‘We’re done being scared.’ Young Black leaders in Tacoma work to make sure this time is different
They were tired of inaction. They were tired of sitting on the sidelines. They were tired of feeling ignored.
Most of all, they were simply tired.
This, according to three soon-to-be-seniors at Lincoln High School, was the overarching motivation behind a protest and march organized for Friday, June 19 at Wapato Park in Tacoma’s South End.
One of many recent Tacoma protests and marches associated with the Black Lives Matter and social justice movement, this one was scheduled on Juneteenth for a reason, according to its organizers, under a straightforward and necessary rallying cry:
“Stop Killing Us.”
Scheduled to run from noon to 5 p.m., Friday’s student-led protest at Wapato Park, like many before it, hoped to highlight and work to address the continued injustices committed against Black Americans at the hands of police and the criminal justice system.
The protest and march also served as yet another example of young Black voices in Tacoma stepping up and — if not seizing the torch of action from previous generations — grabbing a firm hold of it alongside them.
The work, according to many of the young people involved, is to drive the conversation and the change forward where in the past it has plateaued or lost momentum.
“For me it was the George Floyd video, among others. Really, it’s just about being tired of the injustice, and there’s no outcome. We tweet about our anger, and weeks later it’s forgotten,” said 17-year-old Theodore Rollins, one of the protest’s student organizers from Lincoln, adding that the local deaths of Manuel Ellis and Said Joquin added further fuel to his fire.
“I was angry about it, and (thought) we should really plan a protest,” Rollins continued. “I started making the flyer, and we just started planning stuff out.”
Together, the protest’s young organizers — which also include Lincoln High School students Jewlieanna Gransberry and Brooklyn Jones — are far from alone in their efforts to claim a seat at the table and a voice in the fray.
Locally, it’s momentum that’s been building over years, and in the weeks since Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin nonchalantly put his knee on George Floyd’s neck and stole his breath and his life, the activism and direct actions have only increased.
While what’s ultimately to come of it remains to be seen — and will rest heavily on white people’s capacity and appetite to sustain the movement beyond marches and Facebook posts — many local Black leaders told The News Tribune that this time, at the very least, feels like it has the potential to be different,
In part, that’s due to the young Black voices who are emerging and stepping forward to lead, according to 33-year-old Jamika Scott, a representative of the Tacoma Action Collective.
For some, that has meant running for office, as a host of emerging Black leaders in Tacoma have successfully done in recent years.
For others, it has come through community organizing that demands real change and holds leaders accountable, as organizations like the Black Parents Alliance, the Black and Indigenous Organizing program, the Tacoma Mutual Aid Collective and a host of others have worked to do, Scott said.
Making a lasting difference will require action, coordination and cooperation from all parts of the movement, Scott argued.
It will also require taking the demands of Tacoma’s young Black leaders seriously, she added.
“There are so many parts of every moment, and there are so many various ways that people can be involved. I think people are realizing that there are a lot of ways to get involved, and at least I believe it’s going to take all those moving parts to come together with a little bit of harmony to really push … the people who are able to make those changes,” Scott said.
“Seeing these (young) voices emerge, and seeing youth stand up for the hope they have for the city they would like to live in, I think it’s inspiring, and I think we should be doing more to listen to the youth in the city,” Scott said.
Helping to lift up the Black leaders or the future
At 90, Harold Moss — Tacoma’s first Black mayor — has seen several generations of Black leaders emerge in Tacoma since he was making his mark in the city. In the 1950s, Moss helped to subvert and thwart the racist redlining housing policies that made it virtually impossible for a Black man like him to buy a house in Tacoma. Later, he worked to exact real results and change from events like the Mother’s Day Disturbance of 1969.
Throughout his life and career, Moss said he has worked to elevate and lift up the younger Black leaders that have followed him — whether it meant mentoring Victoria Woodards long before she became Tacoma’s mayor or counseling even fresher Black leaders, like City Council member Keith Blocker, Metro Parks Board commissioner Jessie Baines or current president and CEO of the Tacoma Urban League T’wina Franklin, who’s currently running for the state Senate.
That work is more important than ever, Moss said.
Today, Moss looks around at a contingent of emerging Black leaders — those organizing the protests, or calling for change, or making their voices too loud to be ignored — and it gives him continued hope, he said.
Not that maintaining that hope is always easy, he added.
“Every time we go through one of these things (like George Floyd’s death in police custody), we hope that we’ll gain something from it. We hope that it will cause something to happen that will make it better next time. And I often wonder what keeps the promise, when we need to move a mile on down the road … and in the end we only moved an inch or two,” Moss said.
“This time, watching this man callously kill another man with a knee on his neck and his hands in his pocket … and the rest of the cops standing around not pushing him off, that was too much. So you got a worldwide response,” Moss continued.
“So I have that hope that I have always had, this time with even more,” Moss said.
Asked about how he holds onto that hope, Moss replied simply.
“It’s like prayer. You pray for something and it didn’t’ come this time, it doesn’t mean you’re not going to pray for it again. That’s where you are. That’s where we are,” Moss said.
“I hope I never have to find out how I keep the hope,” he added.
The work of 1955 is still the work of today
Like Moss, Tacoma-Pierce County Black Collective co-chair Lyle Quasim has been down these roads before. A one-time Black Panther Party member who went on to become the first Black leader of Washington’s Department of Social and Health Services, Quasim acknowledged it can be difficult to stomach how little things have changed.
Quasim, 76, recalled the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955.
Like Quasim, Till was originally from Chicago, and after his murder his body was returned to the city, where his mother demanded a public funeral with an open casket.
“In 1955, when Emmett Till was murdered in Money, Mississippi, I was 12 years old. In 2020, I am 76, and you pick the death — is it a person being suffocated in New York, shot in the back in South Carolina or a knee on his neck in Minneapolis? From 1955 to 2020, what has changed?” Quasim asked. “The long view for me is the work that we had to do in 1955 is still the work we need to do in 2020.”
Still, like the others, Quasim maintained optimism that “this time will be different.”
It’s one of many things the elder Black statesman and Tacoma’s new wave of Black leaders can agree on.
“It got to the point where we’re not tolerating the disrespect anymore. It got to the point where we’re just fed up,” said Gransberry, one of the organizers of Friday’s student-led protest.
“I feel like now, our generation, we’re done being scared. Were done letting white people just basically abuse us,” the soon-to-be Lincoln High School senior continued.
“We’re standing up.”
This story was originally published June 19, 2020 at 3:00 AM.
