The scenes were incongruous but a stark reflection of the times -- masked faces amid a pandemic that to date has killed some 110,000 Americans and thousands more in the streets protesting a spate of civilian-recorded incidents of police brutality -- all under the brilliant June sunshine in the posh and leafy Hamptons. Last week saw multiple demonstrations on the East End in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, huge crowds coming together to decry the murder of African-Americans at the hands of whites, many, but not all of them, police officers.
At the Hook Mill Green in East Hampton on Sunday afternoon, thousands of people converged in a peaceful protest against racism and police brutality. The event, which came amid similar protests in Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor, Southampton, another in East Hampton the day before, and throughout the country and the world, saw an ethnically diverse group proceed from the green down Gay Lane, circling back up to Main Street, where protesters lay in the street or knelt for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the span in which a white police officer pressed his knee into George Floyd's neck in Minneapolis on Memorial Day, killing him and sparking waves of angry demonstrations.
Protesters then returned to the green where speakers including the Rev. Leandra Lambert of St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Cantor-Rabbi Debra Stein of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, the Rev. Walter Thompson of Calvary Baptist Church in East Hampton, Minerva Perez of Organization Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island, Travis Wilkins, a Bridgehampton School graduate, and Richard Burns of the East Hampton School District paid moving tribute to Mr. Floyd and others who have died at the hands of police or in racially-motivated violence.
Taliya Hayes and Anna Hoffmann, recent college graduates from East Hampton, organized the protest. East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, Councilman Jeff Bragman, and Arthur Graham of the East Hampton Village Board were in the crowd.
"Everyone here walks a different path, and today each of our paths led us to this location," Ms. Hayes said in a rousing speech. "People from all different walks of life are coming together for this moment and to demand changes to the system that has done our black brothers and sisters wrong for centuries."
Ms. Hayes drew attention to the last words of the Pledge of Allegiance -- "and justice for all" -- before asking, "How does it feel hearing these words, knowing they hold absolutely no value when it comes to black lives? . . . On one hand, I know that we're tired, I know we're hurt, and our voices are weak. On the other hand, we're fed up. We're tired of fighting the same fight that our ancestors had fought. . . . We want change to a system that is not broken, but rather a system that was never built to help us in the first place. This system was built for power. It was built for control. And most importantly, it was built to oppress black people and other minority groups. So today, we are here to use our voices to fight for that justice and liberty. And above all else, we are here to be that change. And while we do that, we must never forget those who have been lost at the hands of senseless acts of violence, police brutality, and white supremacy. We must continue to say their names."
"This is not the time for silence but the time for action," Ms. Hoffmann said. "With peace, love, and understanding, we plan to condemn racism as a whole. We do not and will not encourage nor condone acts of hate, destruction, or anything else that sets us back in this fight for equality, justice, and liberty. We will speak up, speak out, and make our voices heard when we peacefully demand an end to the vicious and deadly cycle of racism."
Anger, sorrow, hope, and determination mingled throughout the event as they had at others in the preceding days, speakers sometimes inspiring a contemplative silence, at other times bringing the assembled to their feet, shouting approval. Ms. Stein, in speaking of the biblical story of Cain and Abel, urged the crowd to "Let us not allow the blood of our brothers and sisters to cry to God from the ground. Let each and every one of us stop the bleeding. Stop the indignities done to people of color." Quoting Elie Wiesel, "who witnessed the atrocities of the Holocaust," she appealed for unity and action against injustice. " 'We must take sides. Neutrality only helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.' "
The skies were less bright but the mood similarly intense yet upbeat on Friday, as a huge crowd convened at John Steinbeck Waterfront Park in Sag Harbor. A group of college and high school students calling themselves East End Against Hate organized that demonstration.
"When you have done yelling, losing your voice, and your feet hurt, what will you do?" Georgette Grier-Key, the executive director and chief curator of the Eastville Community Historical Society in Sag Harbor, asked the crowd there, urging it to maintain focus and passion long after the recent spasms of outrage have subsided. "We still have work to do!" she shouted to cheers. "We have work to do! We have work to do!"
With students at her side, she said, ╥You deserve a future. The time is now. Equity now. We want change. We demand restorative justice. . . . We want to dismantle all racist policies, structural racism!"
"We are tired of co-existing," Dr. Grier-Key continued. "We are tired of being second-class citizens. We are tired of two Americas. We are tired of accepting wrong for right."
Those gathered there marched across Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter Veterans' Memorial Bridge and back, proceeding to the village's Main Street, where they lay in the street for eight minutes and 46 seconds.
Rage against that deeply entrenched system was the common theme to demonstrations here and throughout the country, as was a declaration that it would be dismantled and rebuilt so that the nation might live up to its stated ideal, "justice for all." Ms. Lambert, who was named the Union of Black Episcopalians' 2017 Young Adult of the Year, said on Sunday that "We are part of a system which allows a police officer to put his knee on the neck of someone for eight minutes and 46 seconds, without a care that the person underneath the knee is losing his very life. We are part of a system that allows law enforcement officers to go into the home of someone and take their life with at least eight bullets," a reference to Breonna Taylor, an African-American emergency medical technician who was killed by police in her Louisville, Ky., apartment during a drug investigation in March. A judge had signed a "no-knock" warrant allowing police to search the residence. No drugs were found.
"There are good police officers, and I thank God for the good ones," Ms. Lambert said. "But they are also part of a system that is corrupt. A system that is broken. . . . We have the possibility to break it down and build something new, imagine and create something that is just, something that is better, something that is reflective of the more perfect union."
She related Sunday's gathering to "mountaintop experiences" of the Christian and Jewish traditions, "a place where people encounter the divine and they are transformed. There's this energy there. That's what I'm feeling being with you all, right here, right now. I feel the power, I feel the energy. I feel the hope in those beautiful words, 'change is gonna come.' "
But this is no time to be comfortable, she said. "We are going to have to leave the mountain and go back into the trenches and do the difficult work. We have to go back to our homes and our communities. We have to meet people where they are, and call them on their ignorance, call them on their b.s. and say not here, not anymore."
"Don't get comfortable, because people are dying," she said, "and it shouldn't matter that there was a video to capture it. There doesn't need to be a video to know that this person is a human being with inherent worth and dignity and. . . ." Her last words were unheard, lost amid thunderous applause.
See more photos of the East Hampton demonstration on Sunday here.
And more photos from the Sag Harbor rally here.
