Sunday’s Protest in Austin: Why I Marched, What I Learned, and What I’m Learning

I attended the protest here in Austin on Sunday in support of Black lives. It was not a major action on my part. I was one of thousands of people. It took me about four hours. I didn’t have to say anything. I didn’t have to do anything besides walk, sit, and stand.

Yet, it feels worthwhile to write this, and I think I should start by explaining why it feels that way, possibly because as I write this, I’m questioning the degree to which this post is performative, and the degree to which it contributes to progress.

From what I know about The Barking Crow’s readership, many of those who see this have not attended a protest themselves. Some of you may be curious about what happens at a protest, and while the protest on Sunday was just one of thousands around the world these past few weeks, and is not representative of them all, it’s still a protest from which you can hear an account if you are, indeed, curious. I write this, in part, to answer your curiosity to the degree I can. Some of you may have never considered attending a protest yourself. Two weeks ago, I had never considered attending such a protest myself. Protests like these seemed far from my world. I write this, in part, to bring this protest closer to your world.

From what else I know about The Barking Crow’s readership, many of those who see this are desiring right now to do their part in America’s struggle to rectify its problem of racial discrimination. Many of you may be seeking to have your thoughts provoked. I would count myself among you, and I write this to share the things I heard and experienced around Sunday’s event that provoked my thoughts, in case they may be useful in your own effort to do better.

Part of this also, though, is about myself. As I would guess, many of you have, like me, questioned whether tweets and Instagram posts and Facebook statuses are performative, or if they contribute to progress, and how to aim them more towards the latter than the former. For me, that question extends to this website. On the cold, practical side, we’ve questioned to what degree we need to alter our content right now to be tasteful. On the human side, we’ve questioned to what degree we can contribute to progress, recognizing that as a website with a subject matter of whatever-the-hell-we-want, nothing is stopping us from talking about important things. In the end, we’ve decided to attempt some contributions. Some of these undoubtedly have come up short. Some of these undoubtedly will come up short. But as I would imagine many of you have decided with regard to your own social media activity, we’ve found it worthwhile to try to contribute, landing on the idea that focusing on these issues keeps them in the minds of those around us at least a little longer than they would otherwise remain; that posting pictures and stories from protests personalizes those protests for those who know us, bringing the protests closer to their world; and that by publicly acknowledging that we’re making an effort to contribute to progress in this arena, we challenge ourselves to be better, and invite ourselves to be held to a higher standard.

My experience starts with why I decided to attend in the first place.

I am not someone who fits the ideological mode of a “progressive.” My politics average out to something in the area of moderate libertarianism, or libertarian moderation. I voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, and while I respect Barack Obama, I’d vote for Romney again given those choices. I voted for Gary Johnson in 2016, and as with my 2012 vote, would vote for Johnson again given those same choices. Beginning with the 2018 cycle, I’ve voted in Democratic primaries, but I’m generally voting for candidates billed as moderates, especially in state and federal elections. I voted for Joe Biden on Super Tuesday.

I grew up white and affluent, attending public school and a private college around primarily white and disproportionately affluent people. I’ve spent my life around a lot of white people, and those in my circles who haven’t been white have more often been Latino or Asian than Black. This hasn’t been consciously intentional, but I wonder at times whether some of it has been subconsciously intentional—whether I’ve sought out environments similar to those I knew as a child because they’re comfortable to me. Regardless, I grew up white and affluent, and I still in large part inhabit that world.

The murder of George Floyd, all that followed, and all that preceded it—most specifically the murder of Ahmaud Arbery and that videotaped 911 call on a birdwatcher in Central Park—reminded me how white and affluent my life has been. It reminded me how wrong it is how much that means. It reminded me how much America needs to improve. It reminded how much I need to improve. It became rapidly apparent that to play my very small role in America’s improvement, and to play my more proportionally significant role in my own improvement, I would need to listen to Black voices, and I would need to support my Black neighbors.

There are countless ways to support. There are countless opportunities to listen. Some are more comfortable than others. And while there are some comfortable ways to contribute to progress in this arena, I don’t think there are comfortable ways to make significant progress within oneself. Leading from that: If there’s a white person out there who doesn’t need to make any more progress on race, I haven’t met them yet, and they certainly aren’t me. I needed to be uncomfortable. And somewhat embarrassingly, the prospect of spending a few hours attending a protest, even one organized with heavily-emphasized peaceful intent, made me uncomfortable.

