Danbury Racial Justice March Fueled By Social Media

DANBURY, CT — Organizers say up to a thousand people could be marching in the city Wednesday in a show of support for the Black Lives Matter movement and to honor the memory of George Floyd.

Floyd was a black man who was killed while in the custody of the Minneapolis police on Memorial Day. His death has triggered protests across the U.S. and Europe, and rekindled a nationwide conversation about modern race relations. Mayor Mark Boughton described Floyd's death as "straight-out murder" in a news conference Tuesday night.

Marchers will gather at the Danbury Library at noon and proceed onto West Street toward City Hall. They will take a right down New Street toward the intersection of Kennedy Avenue and Main Street, then take a lap around police headquarters before heading back to the library.

Event organizer Serenity Schreiber tweeted out a map of the route on Monday, shortly after C-Town decided it would not serve as the starting point as originally planned.

The march, the latest of many in Connecticut, has been organized by and for young people, primarily, and fueled by social media.

Solomon James, one of the march organizers, told Patch he saw the initial tweets from Schreiber trying to get the ball rolling weren't getting the kind of traction he thought the effort deserved.

"One of the first things I did was use my social media platform and the influence I have within my city to get people behind this," James said. "Before I jumped in and kind of co-signed it, it wasn't getting a lot of support." The Southern Connecticut State University student has close to 600 followers on Twitter, and close to a thousand on Facebook.

Aidan Schultz, another of the march organizers, agreed that, "Social media is the key. We got a lot of buzz on Instagram and SnapChat, people re-posting." A senior at Danbury High School, Schultzdefines success for the march as bringing as much attention as possible to police brutality and Black Lives Matter.

James said he used his connections to get in touch with Danbury Chief of Police Patrick Ridenhour "to see where he stands on the situation, how he feels about it."

He feels pretty good about it, apparently. Chief Ridenhour released a statement earlier in the week, acknowledging "the pain that this and all incidents of unnecessary force by police cause the nation as a whole and often communities of color in particular."

Boughton's expectation is that Wednesday's march will be peaceful. "We are not looking for an adversarial, controversial event." The mayor said that he did not expect the role of the DPD to extend much beyond traffic control.

For his part, James hopes the march is "as peaceful as possible," and that Boughton and Ridenhour are paying attention. He says he wants the Danbury mayor and chief of police to not only hear what the marchers are trying to communicate, but hopes "they respond, as well."

James says he guarantees there'll be at least 150 marchers, but "because there is no one in school, and there are a lot people unemployed," he's looking for anywhere from 600 to a thousand people to march.