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Submitted to It’s Going Down

While the police murders of Philando Castille and Alton Sterling have captured headlines around the country, the killing of Jerry Jai Williams in Asheville, NC by a white police officer has largely failed to reach beyond the confines of this small mountain town.

Jerry, a black man, was killed by the APD after police pursued him into the Deaverview public housing complex. Upon exiting his vehicle Jerry was shot 4 times by officer Tyler Radford, who claimed that Jerry pulled a gun. However several witnesses say he never had a gun, and no witnesses have come forward saying he was armed. Whatever the case may be, as Jerry’s body lay covered in blood on the concrete an AR-15 rifle lay on the ground nearby, leading some to say the police planted the gun. Soon enough more police, armed with assault rifles, flooded the scene and surrounding Jerry’s body for hours preventing his mother, Najiyyah Avery, from seeing her dead son. “When my baby was born, he was covered in my blood; and when they shot him down in the street he was still covered in my blood,” said Avery, “Why wouldn’t I want to see my baby, to see what you did to him?”

In response to the killing, family, friends, and the broader community quickly mobilized to protest Jerry’s death. On Tuesday July 5, Jerry’s family and supporters held an emotional press conference and rally in front of City Hall, garnering good local press coverage. In the evening about 40 people turned out for a vigil in front of the police station. The mood was somber until a crowd of black youth (who said a city bus driver gave them a free ride downtown from the projects) came marching onto the scene chanting, “No justice, No peace!”

The arrival of the new crowd pushed the vigil in a rowdier direction, with some trying to enter the police station, others setting off fireworks, and a brief march that took the streets downtown. The police stayed hands off and there were no arrests.

Since Tuesday there have been nightly protests at the police station and a couple more unpermitted marches through downtown. Even with the sniper attack on the cops in Dallas, and the inevitable shifting of the narrative in the corporate news, the momentum in the “Justice for Jerry” protests has not been lost, in fact they continue to grow.

On Saturday July 10, one week after Jerry’s death. Hundreds took to the streets of downtown Asheville chanting “Black Lives Matter” and demanding an end to police terror. In a town that oftentimes struggles to muster 20 or 30 people for a protest, this was huge. The march snaked around downtown, shutting down several intersections and snarling traffic at the height of Asheville’s tourist season. Again the police took a hands off approach and no arrests were made.

While the protests in Asheville have not yet escalated to more disruptive measures like freeway shutdowns or occupations, many of us find it encouraging that the community has managed to maintain a week of solid demonstrations (something that hasn’t been seen since the Iraq war protests in 2003), that far from petering out, continue to grow.

In a city that has fully commodified its liberal reputation, where tens of thousands of well to do tourists flock every year to purchase their way into a façade of “sustainable” living and feel good capitalism; these marches, tame as they may be, are helping to shatter the the myth of this white liberal fantasyland, and expose the racist underbelly of a hyper-segregated city.

We hope to see these protests continue alongside the national uprisings against police terror that are sweeping the country. And we ask for your help in getting the news of this tragic death out beyond the mountains of Western North Carolina and into the headlines alongside the horrific murders of Philando Castille and Alton Sterling.

Jerry Jai Williams, killed by the APD, never forget!