Wooster rallies for change: BLM protests hit 300 days the-daily-record.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from the-daily-record.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Despite changes at the federal level, the focus for most of those who ve been gathering locally is to enact change here, whether it’s greater transparency from the Wooster Police Department or improving the lines of communication between the public and Wooster City Council.
New year, new president, same challenges
Discussions about what the protest on the square would look like after the presidential election happened continuously over the summer and fall, but who sat in the White House was never a consideration for Justin Isaac, 34, of Wooster. His focus remains creating change at the local level and not waiting for a presidential decree to do the work.
Replace violence with love, and impatience with peace.
That was the message from the Rev. Kevan Franklin of United Trinity Church as the Wooster-Orville chapter of the NAACP held a rally Saturday in response to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
It was a crisp 24 degrees when Oliver Warren, emcee and NAACP first vice president, began introducing the six featured speakers. Where do we go from here? asked NAACP President Juanita Greene. It s time for us to stand up and take responsibility, Greene said. We ve got to make sure our family, our friends and our neighbors take this seriously . . We all have complaints about America: Black people and people of color are not treated equally, women don t get the same pay as men. But we don t have a dictatorship, we have a democracy.
Desiree Weber, a city resident who attends the gatherings and a College of Wooster assistant professor, has been involved since the beginning. During the protest she held a faded green sign that said Black Lives Matter on one side and listed the names of individuals who died at the hands of police on the other. She made the sign on May 31 to take to a vigil for Floyd.
On Thursday, the protests reached day 200, Weber said.
The listing of names is now out-of-date, she said. More lives have been lost since the start of the protests, including that of Casey Goodson Jr. earlier this month.