Students organize Black Lives Matter protest in Manlius
By Ashley M. Casey
Associate Editor
In her 12 years as a student of the Fayetteville-Manlius Central School District, Leila Abdul-Malak never had a black teacher. The 2019 FM grad never even encountered a black teacher until she reached high school. As one of the few black people among her classmates, Abdul-Malak said she felt a lack of representation among the student body, teachers and the greater FM community.
“I have always been marginalized in this community and I’ve always felt left out,” Abdul-Malak told the Eagle Bulletin ahead of a Black Lives Matter protest held June 7 at the Swan Pond in the village of Manlius.
Hundreds of people gathered — wearing face masks and carrying signs — at the Swan Pond to hear FM Students for BLM and their supporters speak about the need for racial justice and police reform. The crowd also marched through the village of Manlius and held a moment of silence for George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died May 25 after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Years of racist microaggressions — classmates saying the N-word, appropriating black culture and making jokes about black people — combined with the death of Floyd and other black people at the hands of police officers left Abdul-Malak feeling “so broken,” she said.
In the weeks since Floyd’s death — and in the wake of other police killings of black people like Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 13 and Tony McDade in Tallahassee, Florida, on May 27 — protests have erupted across the United States in the name of the Black Lives Matter movement.
FM senior Sarah Sharples approached Abdul-Malak and a few of their friends — Aine Hoye, Maddy Malgieri and Simone Sheldon — about leading a protest in their community.
“It was Sarah’s idea,” Abdul-Malak said.
Sharples encouraged the community to attend protests, sign petitions, contact elected officials about effecting change and most of all, listen to people of color when they talk about their experiences.
“Speak up, but more important than that, listen,” she said.
The students contacted Manlius Mayor Paul Whorrall to get permission to hold the protest at the amphitheater next to the Swan Pond, which is just down a sloping hill from the Manlius Police Department.
“These gatherings are nice to have if they’re peaceful and you can get your point across,” Whorrall said.
Whorrall said it is time for Manlius Town Supervisor Ed Theobald to set up a meeting with the mayors of the villages of Manlius, Fayetteville and Minoa to discuss making the greater Manlius community a safer, more welcoming place for people of color.
“You have to work together,” he said.
Addressing the hundreds of protesters who flocked to the Swan Pond, Whorrall said, “Now is a national moment for change.”
Manlius Town Councilors Katelyn Kriesel and John Deer assisted the young organizers in setting up the protest and spreading the word.
“This is an important conversation that we need to have. I think it’s important for elected officials at all levels to be a part of the conversation,” Deer said.
Deer said he supports the 13 bills related to police reform introduced by the New York State Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus. Members of the BPHA Caucus held a series of press conferences across the state June 4 introducing this package of legislation, which includes measures to ban racial profiling, expand access to police personnel records, require law enforcement to provide necessary medical attention to arrestees and more.
“At the town level, once those bills are hopefully passed, [our job is] making sure the changes are produced locally,” Deer said.
Kriesel said the Manlius Town Board will evaluate the town’s policies and the Manlius PD to see where improvements can be made.
Parents speak out
While Kriesel is white, she has two daughters, Alianna and Vivienne, with Tyrell Burke of Syracuse, who is black. At the protest, Kriesel shared Burke’s story of being followed by Manlius Police as he drove their daughters to Kriesel’s home on a recent Sunday evening. According to Burke, the police pulled him over after he left Kriesel’s house and said they believed he was intoxicated.
“My 6-year-old daughter said, ‘We are scared for Daddy and the police,’” Kriesel said. “If he was intoxicated, why would they have let him drive all the way from DeWitt, followed him for several miles all the way to my house and then let him sit there? They pulled him over because they were wondering what a black man was doing in Manlius at 9 o’clock on a Sunday night.”
“Happens all the time,” someone called from the crowd.
Kriesel said it was not the first time Burke had been mistreated by police, and Burke has filed a complaint against the two officers who followed him.
“They were not kind to him and they followed him and they stalked him and they scared my daughters,” Kriesel said. “They didn’t pull him from his car. They didn’t stand on his neck for eight and a half minutes and watch the life go out of him — they didn’t do that, but they did something else. I’m glad Tyrell wasn’t killed, but he could have been.”
Tyrell Burke attended the Manlius protest as well with his current partner and their young son in tow.
“It’s important for people to show up and show solidarity. [We’ve had] enough of the profiling and the injustices going on,” he said.
Burke said raising children in the FM community has been largely positive, but there is room for improvement. The police department could use more racial sensitivity training and experience interacting with people of color, he said.
“It’s a joy, it’s been welcoming, but there is a fear in them not because of what they contribute to the community but because of their skin color,” he said.
Burke said police brutality against people of color is not a new issue, but the advent of social media and smartphones has allowed news of such incidents to spread more quickly and widely.
“It’s been going on without technology. When you see it, you believe it — it’s not just folklore,” he said. “I’m 40. I was around for Rodney King.”
Sami Abdul-Malak, the father of Leila and Ziad Abdul-Malak, said he has had to tell his children to take “extra caution” when driving, dealing with police and in his son Ziad’s case, interacting with girls.
“There are conversations that I have to have with them that I wouldn’t if they were white,” he said. “The fact that they’re black, it takes a certain direction.”
Sami Abdul-Malak said white parents should be cognizant of the privilege their children have.
“There are some obstacles cast upon them by society that their own kids will not be facing,” he said.
Christabel Osei-Bobie Sheldon, whose daughter Simone Sheldon helped organize the protest, is the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants and is the director of the McNair Scholars program at Syracuse University. She spoke of the difficulties black people face in a racist society.
“Our ability to navigate our blackness and black bodies in many spaces takes daily, tiresome and emotionally taxing work,” she said. “Imagine what it feels like to wake up countless mornings to images of black and brown people being beaten, choked, hunted, shot and kneeled to death. Imagine watching your children cry as others call black people ‘animals’ in the year 2020. The sorrow, the anguish and the hurt are palpable.”
Sheldon said platitudes such as “all lives matter” and “I don’t see color” erase the experiences of black people.
“Although it may be well-meaning, it dismisses and ignores systematic injustices that discredits black lives and experiences — lives that are seen as dispensable,” she said. “We are not dispensable. We matter. Black lives matter.”
Another protest is in the works for next Sunday, June 14, in Fayetteville at a location and time yet to be determined. Follow @fmstudentsforblm on Instagram for more information.
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Click on the photos to enlarge and read captions. Photos by Ashley M. Casey
