Large Protest March in Farmville Today

(You might think that this wasn’t very large, but by local standards, it was. I mention below the strained look on more than a few faces.)

It was a great day to go for a walk in the bright Spring sunshine.

Protesting in front of the Prince Edward County Courthouse on Saturday.

It was also a great day for a civil rights struggle in Farmville to be addressed, and that’s what we did. 150-200 people gathered, young and old, tall and small, to protest the building of a private immigrant detention center (prison) in Farmville. This protest almost didn’t materialize when Farmville made it very difficult to get a permit for the protest. At the urging of the Virginia American Civil Liberties Union, Farmville recently changed their clearly unconstitutional requirements for a protest permit. A representative of the group The People United asked for a protest event permit, and was initially told by the Farmville Police Department Chief that the group would need to see the Town Manager or Town Council. The problem with that was that the Police Chief was the person to whom someone applies for a permit, even though Chief Dunnavant had said that wasn’t the case.

Local area politicians have taken money from private prison companies, so the hope was this would also send a message to those who would make it easier to train private prison guards by allowing the developer or operator of the facility to train them at a facility owned by the people of the Commonwealth, through their government. No donations from any company should drive the legislative agenda in Virginia.

This was the first time since the 1950′s that Farmville had seen a protest like this, or any public protest at all possibly. During the 1950′s, there were protests surrounding Massive Resistance, and earlier, the Davis -vs- Prince Edward County suit from (I believe) 1951-52. There were plenty of surprised looks, and looks that didn’t seem so friendly today while we walked the route of the protest. I wonder what they were thinking.

A great point was being made in the speeches today that proceeded the march: Indigenous people of North America are the target of widespread harassment and jail, after their ancestors had lived right in this area for thousands of years. Barry Carter, my friend from Virginia Organizing Project, spoke eloquently about the frame in which so-called ‘immigrants’ are in, and the preferred frame we should all recognize: ‘Native Americans’ are exactly who we are talking about, not the pejorative terms ‘illegals’ or ‘illegal immigrants’. When I look at the whole argument while keeping this in mind, I can better understand the dynamic and range of this problem.

The Farmville Police blocked traffic for us today, and everything generally went off without incident. No counter-protesters, no yelling at the protesters went on; just lots of interested and interesting looks, and lots of fun and pride in talking back and making our opinions known.

A few of the photos I took are in this article and I will most likely put up another story as a photoblog to include more of them.

This felt really good.

One of Saturday's signs at the protest march.

Protesting in downtown Farmville on Saturday.