Black Lives Matter rally in Belleville calls for acceptance of LGBTQ community, too
For at least the ninth time since George Floyd’s death, Black Lives Matter supporters rallied in downtown Belleville on Wednesday.
And since Pride Month events have been canceled this June because of the coronavirus, the organizers of Wednesday’s rally asked demonstrators to bring their Pride rainbow colors to show support for the LGBTQ community.
“Black Trans Lives Matter” was one of the chants during the rally in which participants denounced police brutality and racism. They also honored persons remembered in the Black Lives Matter movement.
“As a Black woman, I really have no right to go talk to a trans white person and say, ‘You’re not accepted’ because I’m not accepted either,” said Tommia Douglas, 21, a Belleville resident who helped organize Wednesday’s rally.
“Here in Belleville we don’t have a big trans community that’s like out in the open.
“To be honest, they’re not even accepted in our community,” said Douglas, who is a student at Stevens - The Institute of Business and Arts in St. Louis.
“I feel bad because I know if we don’t accept them, I know that other communities probably” are not welcoming them, she said in an interview. “I just want them to know that they have a safe place, especially when you come here and wherever we’re protesting at, we love you like we are family.”
Nikki Hughes, 20, of Belleville explained why she helped organize Wednesday’s rally.
“This affects me directly,” she said. “I am a Black woman, part of the LGBT community and it’s just hard being a Black woman period. It’s hard for me to even live my everyday life without being scared to walk outside or being scared of being profiled by somebody.
“There are a lot of Black people that are part of the LGBT community who are not only unjustly treated, there have been so many people who have been murdered just because they are Black and part of the LGBT community. There are people who have just been part of the LGBT community that have been murdered because of that.”
Hughes says she agrees that “All Lives Matter,” but those who use that as a counter argument to the BLM movement simply don’t understand what it’s protesting.
“I’m not fighting just for Black lives. We’re not saying that only Black lives matter. We’re saying that Black lives have to matter for everybody’s lives to matter and right now we’re not seeing how much they matter to people,” she said.
“We’re just trying to let people know we are not against the police in any way, shape or form. We just want reform. We want things to change. We want more focus on education, more focus on the community, more focus on bring the community together.”
Protests following George Floyd’s death
The rally on the plaza in front of the courthouse had about 40 participants. This crowd was smaller than some other rallies in downtown Belleville. As in previous rallies, many motorists honked their horns in solidarity but one passer-by in a pickup truck had flags attached to the truck and part of one of the flags included the Confederate flag.
Floyd, a Black man, died on May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his left knee onto Floyd’s neck while Floyd was handcuffed and face down on the street. The officer, Derek Chauvin, has since been fired and charged with second-degree murder.
Along with the protests in Belleville, others have been conducted in towns across the metro-east since Floyd’s death.
Organizers said the size of Wednesday’s crowd was not as important as the message that brought the gathering to the Public Square in the first place.
“Real life is not necessarily always going to be portrayed by the media and so because media coverage has dropped does not mean that these protests nationally and worldwide are not going on,” said one of the organizers, Orville Parker III, a 21-year-old St. Louisan who was born in Belleville.
“Understanding that the reason why you’re out here is bigger than representation in the media. It’s bigger than a hashtag but you’re actually out here, feet on the ground doing something.”
Hughes noted that many supporters can’t attend a weekday rally because of their work schedules. But she told participants in a previous rally that if only four people had shown up she would still step out to proclaim her message along busy Illinois Street.
“As long as I can touch someone here in this crowd, the big crowds don’t matter,” she said.
This story was originally published June 24, 2020 at 4:15 PM.