My biggest discomfort surrounded what was, on the surface, a strange fear that I’d inadvertently feign support for a peripheral idea I don’t actually support. This obviously wasn’t really a fear. It was an attempted excuse. Nobody cares what my exact position is on, say, the proper portion of a city’s budget to allocate to the police (as though I even have or should have an exact position on something I’m still learning so much about). Beyond that, this was a rally and a march, not an academic forum in which we’d parse exactly how much the Austin Police Department should be allowed to spend on tear gas. And even if it were that sort of academic forum, half the point of this whole, small personal effort was to listen. The primary message of the rally, from what I could tell going in, was that racism exists, that it harms and takes Black lives, and that this needs to change. The secondary message of the rally, from what I could tell going in, was that police reform is something where immediate action can and should be taken as part of this effort to combat racism. I agreed with those messages. I supported those messages. I needed to show that support, and I needed to listen to the people most affected by it all.

The rally began at Huston-Tillotson University, an Historically Black University on Austin’s East Side. To prevent a larger tangent, I’ll just mention here that if you’re unfamiliar with the history of Historically Black Colleges & Universities, it’s worth researching, even if just through Google, and if you’re unfamiliar with the history of redlining, which makes Austin’s East Side significant in the arena of race relations, redlining is also worth researching, even if just through Google.

A few friends had also, largely independently, decided to attend the protest, so we gathered at an apartment a few blocks away from Huston-Tillotson to walk over together. The topic of violence was, of course, on our minds, having seen images of pepper spray and rubber bullets deployed the weekend prior in Austin, having seen broken windows and reports of a dumpster on fire across the street, and having seen similar documentation from around the country of conflict between police, protesters, and opportunists. Personally, I was prepared to leave if any violence began, no matter who started it, thinking that no progress would come from me personally engaging in violence. It seemed like everyone else held a similar position.

There would be no violence. There were only two dissenters I noticed out of the thousands of people who attended the protest—one who yelled late in the rally that Black people were the problem, and one who yelled their objection early in the march to the use of the raised fist as a symbol of solidarity. Nothing major came of either. It looked like the first walked away. We walked away from the second. The Austin Police Department was largely absent following a week of scrutiny—I saw just a few officers, all blocking streets for the march, heads turned away, not engaging. Whatever law enforcement force was stationed outside the Capitol and the Governor’s Mansion were significant in numbers and carried significant military equipment, but kept their distance.

On the walk to Huston-Tillotson, it became clear that this was not a small gathering. Sidewalks were full of people heading to the campus. There were tailgate tents on the side streets where people handed out various combinations of masks, water, Gatorade, granola bars, sunscreen, and voter registration forms. As we entered Huston-Tillotson’s gates, my fiancée mentioned how many people were wearing masks. It was a lot. Upwards of 98%, I would estimate. Possibly upwards of 99%. Music was playing. The crowd, which I’d later very roughly estimate included 7,500 people, though that estimate might be conservative, was more diverse than Austin as a whole, but did include a large share of non-Black protesters. Perhaps 75%.

Chas Moore, the Executive Director of the Austin Justice Coalition, served as the rally’s emcee, and spoke himself towards the end of the rally. Colette Pierce Burnette, Huston-Tillotson’s president, was among the other handful of speakers, as was Brenda Ramos, mother of Mike Ramos, an unarmed Black man who died in an “officer-involved shooting” in Austin this April (that case will soon be presented to a grand jury). Before the event began, local artist Tree G sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a song often referred to as the Black national anthem (some of you may have heard it before, possibly in church—it was in my church’s hymnal growing up). Dr. Burnette asked us, at one point in her remarks, to remain conscious of the necessity of maintaining physical space due to coronavirus concerns, and then asked us to remain where we were but to look around and tell others in attendance that we loved them, in what churchgoers might recognize as a passing of the peace. At one point she asked us to kneel, explaining it as a symbol of reverence and mourning, and to raise our fists, explaining it as a symbol of solidarity, and to call to mind whatever deity we worshipped or spiritual force with which we aligned. She then prayed. Mrs. Ramos publicly mourned her son, calling for justice and reform while disavowing a local group that calls itself the “Mike Ramos Brigade” and has encouraged violent forms of protest, in contrast to the peaceful protests organized by the Austin Justice Coalition. In Moore’s remarks, among other things, the leader explained that the Austin Justice Coalition is focused on policy, and acknowledged that policy only goes so far, and acknowledged that rallies and marches only go so far, and spoke about the need for white people to do better, reminding us that this problem of racism in America was a byproduct of decisions made by white people, dating back to the very beginnings of the slave trade, and was still a byproduct of decisions made by white people (more on this in a few paragraphs).

