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“Creative Protests” At Marcus-David Peters Circle Combine Music, Art, and Resistance

Anya Sczerzenie | September 3, 2020

Topics: black lives matter, Creative Protests, George Floyd, Julia Seliavski, Marcus-David Peters Circle, Marwa Eltaib, Nolef Turns, protests, RVA26, Sheba Williams

Organized by RVA26, monthly “Creative Protests” at Marcus-David Peters Circle have given creative voice to a community hungry for positive change, even as the space remains the focus for civil disobedience in Richmond.

It’s a place where you can play a pick up game of basketball outside. It’s a place where a community garden grows, nurtured by volunteers.

It’s a place covered in graffiti: “Black Lives Matter.” “ACAB.” “Fuck 12.”

It’s a place where you can take your kids, your dogs, even your babies. It’s a place where people listen to live music, socially-distanced, and laid out on blankets.

Morning yoga at Marcus-David Peters Circle. Photo via RVA26/Twitter

It’s a place with a giant statue of civil war general Robert E Lee, which, unlike Richmond’s other confederate statues, remains standing on its pedestal (for now). 

It’s a place of fun, and it’s a place of protest. It’s a place where groups gather to begin marches.

It’s a place that was once simply called the Lee Circle, or the Lee Monument, but has been reclaimed and re-named by community members and protestors. Marcus-David Peters circle, or MDP for short. It has become a community space for many Richmonders.

“Like any birth story, it was birth and then chaos,” said Marwa Eltaib, organizer of the Creative Protests and founder of the anti-incarceration group RVA 26. 

RVA 26 is a group of people who were arrested on May 31 during protests, including those at what would become Marcus-David Peters Circle. The group now describes themselves, according to their instagram page, as “organizing against Black incarceration and for Black liberation.”

Lady E And Friends perform at Marcus-David Peters Circle. Photo via RVA26/Twitter

In addition to other events, RVA 26 has hosted one Creative Protest event every month of this summer. Along with speeches by activists and organizers, these events feature live performances by local black artists.

“Some are up-and-coming, while some are more established,” Eltaib said. “We try to get new artists out there. We have such a beautiful, eclectic, and diverse array of black artists in Richmond.”

These Creative Protests took place on June 13, July 18, and August 22. They hosted musical artists such as rappers Jason Jamal and Skinnyy Hendrixx, and blues musician Lady E. Some visual artists — such as live painters — have been involved in these events, but the difficulty of doing live art, coupled with fears that the police may come and confiscate the finished product, means that few visual artists have performed. 

“If we have a project like that, we need to take more precautions,” Eltaib said. 

Performance art, including fire-spinner Venus Riley’s dance with a flaming hoop — the grand finale at the August 22 protest — is better suited for the circle. Eltaib says that she hopes to involve more performance artists, such as dancers, in future Creative Protests.

Police have been removing items from the circle since its inception. Some of the art pieces from previous Creative Protests, as well as a small lending library, were removed earlier in the summer, according to Eltaib. A sign marking the circle as “Marcus-David Peters Circle” was removed in mid-August, though the Richmond police department denied involvement in removing the sign. Recently, a new sign arrived at the circle, declaring its name once again.

The new Marcus-David Peters Circle sign. Photo via JusticeforMDP/Twitter

The atmosphere during musical performances was that of an outdoor concert, with people sitting on blankets, talking to friends, and eating. Almost everyone wore a face mask.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, in-person community events can be few and far between. The spontaneous, decentralized and community-driven nature of the MDP circle makes it so that community is happening all the time. 

“That wasn’t our main goal, but it’s a natural effect,” said Eltaib. 

The main goal of the space, and of the Creative Protests, is to send a message.

“We founded the first Creative Protest to utilize art to continue the conversation of Black liberation,” Eltaib said. “It’s a wonderful way to get the message across.”

At the Creative Protest, organizers wanted to make this purpose clear. Between musical performances, speeches by organizers reminded people that they weren’t at any ordinary concert. At one event, Sheba Williams, director of the group NoLef Turns, spoke at the event about the difficulties of being labeled a felon, especially as a Black person.

When night fell on the circle, projections were shone onto the Lee monument behind the performers. One was the face of Marcus-David Peters, superimposed with the words “reopen the case”. Another was the label “second place — you tried” on the Lee statue’s base, making it look like a gigantic participation trophy.

