BURLINGTON — Nearly 1,000 demonstrators gathered in Battery Park Saturday to protest racism and police brutality almost a month after George Floyd was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer, sparking a nationwide reckoning on the issues.
Protesters marched through the city, carrying signs and chanting slogans calling for change, many aimed at the Burlington Police Department. The demonstration came as activists are pushing for significant cuts to the city police budget, echoing national calls to defund law enforcement agencies.
“It’s great to see mobilization of people, both white and Black, and any person of color,” said Rivan Calderin, 19, of Burlington. “But this is not nearly enough. And I don’t see this stopping any time soon.”
At least a dozen demonstrators spoke on stage in Battery Park before and after the march, sharing experiences with racism in Vermont and calling for systemic change.
“Being Black in Vermont is its own hell,” Zanevia Wilcox told the crowd. “As hefty of a statement that is, I didn’t believe this until I got older. The stares, the conversations with Black strangers that got too familiar, the liberal bigotry that we continue to ignore all became more clear.”
Wilcox called for the firing of three BPD officers — Jason Bellavance, Cory Campbell, and Joe Corrow — who were accused of police brutality last year following a pair of incidents in which Black men were tackled.
Burlington City Councilor Zoraya Hightower, P-Ward 1, brought acting Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad to the stage before the march and questioned him for about five minutes on police reform. Murad — an Underhill native who formerly worked in the New York Police Department — agreed his agency needs to be better, but he defended it as “a very good police department.”
Pressed by Hightower, the first woman of color elected to the Burlington City Council, on whether the department “has been heavily, and over-involved, in social cases and in schools,” Murad said, “I don’t agree about schools. I do agree that social problems have become the problem of the police for more than 30 years.”
“For more than 30 years, those kinds of issues have been put on the plate of the police because the other services either didn’t exist or were allowed to whither,” he said.
Murad said he “would like to fund” alternative services, but he added, “I would not want to turn off what we have now without having viable alternatives built.”
The Burlington City Council fielded hundreds of calls over the past week from residents who support the demands of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, which has called for a 30% reduction in uniformed BPD officers, among other things. Asked by Hightower if he would be confident in his ability to implement the Racial Justice Alliance’s demands if they were mandated by the City Council, Murad punted.
“If mandated, some of those demands cannot be met under contract law and human resources rules,” he said. “And others cannot be met without compromising public safety.”
Hightower — who said she supports “force reduction through attrition” and backs the plan to cut the number of uniformed BPD officers by 30% — told VTDigger she was not satisfied by Murad’s answers.
“I don’t think we can expect the police chief to give answers that we want to hear,” she said while marching down Pearl Street. “I really don’t think that this is a moment where we can hope for any tangible change from within.”
“I know this is a painful moment for the police department — really all the police departments,” she said. “But Black lives have been feeling a lot of pain for a lot longer than that, and we are going to push through the change that we think we need to see regardless.”
In an interview after the march, Murad — who was brought back on stage by another speaker later in the day — called the proposal to decrease BPD’s uniformed officer headcount by 30% “reckless” and said it “puts public safety at risk.”
Calderin, who also spoke prior to the march, said in an interview that there “needs to be a large restructure in the police department,” including reformed hiring standards and more training.
“It sounded like he was trying to skate a thin line and not upset anyone,” he said. “But at the same time, while doing that, he didn’t really say anything of importance.”
Calderin said he was “proud of the people who put this together” and of those who attended, but he added that he was disappointed to see a smaller turnout Saturday than the one for the demonstration in Battery Park three weekends ago.
“It’s the white people, if I’m going to be frank,” he said. “If they really cared about the movement, they would continue to come out — every rally. I know it takes a lot of time in the day, but we need more and more people to come to every event.”
Mustaf Mohamed, an Essex resident, said he attended the demonstration “to show and represent the Black Lives Matter movement.”
“Racism shouldn’t be a pandemic, but it is,” he said.
Adeen Haji, one of the event’s organizers, said he was pleased with the turnout Saturday, but he added that attending the demonstration “is only the first step to making change.”
“I call on the white folks that came out today, especially during the march, to truly continue to find ways that they can use their white privilege to help fight against the system that’s built within the United States,” Haji said.
