This gathering, space dedication at Bellingham park honors lives lost to systematic racism
About 100 people gathered Wednesday evening at a Lettered Streets neighborhood park in Bellingham to honor the life of George Floyd and numerous other people of color who have died as a result of violence driven by systemic racism.
Mission Accomplished?, a group of local Bellingham activists, organized the event, which took place at Fouts Park from roughly 5:15-7 p.m. Wednesday, May 25.
The dedication event, which had speakers and musical performances, was also a kick-off to a fundraising campaign hosted by the Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship to install a tree and a park bench with a plaque dedicated to the Black Lives Matter movement in Fouts Park.
George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, died May 25, 2020, after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes. The former Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, was convicted of murdering Floyd and sentenced in June 2021 to 22½ years in prison.
Floyd’s murder sparked outrage and ignited civil rights protests worldwide. His death also led to police reform across the U.S., including in Washington state.
The dedication Wednesday evening started with the crowd taking eight minutes and 46 seconds of silence — the amount of time Chauvin was initially said to have knelt on Floyd’s neck and that has now become a rallying cry at racial justice protests. Children could be heard playing on the playground equipment nearby while community members in attendance bowed their heads in silence.
“That silence of eight minutes and forty-six seconds just echoes so loudly with all of us and in all of us. I hope that we, as a community, can find it within ourselves and draw from places of inspiration and wells of compassion that haven’t been tapped before to first try to acknowledge, admit and understand the racism in our own community,” said Kristina Michele Martens, who helped organize Wednesday’s event.
“And then if we can do that, I think we can be an amazing example for the rest of Whatcom County, the rest of Washington state, the rest of our nation in how a community who historically lacked a real overwhelming sense of diversity still cares and still wants to contribute to the solution and still understand that the impacts of things that shouldn’t matter — your skin color, your religion, your hairstyle and/or type, anything about you the way that you identify yourselves — doesn’t make you any less of a human being and worth love and compassion from all other human beings who walk this planet,” Martens added.
Martens made history with Edwin “Skip” Williams as one of the first two Black members of the Bellingham City Council, according to previous reporting in The Bellingham Herald.
Martens said she felt like everything and nothing had changed in the past two years since Floyd’s murder. Martens said she remembers when she was 6 years old and learned about Los Angeles Police Department officers beating Rodney King, a Black man, during his arrest in 1991.
“How quickly you learn about the way the world works when you are 6 years old and you see something like that. And really, the only explanation that the world and the community could give to me was the people who are paid with our money to protect us were trying to murder him because of the color of his skin,” said Martens, who lived 90 minutes south in California in 1991. “Who do you call in that moment when the people who you would call or are told to call, are perpetrating the act of violence?”
Martens said Wednesday’s event was a way to come together to pool resources and gather as a community to acknowledge the struggle that Black people in the United States go through. She said Wednesday’s dedication ceremony was to remember Floyd’s life and murder and dedicate a local space to honor those who have lost their lives to systematic racism.
People who are interested in donating to help fund the bench and tree in Fouts Park can contact admin@buf.org regarding the Black Lives Matter memorial or can go to the Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship at 1207 Ellsworth St.
A defining moment
Isaac Gammons-Reese, a Black 16-year-old who attends Whatcom Intergenerational High School, spoke about how the impact of Floyd’s murder two years ago will always be a part of his mental, emotional and physical journey as he works toward becoming the best human being he can.
“This was a point in my young life where I realized that my white community will never fully grasp the detrimental impacts that I felt seeing another unarmed Black man killed in front of all of America,” Gammons-Reese said. “In a nation that has proclaimed to believe in the liberty and justice for all, until we as a country can come to terms with how much systemic and systematic racism affects BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) people, I’m going to be treated differently than my white peers the rest of my life.”
“It took this moment for me to fully understand the potential life-threatening and life-ending impacts my skin color can have,” Gammons-Reese said.
Gammons-Reese said that assumptions are made about Black people and that he embraced the mannerisms that white people in America had depicted as the only things he could be because of his skin color. Floyd’s murder led to Gammons-Reese examining what kind of person he wanted to be as he grew up, he said.
“Every time one of my Black brothers and sisters are treated inhumanely, everybody in the Black community gains another scar. Almost every single scar that the Black community has was not a product of what we did or how we acted, but we are unfortunately put in a position where we have to use our anger and our scars to make progress for ourselves and our community,” Gammons-Reese said. “Please treat me and my Black brothers and sisters like we’re human. That’s all I’m asking for.”
Naomi Gary, who is with the Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship and helped organize the event, also spoke. The Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship Choir and others performed, including 17-year-old Winter Bee who attends Whatcom Intergenerational High School, before Martens ended the event.
When asked what she wanted people to take away from the ceremony, Bee said “I want them to understand that change comes by little moments and those moments are the most powerful thing that can carry you into continuing on with that movement and I think that here, right now, made a moment in time that people can remember for forever.”
More than $650 was raised at the event for the park bench and tree, which will be put in at a later date. Fouts Park is the former site of the Whatcom County courthouse, which was torn down in 1950 after the current courthouse was built on Grand Avenue. The area became a park in 1980, according to a historical marker at the site.
Martens said it felt “so important” to her to acknowledge Floyd’s murder and gather as a community on the two-year anniversary of his death. She said it was important that “this is not forgotten. That this murder doesn’t just become another name on the long list of injustices against people of color in this nation and that we will support each other in building a better, brighter and more equitable and just future for tomorrow.”
Martens said in an interview with The Herald that the park bench, plaque and tree on the former Whatcom County courthouse site is an important symbol for the community to have that won’t allow the world to forget what has happened. She said donating money is an easy way for people to show that they care, and that while it doesn’t forgive what has happened, it at least acknowledges it.
“We have to remember who we’ve lost and how we’ve lost them,” Martens said.