Photo by Landon Shroder

The circle, which has been occupied by protestors since the killing of George Floyd, may have seen a lot of artistic creativity on display in the months since, but it is still a protest space.

On August 24, two days after the third Creative Protest, people dressed in black gathered in the circle. They all planned to march in solidarity with protestors in Kenosha, Wisconsin after the shooting of Jacob Blake. 

The circle was both the starting and ending point of the march, which wound through neighborhoods before spilling out onto Broad Street, where bike marshals blocked traffic and a few people in cars passed out ice-cold bottles of water to marchers.

Some marchers came on foot, some brought bikes. A few brought dogs on leashes. One protester held a rainbow flag, superimposed with a black power fist. Another protester held a sign painted to look like a spiky coronavirus molecule, which read, “Racism is deadlier than the pandemic.”

Photo via RVA26/Twitter

Julea Seliavski, who co-organized the Creative Protests with Eltaib and is another founding member of RVA 26, said that she hopes the creative protests can bring more of an audience to the Black Lives Matter cause.

“It comes down to care, it comes down to supporting the Black community,” Seliavski said. “People can come in and be radicalized through art. By radicalized, I mean radical softness, radical love.”

Regarding the future of the MDP circle, Marwa Eltaib said that she wants it to become a healing space for the Richmond community to gather.

“You can find food, you can find friends, you can find someone to have a conversation with,” Eltaib said. “If you’re homeless, home-insecure, anyone. I want everyone who comes to feel pride in what Richmond did together. And, I would like the police to stay out of it.”

Top Photo by R. Anthony Harris

Sending A Highly Visible Message

Carley Welch | August 17, 2020

Topics: billboards, black lives matter, Colette McEachin, DTC RVA, Marcus-David Peters, Marwa Eltaib, Nolef Turns, protests, Rebecca Keel, Richmond Community Bail Fund, RVA26, Sheba Williams, Southerners on new ground

A variety of advocacy groups around Richmond are calling for Commonwealth Attorney Colette McEachin to drop all charges filed against participants in recent Black Lives Matter protests. One group has even posted a billboard.

Driving to the Richmond City Jail, you can hardly miss Commonwealth Attorney Colette McEachin’s face. It’s plastered on a billboard overlooking Oliver Hill Way, and it is not in favor of McEachin’s work as an attorney. Instead, it serves as a demand that she drop all charges against the hundreds of individuals who’ve been arrested and charged with crimes during the recent protests in Richmond. It also asks that she reopen the Marcus-Davis Peters case. 

The billboard was paid for by Drop The Charges RVA, a small group of individuals with experience in advertising and communications; it was funded through anonymous donations. DTCRVA leadership said the billboard was made possible by the groundwork done by Nolef Turns, SONG (Southerners On New Ground), the Richmond Community Bail Fund, and other activist groups in the area.

“We are just using our skills to amplify the voices of those doing the groundwork,” a DTCRVA leadership member said in a text message. 

Charges facing individuals arrested during the wave of Black Lives Matter protests over the past few months range from misdemeanors that include violating the 8 PM curfew set in the first few days of the protests, to more serious charges such as disturbing the peace and assault of an officer. 

Nolef Turns, a local organization dedicated to helping individuals who’ve been charged with a crime get back on their feet, has been working to get charges expunged for those arrested for protest-related offenses since the protests started in late May. 

Photo by Nils Westergard

Though Nolef Turns is committed to helping those who have been convicted, the goal where protest-related crimes are concerned is to hopefully avoid a conviction altogether. In Virginia, the state background check includes one’s arrest record, not just their conviction record. This is why getting the charges dropped altogether is vital, according to Nolef Turns Executive Director Sheba Williams, because the process of getting arrest records expunged is a long, drawn-out procedure that someone standing up for social justice shouldn’t have to go through. 

“The only people who are eligible for an expungement today are non-convictions. So you go through the process of the court, you pay your bond, you pay for an attorney, you take time off of work to go to court. Then you’re not convicted, but you still have this thing on your background check,” Williams said. “You have to go before the court where you got this charge to request that they expunge it from your record, and that’s the part that we do.”

SONG, a local organization calling for LGBTQ liberation among all races, ethnicities, religions, and backgrounds, has also been fighting to get the charges against protestors dropped, organizing protests of their own and calling on McEachin to drop the charges. 

