named Eric that was there, “At some point someone said that anyone at risk, with kids or pregnant needed to leave and the group split.”
Protesters are adapting as the police show their cards. Thursday protests stayed mostly away from the police station. Peaceful protests moved through Old Northeast’s rainy brick roads and down Fourth Street. No arrests were made. As of Friday, all was calm in the march south down Fourth Street towards The Chattaway, and folks were dancing in the street between rain bands. For now, the both police and protesters are locked in step with each other, and our community is intertwined alongside, and it ain’t ending anytime soon. How often are they gonna march?
“Every goddamn day!”
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This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2020.