Mobile was a tale of two protests Sunday night. One vigil prompted by the death of George Floyd went peacefully as planned, while another led to a standoff between police and protesters attempting to block traffic on Interstate 10.
Though police made a very limited use of gas or smoke canisters during the standoff and the window was smashed out of one police vehicle, the standoff was defused before it escalated into a violent clash.
The first of two planned events started at about 3 p.m. in downtown’s Mardi Gras Park. A crowd of several hundred people, a roughly even mix of black and white, that had gathered by that point listened to remarks by Dr. Yvonne Mitchell, who described herself as one of the organizers of the event. “It’s not just about Mr. Floyd,” she said. “It’s about all the Mr. Floyds.”
With frequent chants of “I Can’t Breathe” and “No Justice No Peace,” the crowd began a march just after 3 p.m. on a route that took it along Government Street past Government Plaza, north to Dauphin Street at Cathedral Square, then along Dauphin Street past Bienville Square to Royal Street and back to its starting point. As it moved up Dauphin Street, Mobile Police Chief Lawrence Battiste could be seen walking in advance of the throng.
By that point, the crowd had grown dramatically from the group of several hundred that had started. “There’s thousands of people here,” said Battiste, watching the procession pass Bienville Square. Battiste, like other officers visible, was wearing regular uniform rather than tactical gear. “Certainly our intent is not to agitate and to create a bigger problem,” he said of the department’s approach.
He said the event had gone smoothly so far. “It’s very emotional,” he said of the crowd. “People have a right to express their emotions. As long as they’re peaceful, we’ll do everything we can do to support their right to do it.”
After the march, the crowd gathered again in Mardi Gras Park for further speeches. Meanwhile, as 5 p.m. drew near, an independently planned candlelight vigil began a few blocks away in Cathedral Square. Led by local Mobile activist Kimberly Pettway and her daughter, Jordan Pettway, protestors listened to prepared speeches, stood six feet apart and mostly wore masks - vastly different from the huddled mass of people in Mardi Gras Park.
There were few officers patrolling the Cathedral Square event, which appeared to have a more family-friendly feel to it.
Jordan Pettway started the vigil by reading the official Minneapolis Police Department affidavit, explaining in detail what happened in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. The crowd then counted the more than 8 minutes that Floyd was pinned to the ground under the knee of officer Derek Chauvin.
However, while all this was happening, participants in the first event had gone on the move again. At 4:45 p.m. a large crowd of marchers could be seen moving westward along Water Street, which also serves as a ground-level connector between Interstate 10 and the I-165 connector to the north. A crowd of hundreds of people attempting to march up the ramp to westbound I-10 was blocked about 100 yards up the ramp by a line of police vehicles.
Battiste was on the scene and while protesters were vocal, they did not attempt to push through the police line and police did not press their way forward. Over the course of the next 45 minutes or so, the situation was gradually de-escalated, though not without incident.
A busload of officers in tactical gear were brought to the scene, and these moved past the flank of the crowd up to the line of vehicles, reinforcing it. After a while, the officers donned gas masks, a move that prompted the mass of the crowd to move back ten to fifteen feet. Officers then dropped two gas canisters into the newly opened gap, leading the crowd to back away further.
In the uproar of the moment, two or three young men smashed the window of a nearby police vehicle using what appeared to be a short baseball bat, which they tossed away. Police later recovered it.
Meanwhile, police advanced to take up the cleared space and then again held their line. No further gas was used, and based on this reporter’s observations, it’s not clear whether the smoke was in fact tear gas. No protestors were seen displaying signs of the distress usually caused by tear gas, and the smell was not evident from a short distance away.
Mobile’s executive director of public safety, James Barber, arrived on the scene and began speaking to protesters at the head of the crowd. The crowd dwindled slowly for a while, and then one or two officers stepped into the crowd, one of them yelling something that made the crowd cheer. That officer led the majority of the crowd away from the scene, back toward Mardi Gras Park.
Officers removed their gas masks as conversations continued to persuade one or two dozen remaining protesters to leave the ramp. Sabrina Mass, who’d spoken at the beginning of the event back at 3 p.m., was a very vocal presence. Mass said attempting to provoke a confrontation had never been organizers’ intention and attributed it to people who’d disrupted peaceful plans.
“Some people want to be ignorant,” she said of the situation.
As a large portion of the crowd gathered once again at Mardi Gras Park, Chief Battiste spent more than 30 minutes answering questions from young activists.
It was not immediately clear whether any arrests had resulted from the situation. None were observed by AL.com reporters on the scene.