A frustrating part about this particular mission, according to Rebecca Keel, a statewide organizer for SONG, is that McEachin has said numerous times that she will not listen to demands of her constituents. In Keel’s opinion, it’s the responsibility of elected officials to listen to the people they represent. 

“I personally voted for Colette McEachin, so I’d like to be listened to by her, but she is refusing to do so,” they said. “I think that that’s a big indicator that a politician is not ready to serve a community, but rather ready to continue to serve laws that do not work. Colette McEachin is serving systems of oppression, rather than her constituents.”

Photo by Nils Westergard

Among those who were arrested and are also calling on McEachin to drop the charges is the group RVA26. RVA26 is a group of individuals of varying races and backgrounds who were part of the 233 people arrested on one of the first nights of protesting, according to group member Marwa Eltaib. 

The group name actually originated from the first 26 individuals who were arrested and held on a jail bus that night for “eight or nine hours.” Those 26 people, joined by many others as the night went on, all experienced different outcomes, as some were able to go home after they were released from the bus. while others were kept overnight and into the next day. Eltaib was one of the latter: arrested, crammed into a bus with others in defiance of social distancing guidelines, strip-searched, and left in a jail cell. While there, she says she witnessed what she called “traumatizing” events, including people screaming for medical help or having mental breakdowns. 

Eltaib said despite being handcuffed, watching people’s hands turn black and blue from the restraints of handcuffs and zip ties, and not getting a phone call during her booking, she still has gratitude for part of the experience — that the white people who were present were using their privilege for good, and standing by the protesters of color.

“The people that were arrested were more disproportionately Black and brown people, but we still had a good amount of white allies with us that were vocal,” Eltaib said. “It was very traumatizing and horrible, but even still, we were in so much privilege knowing that our community was surrounding us and that we had legal representatives on the outside. And I knew that we had people looking for us and waiting.”

Using their experience to help those who are now getting arrested and facing the same treatment and battles as they once did, members of RVA26 are attempting to build relationships with those currently incarcerated. 

“It gets very lonely, and overall mentally,and spiritually draining, being stuck in those jails,” Eltaib said. “So being able to be a level of support for people that are still incarcerated, and then raise funds for that, is what we’re trying to do.”

Photo by Nils Westergard

Richmond Community Bail Fund (RCBF), an organization which supports those who are incarcerated by helping to raise funds for those who can’t afford bail, has focused on protest-related charges in recent months. They too are calling on McEachin to drop the charges against protesters. 

RCBF has been around since the spring of 2017, said Luca Connolly, co-director of the organization. Since the protest began, members of the group have passed out flyers at the protests with the organization’s emergency number on them, so individuals who get arrested can call RCBF for help when they get their one phone call.

“There’s usually a hotline volunteer who’s [asking protesters], ‘Do you have the support hotline?’’’ Connolly said. “It’s great now because everybody’s like, ‘Yeah, I have it.’ That feels good. I have met people who have it tattooed on their body, and somebody projected it onto the monument in Marcus-David Peters Circle. You need to be prepared for the worst.”

The organization also builds relationships with those incarcerated, providing support with legal fees, legal advice, child support assistance, clean clothes, and rides home. Connolly said there’s also a hotline number that people can call if they’re calling from outside a jail, which helps provide support for those whose loved ones have been arrested.

RCBF is financed through 100% grassroots fundraising said Connolly, meaning they take no money from foundations or big corporations. She also said they primarily ask for money from white people and people of wealth.

“We kind of understand our work as a reparations-based framework, moving white wealth to liberate black people who are experiencing mass incarceration or police violence,” Connolly said.

Discussing protest-related charges in an interview with RVA Magazine last month, McEachin said she would look at the cases on a case-by-case basis instead of dropping the charges of all protesters as a group, which is what these various organizations are pleading her to do.

“There’s not going to be a general review. It’s a very individualized review, which is what I would think people would want if they were charged,” McEachin said. “Given what I know now, I think there will be some charges left at the end of my review.”

Protesters are facing an array of charges, some of which may sound worse than others. However, Connolly feels that it’s important not to separate the fate of individuals based on what they’re being charged with. 

“We are asking Colette McEachin to drop all charges against all protesters,” she said. “No one should experience prosecution for exercising their first amendment right to protest.”

Top Photo via Drop The Charges RVA

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