Roughly 250 supporters rallied outside the Portland police station before coursing through Congress Street and delivering poems and speeches at City Hall Saturday evening.
The protest, organized by a collective of Maine youth activists using the banner Black Lives Matter — Maine, decried racial injustice and police brutality following this week’sgrand jury decisionin the case related to the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who police officers fatally shot around 12:40 a.m. in a no-knock warrant raid at her Louisville home in March.
Plans for the rally were announced shortly after Wednesday’s grand jury decision, setting off a social media skirmish between organizers and Portland police, who claimed in a public statement issued Friday night that organizers had not responded to their outreach attempts. Rally organizers swiftly denied that claim. Josh Wood, a youth activist, said he spoke with an officer and provided evidence he phoned police Wednesday evening an hour after the group received a request to do so.
Wood appeared at the rally, among its leaders, leading the group in an original chant in the early going: “From Portland to Portland, we are here to stay. We will fight for freedom, every single day.”
As dusk approached Saturday evening, the protest proceeded without drama. As rally goers grew to roughly 200 outside the police station in the Old Port, they werejoined by a brass band and marched the city’s main streets for half an hour. Workers at area stores and patrons dining at outdoor patio tables raised their arms in support as they marched by.
At 5:45 p.m., the group collected at City Hall Plaza. There, the group’s organizers — Black young people in their teens and early 20s — shared poems and delivered speeches, flanked by police cars cordoning off the road.
“We are the generation that’s going to make change,” one organizer said to cheers.
A small cluster of half a dozen people gathered on an opposite sidewalk, attempting to goad those on the fringes of the rally into conflict. “Come and get it,” one shouted.
A similar rally scheduled by the same organizers, one of several groups to have organized under the Black Lives Matter tag this summer, was earlier in September was canceled after the group received racist threats and calls for armed vigilantist oppositionThis post will be updated.
This story appears through a media sharing agreement with Bangor Daily News.