Local protests held in support of Black Lives Matter
About 150 people participated in a peaceful protest march in support of Black Lives Matter on June 9 in Ephraim.
Protestors show their support for Black Lives Matter in Ephraim on June 9.
The Black Lives Matter movement came to Sanpete County last week in the form of a pair of peaceful marches in Ephraim and Manti.
While protests and riots have taken place across the country following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, demonstrations in Utah had been mostly limited to the Wasatch Front. This changed over the past week as events expanded into smaller communities like St. George, Moab and Kanab.
Video footage shows Floyd being pinned to the ground by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for more than 8 minutes while three other officers helped restrain him. After repeating multiple times that he could not breathe, Floyd stopped moving and then died.
Chauvin has since been charged with second-degree murder while the other three were charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder.
The march in Ephraim on June 9 garnered the support of about 150 people, a turnout that surprised many. Snow College student Tessa Whitaker said there were a lot more participants than she was expecting.
“I wasn’t sure how many people in this county even cared about issues like that that would care to participate in a march. It felt really good to see that many people there,” she said.
Whitaker estimated about 15 people participated in the Manti march. “Even though the turnout wasn’t as good as Ephraim, it was nice that it wasn’t just me and my neighbors,” she said.
Current and former faculty and staff at Snow College turned out to support the Ephraim march. “I actually saw two of my professors there; Dr. Vance Larsen and Dr. Trent Hanna were there,” she said. “I also saw (Snow College) President (Brad) Cook and Josh Hales, who teaches business classes at Snow …. It gave me a hope that we aren’t alone.”
Dr. Vance Larsen, who is the chairman of the Snow College music department and a retired lieutenant colonel in the Utah National Guard, said of his participation, “It isn’t enough to sit on the fence anymore. I marched because I needed to take a stand.”
Sarita Fowler, who co-organized the Manti march along with Whitaker, also participated in the Ephraim march.
“There are a lot of people here who do want to combat racism and who are open-minded. More than I realized,” she said. “I was like, oh wow, there are people willing to listen.”
In Ephraim, “There were a few people who drove by and yelled at us and flipped us off,” Whitaker said. Things in Manti went a bit farther. “There was one man sitting on his lawn holding a gun, but you could tell it was a toy because of the orange tip. There were people wearing Trump hats that just stood there and stared us down as we walked.”
According to Whitaker, one lady even drove by yelling and calling them “dumb (expletive)s” and telling them to go home. “It really wasn’t a big deal though,” she said.
Negativity toward the marches actually started before they took place. Fowler said that when she posted the event in a group on Facebook, the moderator of the group disabled comments on the post and there were a lot of dislikes on it.
“I don’t understand why people would be upset about that,” she said.
Social media posts for the Ephraim march faced similar backlash, including one person saying that he was going to herd his sheep down Main Street during the march.
“It was mostly positive though,” Whitaker said. In Manti, “There was a really nice black lady in a car who was excited to see us. She smiled and waved … she even drove down the street a ways so she could see us more.”
Similar things happened in Ephraim as drivers in vehicles passing by honked and waved in support.
Fowler said she grew up in southern California’s high desert. “The majority of the people there were Latino. We also had a lot of black people and Asian people. Coming here, it was a whole different ballgame,” she said.
Fowler said when she moved to Sanpete, she was surprised because there was less racial diversity.
“There have been a lot of white people who have hijacked this whole movement about ‘black lives matter’ and made it about them,” Fowler said. “With the whole ‘all lives matter thing,’ it doesn’t diminish your worth to recognize the worth of other people and especially people who are experiencing things as awful as they are, experiencing these things every day of their lives.”
