The chants of protesters filled the air on Route 58 in Riverhead yesterday, where more than 100 people lined the sidewalks just west of the traffic circle for a marathon demonstration against racism and police brutality in the United States.
“Say his name! George Floyd! Say his name! George Floyd!”
“I can’t breathe!”
“Enough is enough!”
“No justice, no peace!”
The chants have become a familiar refrain in a country reeling from the death of a Minneapolis man under the knee of a police officer on the evening of May 25.
Floyd’s killing, captured on a bystander’s video, provoked outrage across the country and around the world and has led to a period of civil unrest in the U.S. unlike anything seen here since the 1960s.
The peaceful protest in Riverhead yesterday began at noon and ended at 8 p.m. The protesters’ chants and hand-made signs were greeted by the honking horns, waving hands and raised fists of passing motorists showing their support. A smattering were seen with a raised middle finger as they rode past, while others chose to register their objections with revving engines and high speeds.
Only at the very end of the event, as 8 o’clock approached and most of the protesters had already departed, did anything resembling a dispute erupt, when a man in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven on the circle exchanged words with some protesters. Riverhead police, who had multiple units standing by all day, quickly arrived and kept the antagonists separated.
Margarita Jimenez Ferebee, one of the protest organizers, used her bullhorn to urge the small group that gathered near to parking lot to stand down.
“This has been a peaceful protest. Let’s keep it that way. This is just ignorance. This is what they want,” Jimenez Ferebee said. “Don’t give it to them.” She urged the small group that was arguing with the man to move to the other side of the road and they complied — though a couple of men continued shouting.
Police convinced the man who was arguing with the group to get back into his van and then moved it to another space in the convenience store parking lot, away from the roadway.
Some had worried that the protest on Riverhead’s busiest roadway would disrupt the flow of traffic on what would surely be a busy Saturday afternoon — on the first weekend since most retail stores were able to reopen for business following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions on Wednesday.
Of special concern was access to Peconic Bay Medical Center by emergency vehicles. In an interview Thursday, protest organizers vowed the protest would not impede traffic, especially ambulances. And it did not, except during two pre-arranged demonstrations in the roadway that took place with police assistance.
About 90 minutes after the protest got underway, Riverhead Police shut down traffic on Route 58 to allow the protesters to enter the roadway for a pre-arranged demonstration. There, they silently lay for the nearly nine-minute interval that Floyd spent face down, dying on the pavement, with three Minneapolis police officers atop him — one of them kneeling on his neck. The eerie silence on the normally bustling thoroughfare was pierced only by occasional shouts of “I can’t breathe” and “Mama,” recalling Floyd’s cries for help as he lay dying.
At the end of the period of silence, protestors asked the Riverhead cops standing sentry to “take a knee” to show support. The officers did not respond, drawing shouts of angry words from some in the crowd, who accused the Riverhead cops of siding with the Minneapolis police rather than the protesters.
Protesters — whose numbers had dwindled by more than half — repeated the demonstration in the roadway as the event drew to a close, with police again shutting down traffic. As the demonstration ended, protesters again shouted at the Riverhead police officers who had closed the road, objecting to some of the officers standing in the road with their backs to the protesters.
Riverhead Police Chief David Hegermiller said he wants the community to know that every member of the Riverhead Police Department was upset by what they saw in the video of Floyd’s death.
The Minneapolis police officers’ behavior was “incomprehensible,” Hegermiller told RiverheadLOCAL.
Riverhead Supervisor Yvette Aguiar, a former NYPD sergeant who in her position as town supervisor also serves as Riverhead police commissioner, said in a statement posted Wednesday on the town’s Facebook page that she has never and will never “condone the actions taken by officers in the death of Mr. Floyd in Minnesota.”
The supervisor also voiced support for the right of Riverhead residents to peacefully protest.
“Riverhead stands united against any acts of injustice,” Aguiar said in the statement.
The protest organizers expressed gratitude and some relief that the day-long event took place without incident.
“We wanted it to be peaceful, that was our intention as we expressed to the community,” Jimenez Ferebee said. “But you never really know what could happen with something like this. I have a lot of gratitude that it went so well, that it was so well-attended and was peaceful,” she said.
“The community support was really wonderful,” Jimenez Ferebee said. People just came and dropped off all this water. It was amazing. Someone even dropped off a cooler with ice,” she said. Various stores in the area — Dunkin’ Donuts, Big Lots, Staples, Taco Bell — donated food and water to the group.
Yesterday’s protest was the third in Riverhead since Floyd’s killing on May 25. There were two protests on Sunday, May 31, one in Stotzky Park, for which the town issued an assembly permit and another — like yesterday’s protest, “unsanctioned” according to town officials — took place for more than two hours downtown, shutting down East Main Street and Peconic Avenue as 200-300 people marched from the riverfront to Riverhead Town Hall and back.
The Riverhead protest yesterday was one of hundreds that took place across the country and in other parts of the world. Even as they got underway, word spread of yet another police killing of a black man in Atlanta, Georgia late Friday night. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Rayshard Brooks, 27, was fatally shot by police in a confrontation after he was found asleep at the wheel of his car in a Wendy’s drive-thru lane. Video appears to show Brooks fleeing on foot when he was shot. Yesterday, the Atlanta Police Department fired the officer who shot Brooks and the city’s police chief stepped down, as the man’s death sparked new protests across Atlanta.
Riverhead Charter School is organizing a protest March on Main Street on Friday afternoon. Friday, June 19 is “Juneteenth,” an annual celebration of the emancipation of slaves in America in 1865.
Lawrence Street of the Eastern Long Island Branch of the NAACP, who attended the Riverhead protest yesterday, said he supports protests but believes the only way real, permanent change can come to America is by voting.
“We have to vote for change,” Street said. “Ultimately that is the answer.” Street, who is also a member of the East End Voters Coalition, said that group is holding a voter registration drive next Saturday at 2 p.m. at Stotzky Park.
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