'A traumatized generation': Louisville's youth demand racial justice during mass protests

Louisville Courier Journal

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Young people in Louisville went to battle Friday night.

For more than four hours, flash grenades volleyed through the air like cannon fire, booming above teenagers’ heads while the tat-tat-tat of pepper balls rattled in their ears.

Tear gas wafted across entire city blocks, seeping into their eyes and lungs — the searing pain leaving some in tears, others blindly grasping for the reprieve offered by a stranger with a gallon of milk.

By 10 p.m., downtown Louisville looked like a war zone.

“We just came here because we want peace,” said Louisville native Juliana Ramos, 19. “And we want to stop being killed.”

But by sunrise Saturday, their demands for justice were overshadowed by widespread property damage, as Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and other officials focused their attention on preventing another night of mass unrest — including the announcement of a citywide curfew set to begin by nightfall.

The curfew, officials hope, will keep hundreds of teens and young adults from returning to the downtown corridor for the third night in a row.

By early evening, it remained unclear whether youth would heed the directive.

What has been clear, said Shameka Parrish-Wright, a local activist, is that Louisville's youth are not scared to stand "toe to toe" with law enforcement in protest.

"They're watching and seeing how other people are reacting and are like, 'Hell yeah, let's do this,'" she said. "These young people were out here pushing for change."

ICYMI:Second night of protests marked by vandalism in downtown Louisville

'I could be another funeral'

Kayla Webb, 19, of Louisville, was among those who spent hours facing down a line of roughly 50 police officers in front of Metro Hall on Friday evening.

Chanting, "No justice, no peace!", they held banners that read "#JusticeForBreonna" and "Enough is Enough."

"As a black woman," Webb said, " ... it's terrifying to know that one mistake, one slip of my hand, to reach for something, to breathe wrong, to look at someone wrong, I could be murdered."

"I could have no future," she continued. "I could just be another statistic. I could be another funeral. I could be another T-shirt spray-painted at the flea market."

Molly Wallace, 19, stood shoulder to shoulder with Webb.

At one point, Wallace said some protesters threw water bottles at the officers’ direction. She was hit with pepper bullets and tear gas, she said.

“I was really scared, I'm not gonna lie,” said Wallace, a Louisville resident.

“But I also know that I'm white," she said. "I am not nearly the same risk of being attacked and being assaulted by the police as any person of color. And so, I didn't know if it was necessarily my place to be right up front protesting as a white person, but I felt like in this situation I am so much safer than any person of color.”

Nearby, government buildings were tagged with spray-painted messages denigrating the police. Shards of glass were scattered at the entrance to the Hall of Justice, where protesters earlier in the evening had hurled plastic water bottles at the window panes.

Acknowledging the property damage, Webb said black people have been "trying to protest civilly for the right to be treated as human beings" for decades.

Wearing glasses and an oversized sweater, Webb said she felt "rage" looking at the officers in full riot gear.

The pain of the black community is "so deeply wound into the fabric of our history and our condition that we don't even see all the ways that it manifests," she said. "But it's there."

'A traumatized generation'

Though sparked by the recent high-profile deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Louisville’s own Breonna Taylor, the protests that erupted in the city on Thursday and Friday nights were, in many ways, years in the making for a generation rocked by unrest.

Those graduating high school this month among the Class of 2020, for example, were in the fourth grade when Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old black boy, was shot and killed in his Florida neighborhood.

They were in the seventh grade when Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy carrying a toy pellet gun, was shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer.

By the time they entered high school in the fall of 2016 — just months before President Donald Trump was elected — Black Lives Matter had emerged as a national political and social justice movement.

White supremacists rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, the summer before their sophomore year. Six months later, the tragedy at a Parkland, Florida, high school launched the “March for Our Lives” movement, with teens calling for action against gun violence writ large — including shootings by police officers.

Ramos, who has family in both Louisville and Miami, said her brother was the victim of a fatal police shooting in Florida.

'We've got no choice':Frustrated protesters say police brutality, injustice must end

“I don't want to lose anybody else,” she said. “I don't want to be afraid to leave my house. I've been pulled over and dragged out of my car and asked if I have my immigration papers.

"I was born in the United States," Ramos continued. "I'm tired of watching this happen.”

Webb, a student at Northern Kentucky University, said Friday evening she and other younger people would not back down.

Though she was “terrified” of what could happen at the protest, she was “more angry than anything else.”

"You have to realize these kids are organized and tired and they just want justice," said Parrish-Wright, the activist.

"They've watched it their whole lives," she said. "It's all they know.

"This is a traumatized generation."

Editorial:Louisville must listen to protesters in Taylor case and battle injustice

Reporters Savannah Eadens and Bailey Loosemore contributed to this story. Mandy McLaren: 502-582-4525; mmclaren@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @mandy_mclaren.