By KAITLYN LEVINSON, Special to The Sun
With masks and signs at the ready, hundreds of Moorestown residents and neighbors marched up and down Main Street on June 2 to peacefully protest police brutality and racism.
The protest came eight days after the death of George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis who died when a police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly 10 minutes and ignored his pleas that he couldn’t breathe.
Jasmine Cartwright-Atkins, 20, and Jessica Garcia, 19, who graduated from Moorestown High School in 2018, planned the township event and led the crowd along Church Road and Main Street before circling back to the steps of the recreation center. The protesters engaged in call-and-response chants, crying out sentiments such as “I can’t breathe” and “No justice, no peace.”
“Then it was chanting the names, chanting with other people on Main Street,” Cartwright-Atkins said in describing how she felt during the march.
“It was a lot of emotion: happiness, pride, just love. Pure love. I felt everything.”
As the marchers reached the end of their route, a number of individuals lined up to give speeches and recite poems and praised Moorestown for its display of unity.
Graduates and current Moorestown students addressed the crowd, as did elected officials such as Congressman Andy Kim and Moorestown Mayor Nicole Gillespie. Parents and other residents also took turns at the microphone.
Floyd’s death has sparked nearly a week of unrest in multiple U.S. cities, with some protests turning violent as police confronted marchers. Other protestors took to social media to express their outrage over Floyd’s death.
“I could not just keep scrolling through my feed without feeling pain,” Garcia said on her decision to take action. “There’s no way I can sit here and just watch this happen and not be involved.”
Soon after word of the protest spread on Instagram and Facebook, Cartwright-Atkins and Garcia received pushback from Moorestown residents who disapproved of the image on a flyer announcing the protest It depicted a police vehicle with the words “F*ck cops” spray-painted on its hood.
“We didn’t post it with the intention to cause issues,” Cartwright-Atkins said of the criticism. “We made sure on the flyer to stress ‘peaceful protest’ in bold, bold letters.”
Gillespie commended Moorestown’s residents and the police department for their cooperation in overseeing “a constitutionally protected right.”
“There are a lot of people causing trouble and taking advantage of this that aren’t involved with the protesters,” Gillespie said of concerns that the Moorestown demonstration could turn ugly
“It’s important to separate protesters from looting. It’s not the same thing.”
As speeches concluded, Cartwright-Atkins and Garcia expressed their pride that the Moorestown protest remained calm and respectful, defying those “thinking we couldn’t be peaceful, couldn’t be loving.”
“Nothing happened, no one got hurt, everyone is okay,” Cartwright-Atkins said. “That is more than what I can ask for.”
