Second protest planned at Beebe Memorial Park

Published 3:57 pm Monday, June 1, 2020

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

A second protest has been scheduled in Washington for Monday night. An event on Facebook titled “Black Unity Power Rally” is scheduled for 5 p.m. at Beebe Memorial Park on Bridge Street, 30 minutes before another protest is scheduled on the Washington waterfront.

“We’ve been notified of the protest downtown that starts at 5:30,” said Tina Billingslea, one of the organizers of the protest. “We will say what we have to say (at Beebe) and then we are walking through the city through Ninth Street, through Market Street and meet up with them downtown.”

Billingslea said that the purpose of the rally was not to incite violence, but send a message on police brutality. The issue, she said, goes beyond George Floyd’s death, and impacts every city and town throughout the country.

“The fact that the public and our government is so stubborn that they would let a whole nation burn down, instead of just detaining all of the officers that were filmed and put on tape, it speaks not just to Minneapolis, Minnesota, it speaks for every town I’ve ever lived in,” Billingslea said.

The Washington Police Department learned of the second protest Monday afternoon, and is making plans to be present at both rallies, according to Washington Police and Fire Services Director Stacy Drakeford.