Protesters Shut Down Wilbur Cross

On any other Sunday, the whir of cars would drown out the birds and the crickets on the Wilbur Cross Parkway. On this Sunday, the only cars on that stretch of highway were those driven by protesters, carrying water and other supplies to keep people marching in the hot sun.

A group of about 250 protesters packed the highway shoulder to shoulder, marching North in both lanes.

On any other Sunday, the whir of cars would drown out the birds and the crickets. On this Sunday, the only cars on that stretch of highway were those driven by protesters, carrying water and other supplies to keep people marching in the hot sun. Police had directed all traffic off the highway.

For once, it was silent on the Wilbur Cross. Or, nearly silent, save for the birds and crickets singing their pastoral funeral dirge and the sound of 500 sneaker-clad feet drumming dreams of justice into the asphalt.

After eight minutes and 45 seconds, Cassie Meyerhofer broke the silence. ​“For how many of you did that seem like a long ass time?” she asked. It was the amount of time that a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into George Floyd’s neck to kill him, she said.

Protesters had been out all afternoon for what ended up being a five-hour, entirely peaceful protest. They started on the steps of Hamden Memorial Town Hall for about two hours of speeches. A few minutes before 1 p.m., when the protest was set to start, a little over 200 people were already waiting on the side walk in front of the steps leading up to the building. About half an hour later, after the event had started, the crowd had grown to about 600. People spilled out into the intersection of Dixwell and Whitney Avenues, some standing on the curbs on the other sides of the intersection.

Mayor Curt Leng, Police Chief John Cappiello, Deputy Chief John Sullivan, and Captain Kevin Samperi watched silently from one side. Sometimes Leng clapped with the crowd. Sometimes he just watched.

“I stood on these very steps on April 17 of 2019 and I begged the town of Hamden: Fire Devin Eaton. I begged the town of Hamden: Fix your union contract to hold your officer accountable. What have they done? Nothing!” organizer Rhonda Caldwell called into the microphone to the cheers of the hundreds gathered in front of her.

Caldwell has been a leader of protests over the last year to put pressure on Hamden to fire Officer Devin Eaton, who opened fire on an unarmed black couple in New Haven last year. Eaton has been put on unpaid administrative leave, and charged with a felony. A court injunction has stopped the Hamden Police Commission from holding a hearing on his employment until after his court case has concluded.

Rev. Jack Perkins Davidson (pictured) of Spring Glen Church, who was also listed as an organizer, called up the other religious leaders in the crowd. Rabbis, priests, and pastors gathered below where Perkins Davidson was speaking and lowered themselves to one knee. Perkins Davidson said a prayer to a God who, in his faith, ​“was a brown-skinned radical pacifist from a religious minority who was killed by state-sanctioned violence.”

“God, don’t let us be complacent,” Perkins Davidson prayed. Many had their hands clasped in front of them, their heads lowered, and their eyes closed. ​“Don’t let this be the only time that we show up. Because justice requires persistence. Requires that we show up day after day after day. That we don’t let this fade into the background until all are free, until all are loved, until all are lifted up, until black lives actually matter in this world!”

The crowd clapped.

“And so we join together shouting words that your prophet Moses shouted. Let my people go!”

The crowd shouted back: ​“Let my people go!”

A few minutes before the crowd set off down Dixwell Avenue, Hamden High School Senior Meron Campbell (pictured above) took the microphone. She started quietly.

“This Friday, I came downstairs sobbing after seeing everything that we’ve seen in this past week,” she said. ​“In this past lifetime. Sobbing and sitting in my mother’s arms, crying my eyes out because I’m tired. And I had to hold my five-year-old niece and nephew as my mother explained to all of us the reality of what it means to be black in America. And she had to cry into my hair as I cried into her hair as her mother cried into her hair and for generations and generations we have cried into each other’s hair because it didn’t end. And I am here to tell you that it is going to end now!”

The crowd erupted into applause.

“The American system is a chameleon. It has been shape shifting and changing color to fit whatever society deemed the moral code. It’s been binding us in different places and pretending we are free. We are done. I am not going to fight for my freedom anymore. It stops now!”

Again, the intersection filled with the roar of clapping and cheering.

“The system is not broken. It was built this way. And we need to change it. We need to change it. Now!”

This time, the cheers and the whoops echoed off the Sacred Heart billboard on the other side of Whitney so that the noise blurred into a thunderous roar of assent.

“Am I Next?”

When the speeches were over, 300 – 400 people, most of them young, poured into the street and formed a river of signs and fists behind a banner showing the places in Connecticut where people of color have been killed by police. Adjacent with the Miller Memorial Library parking lot, they stopped for a moment to let the back of the group catch up. Then they continued, filling all four lanes of the road.

“No justice! No Peace!” they chanted as they walked.

They snaked down Dixwell past the middle school and then under the Farmington Canal Trail.

They stopped there again to regroup for a moment. Then they kept going, marching up the gentle slope past the Gulf station just north of Skiff Street on Dixwell. They continued past the gas pumps, and crossed Skiff.

Once they had passed Skiff, they spread out farther, filling all six lanes of the street as they marched past Stop & Shop on one side and Hamden Mart and Hamden Plaza on the other.

Once they reached Hamden High School, they stopped again. They were going to go onto the Merritt Parkway (technically the Wilbur Cross Parkway in Hamden), someone shouted. The front row linked arms. Then they started again, taking a slightly faster pace, and flowed up onto the on ramp to the Merritt, engulfing a police car that was blocking cars at the entrance, its lights flashing.

At the top of the on ramp, they stopped again as someone shouted into a megaphone to keep children on the inside of the group. Then they flooded out onto the highway.

Some stayed in the South-bound lane. Others hopped the cement barrier to cross into the other lane. Both were free of cars. Police were around each bend directing traffic off the highway.

Aaron Hawkins (pictured above), a coach for Hamden schools, jumped onto the barrier and shouted into a megaphone so people could hear.

“Please do not let what is going on now be something that is trendy or something that you want to be a part of because everyone else is. Recognize that it’s something that’s been going on since the beginning of time, and will not get better unless we all put in the effort,” he called.

They formed a line facing north, filling out both sides of the highway, and they began to march toward Exit 61.

As they marched, they passed a megaphone between various speakers. Robin Ellington, the mother of People Against Police Brutality Organizer Kerry Ellington, led at some points. At others, Hamden Councilman Justin Farmer, or Perkins Davidson, or others gave speeches and led chants.

They marched for just under a mile until Exit 61, where they turned onto the off-ramp and followed it down to Whitney Avenue. They turned right to head back to town hall.

By the time they arrived, the marchers had dwindled to about 200. They sat down on the steps in silence.

The silence was broken after a minute or so by Perkins Davidson humming, then singing: ​“We shall overcome.” The crowd joined.

Most of the parents with young children who had marched down Dixwell with the crowd had not gone up onto the highway. They had stayed back.

Lamond Battle and his son Ni’rel were one of those parent-child duos. Earlier in the day, when the protesters were marching by Hamden Plaza, they had walked in front of the crowd.

Ni’rel wore a black shirt with a simple question in white: ​“Am I next?”

About an hour before, back at the steps to town hall, Campbell had spoken some words for Ni’rel, and for the other young people in the crowd.

“You cannot, whatever you do, you cannot stop here. It cannot end here. It cannot end in front of this police department. It cannot end marching in the streets. You need to vote. Young black children, you need to be the change your parents have been praying for. You need to become lawyers. You need to become the mayors. You need to become the governors, the senators — you need to be president!”

“I don’t want to hear we are going to ​‘make America great again,’” she continued. ​“We are going to make America great for the first time in history.”