The year was supposed to be defined by the coronavirus, after it shut down the entire country in March, quietly killing thousands.
Without doubt, 2020 would be the year of Covid.
But when George Floyd was killed by police on a Minneapolis street in June, it became clear that 2020 would have another grimly defining thing.
It certainly wasn’t something new to 2020, but in a year when Black and brown people were bearing far more than their share of the pandemic, in loss of jobs and loss of life, racial justice couldn’t be kept on the backburner any longer.
This year, millions of Americans took to the streets wherever they lived to protest police brutality, racism, and the systemic injustices faced by BIPOC communities all across the country.
In Vermont, that meant thousands of people gathering in towns large and small, to say names like Rayshard Brooks, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor. To demand that police departments stop inflicting violence on their communities, and that cities hold their police accountable.
And nowhere in Vermont were those demands heard louder than in Burlington.
For more than a month, hundreds — and sometimes even thousands — of people marched from Battery Park to City Hall, demanding that three Burlington police officers who’d been accused of inflicting excessive force on people of color lose their jobs.
Each night, they carried signs painted black with the three officers’ names: Jason Bellavance, Cory Campbell and Joseph Corrow — and signs painted red, bearing the names of victims of police brutality in America.
One of the three officers, Bellavance, signed a separation agreement with the city in September. A few months earlier, the City Council approved a 30% cut to the number of officers in the department — an answer to the calls to “defund the police.”
Protesters had dance parties to celebrate their wins, and vigils to reflect on those who were lost.
And every night, after the marching and chanting was done, dozens of tents filled the park, so the protest could go on all night. For weeks on end, for 24 hours a day, every person who drove past One North Avenue would see not only the police department, but also a steady stream of protesters demanding that its funds be reallocated.
When the weather started to drop below freezing, the protesters packed up their tents, and ended the 24/7 era of the protest. But their fight continued.
In December, the City Council approved a charter change proposal that would create a police oversight board with investigatory and disciplinary power, if voters support the measure on Town Meeting Day.
But at the same time, councilors are now rethinking their decision to cap the size of the force, after Acting Chief Jon Murad announced this month that once the department gets down to 74 officers, it will be unable to staff the overnight shift, from 3 to 7:30 a.m.
For weeks after the protesters had brought their tents home, you could still see the dark, flattened imprint in the Battery Park grass of where they had been. Likewise, the protest — that was a long time coming — will have effects that last even longer.
For many months now, virtual City Council meetings have gone late into the night, with public comment after public comment from Burlingtonians demanding change. And so as the pandemic rages on, keeping everyone at home, protesters’ voices will continue to be heard, and in the most 2020 way of all — on Zoom.
