“The Bucket Boy” provides a beat for protesters as they rally at the Fremont Street Experience during a march, organized to honor Breonna Taylor and other people killed by police, in downtown Las Vegas Saturday, Sept. 5, 2020. Taylor was shot and killed by Louisville (Kentucky) Metro Police officers on March 13, 2020.
Saturday, Sept. 5, 2020 | 9:47 p.m.
A “Black Lives Matter” demonstration through Fremont Street Experience on Saturday featured more than the typical sounds of a protest. There was also music playing from the popular lights show attraction.
When the group of about 100 moved east on Fremont, and the music slowly started to fade, a street drummer joined the group. He banged buckets as demonstrators chanted, “If we don’t get justice, we’re going to shut (the system) down.”
The group then peacefully continued their march through downtown.
The march was the latest local gathering in a string of national demonstrations following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody in late May.
Aside from grabbing the attention of tourists — some who looked on perplexed, others who pumped their fists in unison — the protest ended as peacefully as it began at Las Vegas City Hall.
When hotel security units blocked the re-entry to the tourist attraction, the marchers continued down public sidewalks. Metro Police and Las Vegas City Marshals were present but didn’t interfere.
With now familiar chants like “whose lives matter,” “we got the power,” and “no justice, no peace,” protesters decried what they call “police terrorism” and a racist system.
The march was organized to honor Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed by Louisville police earlier this year during a no-knock warrant. Demonstrators also acknowledged Jorge Gomez, an armed protester who was killed by Metro officers at the end of a downtown protest in June, and Byron Williams, who was killed by Metro officers last year after pleading he couldn’t breathe.
A megaphone in hand, organizer Stretch Sanders, led the march. In one stop, he poured water to the ground to commemorate those who died in the hands of police.
At City Hall, where officials placed barricades to protect the building, Sanders spoke about Black Lives Matter being more than a movement against police violence, and it becoming a “lifestyle” that challenges other flawed systems. Protesters must also acknowledge other societal issues affecting those in the Black community, such as homophobia, transphobia, joblessness, and hunger, he said.
Sanders said that Saturday’s protest had accomplished something good, but that future events must be more targeted, and might require peaceful, but civil disobedience acts that could lead to arrests.
The protest ended in less than three hours with demonstrators chanting the names of people who have been killed by police.
