SUNDERLAND — Community members will gather on the bridge connecting Sunderland and Deerfield on Monday for a standout remembering George Floyd, whose death at the hands of Police Officer Derek Chauvin rocked the country on May 25, 2020.
The attendees of the standout, organized by the Sunderland Human Rights Task Force, with the help of the Deerfield Inclusion Group and First Congregational Church in Sunderland, will meet at the church at 9:30 a.m. on Monday, May 25. After a short welcome from the Rev. Randy Calvo and speech from Task Force member Diane Mercomes, the participants will march to the bridge.
“I worry sometimes about, as these atrocities accumulate, that people will think that saying their name is enough, and saying the name I don’t think is enough,” Mercomes said. “I thought about what I should personally do.”
For Mercomes, the location of the standout on the bridge “shows the two communities joining together in a mutual interest.”
With a weekly Black Lives Matter standout in Sunderland and No Kings Day protest in South Deerfield, Mercomes described the two neighboring communities as “little towns with really caring people who want to have our say, and we want our feelings to be known.”
Along with George Floyd, the gathering will also commemorate “many others who have been victims of racialized police brutality in this country, including those murdered,
detained and disappeared by [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement],” an event announcement reads.
Mercomes decided to read, “His Name is George Floyd,” a biography of Floyd’s life by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa. Through the pages of the book and research online, Mercomes pulled together pieces of Floyd’s story, including the influences of systemic racism. Mercomes plans to shed light on his life during the standout.
“His death is obvious, his death is videotaped, but his life is something that I had to dig for,” Mercomes said. “I’m reading this biography so that I can know George Floyd, because he’s more than a dead man lying in the street. He had a life as well as a death.”
