After three nights of unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the police shooting of Jacob Blake on August 23 and the murder of two Black Lives Matter activists the following Tuesday, protesters peacefully marched through the city on Wednesday night, while police officers kept their distance and monitored the demonstrators from afar.
“If you don’t want the city [to be violent], tell the officers to stop shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at us when we’re trying to be peaceful..."
For several hours, approximately 200 to 300 protesters walked through Kenosha’s streets, using Civic Center Park, adjacent to the county courthouse, as a congregation point. They clogged intersections, honked horns, rode on the tops of cars, and chanted.
The march came after two people were fatally shot and another injured at around midnight on Tuesday. Kyle Rittenhouse, seventeen, of Antioch, Illinois, was later arrested and charged with first-degree homicide after fleeing back across the state line. On Thursday, he was also charged by prosecutors with two counts of recklessly endangering safety.
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers announced on August 27 that he had requested National Guard members from Michigan, Arizona, and Alabama to help keep the peace in Kenosha, in addition to the Wisconsin Guard troops already stationed in the city since Sunday.
The only confrontation between protesters and authorities on Wednesday was in the early evening. Around 7 p.m., just before protesters started marching, at least a dozen Kenosha County Sheriff’s deputies wearing tactical gear pulled up to the park in an armored vehicle called an MRAP (or Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle). They also appeared to be using a U-Haul moving truck and a couple of SUVs, demanding that protesters stay in the park, before quickly retreating after being met with a chorus of hostile yells.
From then on, the authorities largely avoided the main group of protesters, but squad cars or unmarked SUVs were often behind, in front, or on their flank, several blocks down. If the group marched closer to one of the police vehicles, the vehicle would quickly move back or speed away.
Meanwhile, a helicopter was almost always hovering above the marchers, but was not evident in media footage of the march. This apparent change in tactics coincided with the reported arrival of F.B.I. agents and U.S. Marshals provided Wednesday by the Trump Administration at Governor Ever’s request (after he had declined the offer of Homeland Security officers like those deployed in Portland, Oregon earlier this year).
“If you don’t want the city [to be violent], tell the officers to stop shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at us when we’re trying to be peaceful because that’s what happened the day before,” one of the protest leaders, Kejuan Goldsmith, a nineteen-year-old activist who said he studies environmental policy and theatre at UW-Green Bay, tells The Progressive. “They thought they could scare us with that tank,” he adds, referring to the MRAP that the sheriff’s deputies had deployed earlier in the evening.
At around 11:30 p.m, protesters marched toward what some described as a “rich, white neighborhood,” where they honked horns, banged on drums, and loudly chanted.
At around 11:30 p.m, protesters marched toward what some described as a “rich, white neighborhood,” where they honked horns, banged on drums, and loudly chanted. “Outta your house and into the streets,” they repeated. Most of the large houses appeared empty, and a few of the protesters surmised that the residents had fled to their “lake houses.” The police, however, did not intervene.
The protesters slowly dispersed on their own accord around 1:30 a.m. Thursday morning. A handful of remaining protesters resting in the park were approached by three police officers and subsequently asked to leave since there was a curfew. When a few other protesters and journalists walked over from across the street, the officers retreated.
Kenosha County Sheriff’s deputies confront protesters in an MRAP, U-Haul, and SUVs confront protesters assembled at Civic Center Park around 7 p.m. on Wednesday.
A protester raises his fist during the first march through the streets of Kenosha on Wednesday night.
A protester on a skateboard and holding a woman’s hand raises his fist while marching.
Protesters stand at an intersection in an affluent Kenosha neighborhood.
Kejuan Goldsmith, nineteen, rallies protesters with a megaphone as they clog an intersection in Kenosha.
A protester stands on the top of an SUV at an intersection in Kenosha.
A protester holding a sign that reads “All Lives Don’t Matter Until Black Lives Matter” stands on the top of an SUV.
Three Kenosha police officers approach a small group of protesters in Civic Center Park early Thursday morning and ask them to leave.
Protesters walk past a business with text on the boarded windows reading “Black Owned Business.”