It’s like the blacks can just get away with anything.
Between 150 and 200 protesters peacefully marched from the Ralph Ellison Library to the Governor’s Mansion on Saturday to deliver a double-barreled message.
“We aren’t going to allow people to come into our communities and brutalize us,” event organizer Omar Chatman said before the event. “If you come into our community, know we are armed.”
The 1000 Brothers and Sisters in Arms protest might not have approached its eponymous numbers, but it bore enough artillery to pop the National Rifle Association’s buttons.
Community organizer Michael Washington was among the speakers who said the march was a response to the recent killings of Black men by police as well as local cases they want reopened.
The march, made up mostly of Black men but with plenty of diversity, commenced from 2000 NE 23 just after 2:30 p.m., slowing oncoming traffic as it headed west before landing at the north gate of the Governor’s Mansion about 20 minutes later and created a blockade.
Gov. Kevin Stitt was not at the residence. He was in Tulsa for President Donald Trump’s campaign rally.
Washington gathered protesters while support vehicles blocked off traffic on NE 23, in both directions, with help from the Oklahoma City Police Department.
Chatman, 41 and a certified family counselor, took the bullhorn flanked by Pan-African flags, and exhorted the gathered to settle on the north side of the street.
“We must be civilized,” he told the crowd before launching into an oratory reiterating the reasons for the protest, and the reasons they came armed — namely dissatisfaction with police.
“Their job is not to patrol and control,” Chatman said. “How can this Governor live in a predominantly Black side of town but allow the police to execute us when we have our hands in the air?
“This is systematic racism, deep in the heart of America.”
Chatman referenced a recent case in which two parole officers on a home visit ordered two Black children, ages 5 and 8, to the ground. He called the incident “intolerable.”
“We don’t want just their badges taken, we don’t want just their guns taken,” Chatman said. “We want them in jail!”
Chatman, who was armed with an AR-15, said, “All too often on this side of town, police have acted as judge, jury and executioner.”
Following Chatman was Charles Pettit Sr., whose son C.J. was killed by a Midwest City police officer in 2015. Pettit pleaded with the governor to reopen the case based on video evidence he believes tells a different story than the report.
Washington and Chatman walked a letter with their demands to a security guard at the gate to end the event.
Obviously, these problems are not real. The blacks are stupid, and the media told them these were real problems, and they don’t know the difference. It’s an IQ issue.
But here’s the question: do you think these blacks wouldn’t kill you? Do you think they wouldn’t storm government buildings and burn them?
Obviously, they would.
And they are trying to remove the police. The government now supports removing the police. The police are going to be removed, and then the killing will start. The government isn’t going to do the killing, they are going to let these blacks do it, but the government isn’t going to investigate and arrest anyone. They are just going to let it happen.
We are months out from the beginning of the killing. Truly.
You need to get your affairs together.