Throngs of Sunshine Coast residents flooded the lawns of Hackett Park and into the streets of Sechelt Sunday afternoon to walk for racial justice.
It was the largest turnout for an event since COVID-19-related public health restrictions went into effect in March.
Organizer Julia Budd estimated 2,000 people attended the event, while RCMP Const. Karen Whitby put the number at about 1,000.
“I can’t believe how many people showed up. Unbelievable. Unbelievable,”
said Lance Gibson Sr., Budd’s husband and one of the event speakers. “With these numbers, good luck being racist on the Sunshine Coast.”
People had filled the park by 1 p.m. on the sunny afternoon, many wearing face masks, wielding signs and staying in physically-distanced clusters.
Reggae standards by musician Randeesh wafted over the diverse crowd as speakers took to a stage installed at the baseball diamond near the corner of Ocean Avenue and Dolphin Street.
First came a prayer – in she shashishalem and English – by shíshálh Nation members Valerie and Lenora Joe. From the stage Valerie told the sprawling crowd, “I think my ancestors have waited for this day. I know I have.”
Then it was Budd’s turn.
The professional mixed martial artist spoke about her exposure to racism while travelling in the southern United States for fights.
She referenced the wave of protests in the United States and around the world, unleashed after a video captured a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minn., kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, a black man.
She broadened the movement’s rallying cry for a stop to anti-black racism and police brutality to one with local appeal.
“I heard plenty of racist slurs on the Sechelt Elementary playground, at Chatelech, in our stores, on the beach, I’ve heard it everywhere – mainly targeted at our Indigenous community,” said Budd, who was raised in Sechelt.
“I don’t want to use the excuse anymore that our racism is a little better than the United States, that it’s somehow a measurement of how good we’re doing in our community or our country. It doesn’t sit well with me anymore,” she said. “We cannot stay silent any longer.”
Then Lance Gibson Sr. took the microphone and ran through a litany of anecdotes, beginning with his own parents, an interracial couple married in 1961 – six years before it was legal to do so in the United States.
“I have so many stories,” he said. “I’ve been fighting all my life. I want to tell you I’m tired, I’m tired. I can’t breathe.”
Those stories now extend to his son, Lance Gibson Jr., a 25-year-old model, actor and former mixed martial arts fighter. “[My son] is in danger at any time. It could be a security guard, it could be a lynch mob, it could be a police officer, it could be a customs agent. And you know how that story gets twisted? They pull him over, take him down a back road, we don’t see my son again. That’s what I worry about every time he leaves the house.”
More stories poured from Gibson Sr. Each with a name, each with a death defined by racial discrimination. “Ahmaud Arbery, lynched in the streets in front of everybody. Breonna Taylor, shot in her house. And then George Floyd, for the whole world to see.
“Until black lives matter, until Indigenous lives matter, all lives can’t matter,” he said, before calling on the crowd to walk as allies, to use their smartphones as weapons against racism.
A minute of silence to remember lives lost, and the march began.
RCMP officers blocked traffic as protesters streamed down to the waterfront and back through Cowrie Street.
It took a half hour for the larger-than-expected crowds to clear pedestrian crossings, according to Const. Whitby. Most drivers sounded their support with horns. Some expressed frustration at the wait.
While the protest was peaceful, an altercation did erupt between two drivers, resulting in a broken car window. But according to Whitby, “it had nothing to do with the protest.”
Walking in the crowd were local government leaders, including MLA Nicholas Simons.
Adelene da Soul Poet welcomed back the crowd to Hackett Park, followed by shíshálh Nation Coun. Alvina Paul.
“In a society that is filled with unnecessary hate, it is not enough just to be non-racist, we need to be anti-racist,” she said.
The youngest speaker of the day, 25-year-old Lance Gibson Jr., was one of the last to speak.
He reached back to the history of slavery, and into his recent history – the “cold desert” feeling that stayed with him while training as a wrestler at Arizona State University, the Ku Klux Klan rally at his school, the white college friends defending police brutality. He called on the audience to follow the golden rule and to stand up to racism.
“There’s going to be that voice that says don’t stir the pot. And I encourage you all to grab a wooden spoon and stir that pot for me. And throw a little cayenne pepper in it, because I like my soup spicy.”
The rally ended with a gifting ceremony: elder Robert Joe tied two eagle feather armbands around Budd’s biceps.
One more song by Randeesh – Lean on Me in a cappella – and by approximately 5:30 p.m., Hackett Park was once again an empty space.
See more photos from the event in our online galleries at /www.coastreporter.net/photos-videos/