When the rally was over and the march was to begin, Moore asked the non-Black people in attendance to wait while Black marchers formed the front of the line, leading the march for justice while white marchers marched behind and to the sides of them, symbolizing a willingness to stand with our neighbors and protect them. Since the first announcement of the event, the Austin Justice Coalition had made clear that the event would center Black voices, and as the first marchers filed out of the gates, a man with a megaphone said something along the lines of, “This separation isn’t racism. This is symbolism.”

The march went down 7^th Street and passed under Interstate 35, the highway that separates the East Side from the rest of the city of Austin. It passed by the A.R.C.H., a homeless shelter towards downtown’s eastern edge, and turned right onto Congress Avenue four blocks south of the Capitol, directly in the heart of the city. In front of the Capitol, the march ended and the rally resumed, with more speakers. During the march, there was chanting—“Black Lives Matter” and “Defund APD” were the two most common in our area of the marchers, but anyone could try to start a chant. There were signs—we hadn’t brought any ourselves, but a group adjacent to us at the rally had brought extras and gave us two, one of which repeated the phrase “Black Lives Matter” half a dozen times, the other of which read, “Racism is also a pandemic,” which my fiancée, who’s a social worker, later pointed out is an accurate statement, given that the definition of pandemic states that the disease is global.

We couldn’t hear the speakers at the Capitol. The crowd was too big, and the audio equipment was too small. I believe Moore said these speakers were people who had been impacted by police brutality, but I don’t want to report that with certainty in case I misunderstood him. We stood under a tree towards the edge of the crowd, trying to listen, and watched thousands more marchers file in. When we got the impression the speakers were done, we went back to the apartment where we’d gathered. I drank a lot of water. My fiancée laughed at the sunburn in the corners of my forehead.

Looking back on the day, now two days later, a few things stand out to me.

One is how much more disorganized protesters are than they appear in history books and the media. My perception is that the protest I attended is rare in how organized it was. Many of the protests nationally have been either loosely organized or purely spontaneous. Some action has been lumped in as protesting in media coverage but has really been opportunism, and the reverse has likely also been true, and in some cases I’d guess that two people have taken the same exact action, one as an act of protest, the other as an act of that opportunism, and neither told anybody which. Even the groups organizing the protests that are organized often have different focuses, strategies, and objectives. In elementary school, I got the impression that in the 50’s and 60’s Martin Luther King Jr. told all the protesters what to do, and then they all went and did it. In high school, I learned more about the diversity of thought and organizations within that time period’s Civil Rights Movement, but I never reconciled that new knowledge with my overall image of the movement. I wonder how organized or disorganized it all looked at the time. I wonder how organized or disorganized this all will look around the turn of the next century. I wonder whether they’ll notice it at all.

Another is what a distinct set of shared experiences Black Americans seem to have. I obviously do not know what it’s like to be Black, but hearing the speakers and witnessing the nods of the crowd drove further home so many of the points of the last week—that there are things Black people experience that white people don’t, and all Black people experience them. Growing up, I never had to deal with classmates assuming I was good at sports because of the color of my skin. Today, I never have to worry about being looked at in an affluent setting as though I’m out of place. When I have children, I won’t have to worry about being in the position Brenda Ramos was in on Sunday, pulled into a 400-year-old struggle for justice through no choice of my own. My perception is that these things are part of the reality of being Black in America, and while the protest didn’t create that perception or very much change that perception, it made me realize those shared experiences probably create a significant unity between Black Americans.

The last thing that stands out is the most active. When Chas Moore said that racism in America started with white people, he asked those of us in attendance who were white to do two things.

The first thing Moore asked of us was to acknowledge our privilege as white people. When I first heard the words “white privilege,” presumably in college, I’m guessing I initially had some resistance to the idea. I know that as late as my high school years, I thought anybody could make a good life for their family in America by working hard. I suppose that at some level I still think that, but I now realize how incomprehensibly hard the work must be for those who don’t have very much privilege.

