MONTAGUE CENTER — It wasn’t another march, and there were no megaphones and no chants. But a demonstration in a quiet neighborhood in Montague Center on Monday sought a different way to draw attention to national issues of racial violence.
Passing the Montague Town Common on Main Street, drivers were greeted by rows of people on either side of the street, with signs reading “Silence equals consent,” “End white silence” and “Racism is a public health crisis.”
The demonstration drew about 185 people, as counted by organizers, and was coordinated by Montague Center residents.
As residents of a town and region that is rural and largely white, people’s reasons for demonstrating are different than in places with greater ethnic diversity, said Laurie Davidson, one of the co-organizers of the demonstration.
“We could just be in our little bubble, not doing anything, not feeling like we’re connected and like we have any part in anything,” she said. “And we do.”
Other demonstrators expressed similar views.
“In Montague, we’re a super white community. It’s on us to take responsibility for caring,” said 21-year-old co-organizer Lucia Mason. “I think people care and want to make a difference, and just aren’t entirely sure how.”
Another reason for the demonstration, Mason said, was to create an outlet for locals to take proactive social action, even if they aren’t directly hurt by racism.
“If I drove by this road and I saw this number of people standing here — and I drive by this road a lot, and I’ve never seen that before — it’s going to make a difference,” she said. “It’s going to hit home, even in a way that Greenfield or Northampton wouldn’t.”
John Sheldon, who lives in Amherst, was holding a sign that said, “I am learning about my privilege as a white male. Open to learning more.”
He said he was shocked by the video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes. (Chauvin is charged with murder following Floyd’s death.) The video has sparked protests across the country for the last two weeks.
“I feel like we’re in a collective period of trauma,” Sheldon said. “I’m learning how to deal with it. I don’t know how to deal with it.”
A few people at the demonstration held signs that, in different ways, alluded to recent political movements to defund the police.
Defunding measures have ranged from the Minneapolis City Council’s announcement that it would commit to entirely dismantling its police department, to relatively more moderate reallocation of funding from municipal police departments to social service programs, as New York City has announced.
Tom Weinreich, who lives in Brooklyn but has been staying with relatives in Montague for the past three months to avoid the coronavirus outbreak in New York, was holding a sign that said “Could we live in this valley without police?”
He noted that, if police forces are scaled down, communities will have to invent new ways of guaranteeing public safety.
“I support that. But we need to take seriously the responsibility,” he said. “This is a big obstacle when we’re talking about that. How do we keep ourselves safe?”