Syracuse, N.Y. — Curtis Chaplin and Last Chance for Change had no plans for a long march Saturday. They would walk to the Black Lives Matter rally and leave.
But as the group left the rally, hundreds of people filed into their ranks. By the time they crossed through Hanover Square and onto South Salina Street, they’d amassed a movement. Then a protester hopped into South Salina Street, stopping traffic. So they marched.
“Civil disobedience,” a protester yelled from her car.
They commandeered the southbound lane of Syracuse’s main street. For the first time in eight days, protesters had no police escort. All of this happened with relative ease in an accidental show of strength.
“It goes so far back they can’t hear us," Devon Carmichael said to another protester.
After a week of 100- and 200-person marches that routinely pushed protesters 9 or 10 miles, Saturday started with 2,000 people gathering at City Hall for a Black Lives Matter rally. It ended with a few hundred people leaving the march led by Last Chance for Change, a group against police brutality that formed this week.
Earlier this week, protests began as a show of frustration, a reaction to a knee in George Floyd’s neck. On the fourth day, the protesters found purpose. They named themselves Last Chance for Change. They developed demands. On Thursday, they found action. They rallied with local leaders in hopes of having section 50-a of the Civil Rights Law changed.
Now, they’re looking for results.
“We’re going to go into their pockets," Chaplin said of the police department, echoing calls to defund police. “We’re going to continue to protest for 40 days and 40 nights. We promised our city 40 days of peaceful protesting.”
Reforming police issues often takes years. The Citizen Review Board took more than a decade to put in place. Calls for a review board started in the early 1980s after the alleged beating of Dennis Collins, a photographer who was taking pictures for a black newspaper.
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On Saturday, protesters called for strengthening that body — more than 25 years after its creation.
In some cases, the reform didn’t come. The department was part of a federal consent decree in 1980 to increase the hiring of people of color and women. At the time, 2% of officers were black. That number grew to 8% in 1990. That number is still the same 30 years later.
Right now, the group’s solution is to gather and march. It puts a strain on the system. The police have to have several cars escort the protesters.
Some looting by a handful last week put the police on guard. On Saturday, police deployed what they called a “public order unit." They filled City Hall with police dressed in riot gear and other officers dressed in camouflage fatigues.
Even after the protesters took South Salina Street for their own, the police escort caught up with them.
The protesters marched to a field behind the Institute of Technology at Syracuse Central and the leaders of Last Chance for Change had to decide whether they wanted to keep going. They knew the decision could frustrate some of the public officials who backed them and expected them not to march.
Chaplin expressed worry about the large group and something — anything — going wrong. But they agreed they couldn’t miss the chance.
The group circled the city, heading down South State Street, past the boarded-up and chained-in Onondaga County courthouse and Public Safety Building and back up past City Hall. They moved through Armory Square and down Jefferson Street.
Marchers stopped at the Columbus Circle statue to talk about the harm done to indigenous people by Europeans. Dennis Nett | dnett@ Syracuse.com
Eventually, they ended at Columbus Circle. The protesters climbed the statue of Christopher Columbus and railed against his role in history. Chaplin pondered why people cared so much about the looting of stores last week but not about how Columbus led to the looting of the Americas by Europeans.
“It’s sad that this statue is here in the cornerstone of Syracuse," Chaplin said.
After finishing the march, about a dozen of the organizers met in a yard on South Salina Street. They all pitched in for some Popeyes.
For much of the early part of the night, they ate dinner and joked. One complained about the blisters on his feet. Another took his shoes off.
Each of them comes from a different background. One has been to state prison while another is the son of an Onondaga County legislator. One worked at Enterprise Rent-A-Car before the pandemic, while another is a Syracuse University student.
The cause has captivated them enough to walk 70 miles in a week.
Even as they joked, they all thought about what would come next.
They plan to march for 40 days. Right now, that feels like a long time to them, but they’re already accounted for 20% of it. Initially, Chaplin said each march was like a piece to the puzzle, that they were going to cover each part of the city. They’ve mostly accomplished that.
Saturday proved they have people’s collective ear, now they’re just figuring out how to keep it.
Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact Chris Libonati via the Signal app for encrypted messaging at 585-290-0718, by phone at the same number, by email or on Twitter.
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