Black Lives Matter activist arrested after dispute at anti-racism training

Editor's note: This story has been updated to include a response from the Racial Equity Institute.

BILTMORE FOREST – Police forcibly removed a Black Lives Matter leader from a recent anti-racism training after event organizers said she spoke out of turn, causing a disturbance.

Sharon Smith, 64, was arrested on March 16 at a Racial Equity Institute event at Mountain Area Health Education Center, in Biltmore Forest. Police charged her with misdemeanor counts of resisting a public officer, disorderly conduct and marijuana possession, which she said was added only after she was searched at the jail.

According to Biltmore Forest Police Chief Chris Beddingfield, the situation was “handled great.”

Smith, the educational director of Asheville Black Lives Matter, disagrees.

“It's a perfect case study in how systemic racism works, absolutely perfect,” she said.

Shortly after the training started at 9 a.m., Smith answered a question one of three panelists posed to the group of several dozen participants, she said. In doing so, she violated a Racial Equity Institute guideline suggesting alumni of the training not participate and thereby set in motion the chain of events that ended in her arrest.

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Carol Rogoff Hallstrom, a fellow alumna of the training and a veteran of the civil rights movement, reached over the person sitting between her and Smith and told Smith that, as an alumna, she wasn’t allowed to talk. Smith told Hallstrom she should be allowed to speak.

“There’s no way, according to systemic racism theory, that any white woman should be telling a woman of color what she should and shouldn’t be saying. That’s just not OK,” Smith said.

Frustrated by the disruption, a MAHEC employee then asked Smith to leave and called security, who in turn called Biltmore Forest Police.

Racial Equity Institute Managing Director Deena Hayes-Greene said her organization "did not endorse the decision to call the police" nor did it know the police were being called.

"While it was a terrible outcome and upsetting to all concerned, we want to be clear that we did not tell Ms. Smith she could not talk, nor did we call law enforcement," Hayes-Greene wrote in a letter to the Citizen Times.

Smith refused to leave the training after police arrived, which led to her arrest, said Beddingfield.

“We asked her to leave the premises multiple times, which she refused,” he said. His first day on the job was the day after Smith was arrested, but he said he was familiar with the situation.

“Obviously, after multiple attempts, we have to escalate to an escort,” he said. “It’s kinda like soft hands, you’re guiding someone off the premise.”

There was nothing “soft” about the officer's hands, according to Smith, who said police twisted her arm behind her back to remove her from the training. Adrianne Weir, a friend of Smith’s who was attending the training that day, corroborated Smith’s account.

“They used force to get me out of the room because I refused to leave any other way,” said Smith, who explained that she was practicing civil disobedience when she refused to leave the event, to which she’d been invited.

Delores Venable, president of Asheville Black Lives Matter, said the anti-racism training, which she didn’t attend, provided its participants with a valuable lesson in what not to do.

“People haven’t learned to translate anti-racism theory to practice,” she said.

In responding to the reporting of the incident, Hayes-Greene told the Citizen Times that "racism thrives when we see the work as fighting with each other and casting individual behavior as systemic racism."

Hallstrom declined to comment beyond a written statement that she and the other organizers of the training released on March 28.

“The REI core organizers regret that the situation was not able to be resolved without calling in law enforcement, and we recognize the ways in which systemic racism contributed to this outcome,” they wrote. “In this work, there is a constant need for effective communication, growth and learning.”

On that point, Venable agrees.

“I think when we have these teachable moments, we need to use them as a wake-up call,” she said. “The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result.”