A diverse crowd led by youth marched from Cranbrook’s Spirit Square in the downtown core to Rotary Park to take a stand in solidarity against racism and discrimination on Friday night.
The gathering started at 4 p.m. at the Spirit Square, before the crowd of roughly a few hundred people began chanting slogans and moving down 10th Ave past city hall towards Rotary Park.
A crowd marches from a meeting place at the Spirit Square in Cranbrook, down 10th Ave alongside City Hall, en route to Rotary Park. #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/SAwmsDH0t7
— Trevor Crawley (@tcrawls) June 5, 2020
The procession ended at the Rotary Park bandstand, with a number of speakers addressing the crowd while also holding an open mic for anyone to wished to say a few words.
Cranbrook’s event was inclusive, with representation from, and solidarity with, the Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) the LGBTQ+ communities
Moments of silence on bend-ed knees where held, honouring and referencing George Floyd, a black man who died while in police custody during an arrest in Minneapolis on May 25. Video of the arrest shows Floyd on the ground with a police officer’s knee on his neck for over eight minutes, while Floyd pleaded that he couldn’t breathe.
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