Yesterday afternoon as students returned to classes after the Thanksgiving break, up the hill at Brown they were sidestepping their peers’ lifeless bodies strewn across the main green. The living corpses remained silent but held signs with the names of African Americans killed by excessive police force.
The dramatic demonstration was part of a student-run “Die-In Protest” staged in response to the St. Louis County grand jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot and killed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. This week colleges across the country have been holding emotional protests calling for an end to racism and police mishandling people of color.
Sitting on the periphery of the action, Matthew Menzies 14 FD (pictured above, third row left) was also talking about his plans to attend a protest march from Burnside Park to the Rhode Island State House last evening. “These demonstrations are about humanizing victims who are deemed sub-human and cast aside by those in power,” the Brooklyn native noted. “It’s a cathartic way to release some of the tension surrounding our country’s recent shootings.”
Last week Menzies joined a group of approximately 150 protestors who formed a line across both lanes of Route I-95, halting traffic for over an hour. State and local police intervened to get protesters off the highway and six college students ended up leaving the scene in handcuffs.
“I was holding up my arms so the officers could see we didn’t mean them any harm,” Menzies says. “We had a right to peacefully protest the social inequity that ends up hurting everyone. We live in a system where people are marginalized and stripped of their power. It’s time to change that through action.”
Last night’s demonstration proved to be peaceful and calm.