On the sixth night of protests in Omaha, Nebraska’s best-known advocate for racial justice, State Sen. Ernie Chambers, visited with about 60 mostly young people outside City Hall about injustice and civic engagement.
The long-serving legislator told those gathered that they had accomplished something with their protests.
“(This) shows you can have a profound impact,” he said.
Chambers, whose advocacy reaches back to the unrest of the 1960s, told those gathered to gird themselves for the long haul. And despite Chambers’ often fiery rhetoric, he called on the young people gathered around him to protest peacefully.
“Don’t let anybody turn you in a direction that you don’t want to go,” he said. “You don’t have to prove anything by knocking out a window.”
Political protest requires a commitment to one’s own value, he said.
“You have to love yourself more than anybody else,” he said. “Whatever it is you believe in, go toward that no matter what anybody says. ... Despite your fear, you do the thing you know needs to be done.”
He called for unfaltering efforts at reconciliation.
“For there to be understanding across racial lines and all of the rest of that, you are going to have to talk to each other, you are going to have to respect each other, and not everybody is going to like you,” he said.
“There are black people who don’t like me, I don’t understand why,” he said to laughter among those gathered.
Protesters already had begun gathering when Chambers arrived and stayed late into the evening after he left. As they did on Tuesday evening, they shared with each other their own experiences.
Maria Mwita, an 18-year-old first generation American whose mother immigrated from Kenya, spoke of the incomprehensible realization that she was different because her skin is black.
“I was 5 years old (when) I had to find out because I’m black, people look at me differently. There are people in this world who hate me solely because of the color of my skin,” she said, adding that she’s much more than that. “I love to laugh, I love to dance, I love to write, I love to read. They don’t care about that, they look at me, they hate me.”
That confusion turned to anguish as she talked about her little brother.
“I have a brother who is 9 years old,” she said, her voice choking. “He’s like, ‘Mom, why do people hate me?’ Why can’t God just snap his fingers and fix it all?”
For Mwita, the answer is education. Individually. In the family. At church.
“Education is power,” she said.
Omaha curfew was lifted Wednesday, so after the testimonials, the group marched from the City Hall to the area where 22-year-old James Scurlock was fatally shot Saturday night.
The block where the shooting occurred was cordoned off and heavily guarded.
As one member of the group became hostile and confronted law enforcement, the rest tried to persuade him to relent. When he wouldn’t, they left him and marched back to City Hall.
They shouted chants along the way, including: “What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now.”
Photos: Omaha protesters come out again on first night curfew is lifted
Dozens of people march from the Omaha Douglas Civic Center to the Old Market in Omaha on Wednesday. James Scurlock, a 22-year-old black man, was shot and killed in the Old Market on Saturday night by a white bar owner.
The protests show “you can have a profound impact,” State Sen. Ernie Chambers told a group of about 60 mostly young people outside the City-County Building on Wednesday.