SAUGUS — Despite heavy rains, dozens of Saugus youths gathered in the town’s center early Thursday afternoon to show their support for the Black Lives Matter movement and to demand justice for victims of police brutality.
“We agreed that we were going to hold this thing rain or shine. We weren’t going to be deterred by the weather,” said Seven Greer, one of several students who helped organize the event. “This is ultimately an extremely important cause to us, (and) I’m just feeling proud of this turnout. I’m proud of the community, particularly all the youth support that we’ve got out here. I recognize a lot of these faces from the high school.”
Although advertised on Facebook as “peaceful … (and) unobtrusive,” Thursday’s demonstration has been at the center of town-wide controversy since Selectman Anthony Cogliano publicly announced Monday that he had withdrawn his involvement after “anti-police” statements posted by one of the event’s organizers surfaced online.
When asked, however, several demonstrators said they were there to show their support for the black community and call for systemic change.
“I’m biracial. My father is African American and my mother is white,” said 18-year-old Arianna Bentley-Jette. “I’m really big on supporting Black Lives Matter during these times right now. I’m really glad Saugus decided to have a protest, and that’s why I came out.”
Bentley-Jette said she was pleasantly surprised by the number of protestors who had shown up to support the movement.
“I heard so many different rumors that I didn’t know how this would end up, but now it looks like it turned out pretty good,” she said.
Saugus mother Grace Adeoye, who was there with her four daughters — ages 22, 20, 16, and 4 — said that as a black woman and a Christian, she had been horrified by the filmed death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis cop and wanted to focus on making the community safe for her children.
“It’s really heartbreaking to see a human being being murdered in daylight, right in the open, in the street where people were passing by. Being a black woman and also a Christian, it’s really hard,” Adeoye said. “Personally, I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by really amazing white people. I have white friends who would literally die for me, and what I’m seeing now — it’s hope.”
She later said: “I don’t want my children to be fighting this when it’s their time. We want an end to this.”