White privilege is just one privilege. This is something certain white people ignore, especially when pointing out how, say, an impoverished child in Appalachia doesn’t exactly have it easy. It’s true that impoverished children don’t have it easy. That’s true everywhere. But it’s also true that if that impoverished child in Appalachia is white, and that impoverished child from Appalachia overcomes the odds and makes it to college, where not everyone shares their experiences, that impoverished child from Appalachia might deal with assumptions and prejudice based on the way they talk or the way they dress, but they won’t deal with assumptions and prejudice based on the color of their skin. If they change the way they talk, they can fit in. If they change the way they dress, they can fit in. They don’t have to change the color of their skin.

Of course, nobody should have to change something as arbitrary as their dialect or their apparel if they want to escape prejudice. But they should especially not have to do the impossible and change something as natural to them as the color of their skin.

White privilege is just one of the privileges from which I benefit. I also benefit from affluence. I benefit from having been raised a Christian in a society largely built around Christian traditions. I benefit from having a Great Lakes accent, rather than one associated with negative, bigoted stereotypes or treated as a novelty. I benefit from being a man. I benefit from being heterosexual. I benefit from having never had to suffer the struggle of questioning my gender. I benefit from having two parents who were married before I was born and remain married today. I benefit from having a mom whose primary occupation was mothering. I benefit from having two working legs.

It seems like some white people are reluctant to acknowledge privilege, especially white privilege. Sometimes, it seems this might be out of a misunderstanding of what it means. Sometimes, though, it seems more vain, as though the person is reluctant to admit that no matter how hard they’ve worked, no matter what odds they’ve overcome, that work would need to be harder and those odds would be greater if they wished to be in the same place socioeconomically and they were Black rather than white. There’s nothing wrong with admitting this. I know my dad, born on a farm in rural Iowa, worked his ass off. I’m proud as hell of my dad. I know my mom, a rare female engineer, is tough as nails. I’m proud as hell of my mom. But I also know that were my parents Black, the challenges they faced would have been greater, just because of the color of their skin, and that’s without mentioning truths like the average economic position Black families start at in America compared to white families. Not only do white people play with loaded dice. We start, on average, with more chips in our stack, and fewer of our dads in prison, and a lower risk of gun violence in our neighborhoods, and no concerns about traffic stops, and so many other little and big advantages, all because of a long line of mistakes and sins tracing from slavery through poll taxes through redlining through the war on drugs, with hundreds if not thousands if not millions of other mistakes and sins in the same thread, all combining to create an imperfect union in which, while all men may be created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, we don’t all start at the same place in the game, and some of us get to play, as has been said, with loaded dice.

Acknowledging white privilege is the easy part. It’s readily apparent. What’s harder is the second thing Moore asked.

The second thing Moore asked of us was to relinquish that privilege. It doesn’t sound fun. It’s pretty comfortable to play with loaded dice. It also doesn’t sound easy. Because how, exactly, do we relinquish something this ingrained in our worlds?

Moore offered a few suggestions. Some felt rather small—asking our employers to commit to having Black representation on their boards. Some seemed mightily large—asking those of us living in gentrifying areas of Austin to sell our houses back to Black families at ten percent of the cost. The fact is, relinquishing this privilege isn’t straightforward. It’s not as easy as acknowledging its existence. It’s not as easy as reading about Black history. It’s not as easy as listening. It’s not as easy as attending a protest.

I don’t know what the answer is about how to relinquish white privilege. I want to, though, because what Moore said makes sense, and what Moore said is just. Unless those of us who possess privilege work to relinquish it, progress is going to remain painfully slow, and millions more children will be born into a world in which their skin color has a large say on what freedoms they will have. Slavery doesn’t come out over the wash of a few generations. Cycles of American poverty and hardship are real.

Relinquishing privilege doesn’t mean self-immolating. But it does mean taking a lot of time and effort putting out the fires engulfing our neighbors. It means making efforts to dismantle systems that continue racial oppression, like so many of those within our policing system. It means confronting prejudice and bias within ourselves, reminding ourselves constantly of our neighbors’ humanity. It means advocating in our workplaces and schools for all voices to be heard. I don’t know what all else it means. I’d guess it means some hard things. It’s hard to give up loaded dice. It’s not fun to be uncomfortable.

I spent a lot of time Sunday night listening to “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” I was struck by its optimism. It’s not just a song about a journey to come. It’s also a song about victories achieved. I’ll leave you with the text, penned by James Weldon Johnson around the beginning of the 1900’s:

Lift ev’ry voice and sing,
‘Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on ‘til victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
‘Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

Source: NAACP

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Note: On June 10th, following input from a reader, we updated this post to change the capitalization of the word “Black.”