Black Lives Matter activists to stage second demonstration in Bishop's Stortford
An anti-racist demonstration will take place outside Bishop's Stortford Library tomorrow (Saturday, June 20) for a second time.
Campaigners for the Black Lives Matter movement will gather in the Causeway from 1pm and are inviting supporters to join them for the peaceful, socially-distanced protest.
Organiser Mave Brindley, a 20-year-old university student, said: "The police have been in contact and will be present at the event in order to keep us safe in case of a counter-protest and ensure that the protest stays peaceful.
"We encourage those attending to wear masks and respect social distancing rules."
She also organised the protest last Saturday in the same location attended by around 10 people.
She said: "We decided to organise these protests because in a town which is predominantly white because we feel like some do not understand the struggles of people of colour and the privileges that we have as white people.
"When we protested last week, we had some very choice words from some members of the public in Bishop's Stortford which shows that racism is very much alive in our local towns. We need to tackle this because black lives matter no matter where you are."
Similar protests have taken place across the country and the rest of the world by people galvanised by the death of African American George Floyd.
He died in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25 while being arrested by police for allegedly using counterfeit money to buy cigarettes. White police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
The protests have particular relevance in Bishop's Stortford after thousands of people signed petitions calling for the renaming of the Rhodes Arts Complex.
The South Road venue commemorates the birthplace of diamond magnate, politician and imperialist Cecil Rhodes, founder of the former Rhodesia in southern Africa who is now reviled as a white supremacist, and protesters targeted the building on Wednesday last week.
Rhodes Birthplace Trust, which runs the venue with a £250,000 subsidy from the town council, is already changing its name to the Bishop's Stortford Museum and Arts Charitable Incorporated Organisation and chairwoman Deirdre Glasgow has pledged any new name for the centre will be "truly reflective of the wishes of our local community".
At Oriel College in Oxford, where Rhodes' colonial legacy lives on in student scholarships, campaigners are celebrating a victory for the Rhodes Must Fall movement.
The governing body has voted in favour of removing its controversial statue of the former prime minister of the Cape Colony and is setting up an independent inquiry in response to a four-year campaign which reignited in the wake of Black Lives Matter demonstrations and the toppling of Bristol slave trader Edward Colston's statue.
