Against the Current: Days of Protest and Unrest
by Jeff Turner
Photo: Andrew Washington
The air is chaos, the anger is palpable, the scene - apocalyptic. A legion of police wearing riot gear, armed with tear gas, rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, and pepper bullets met thousands of protestors who had come out to demonstrate after the death of George Floyd at the hands of several members of the Minneapolis Police Department. These skirmishes took place throughout the weekend all over Omaha.
The protests originated on 72nd and Dodge Streets on Friday (May 29) and Saturday (May 30), and moved to downtown Omaha on Saturday evening. Most attendees said the protests started out as peaceful and began to escalate as the police deployed tear gas and other non-lethal weapons onto protestors. One of the organizers who emerged as a leader over the weekend was Morgann Freeman, who described the nights of protests, "I feel devastated. We wanted to be heard. Instead, we got gassed and shot at."
Mark Vondrasek, a local organizer, and former candidate - was on the scene both nights, "I got there around 5:30 - already hundreds were there, everyone stayed on the corners the first hour, and after that, the crowd took over the intersection and shut everything down peacefully."
"They (OPD) took advantage of the law making it illegal to walk on street medians that Mayor Stothert put in place to escalate the situation," Freemann said. Vondrasek added, "The protest was completely peaceful until the police intervened - had they not escalated the situation, everyone would have left at 9:15."
While many organizers are in agreement that OPD's response was excessive and have voiced support of the protests, not all have agreed with the choice to riot. Terrell McKinney a local organizer and candidate for the Nebraska Unicameral, said "It did seem like there were people who were giving the police any reason they wanted to escalate the situation, folks were throwing bottles, mostly." McKinney added, "I didn't feel any way about it, though."
Chelsey Gentry, another local organizer who was at the event Friday night, had strong feelings on the topic, saying, "OPD's response was ultimately excessive - but you could see at the beginning that they weren't trying to escalate the situation. A lot of people who were there, primarily white people, were throwing bottles at the police and smashing their car windows. We went into this knowing the police were going to be excessive - so it seemed like the white organizers were doing this knowing they wouldn't get in trouble, that the black and brown organizers would shield them."
Morgann Freemann voiced her stance on the organization of the protests, "The Omahans organizing are almost all new to organizing. They aren't "activists" you're familiar with. They're young, they're hurting, and they want justice, by any means necessary. So yes, there are many calls for caution, calls for better organizing. But this is a people's movement."
On the Facebook page for the demonstration Friday night, several recommended to all interested in attending that protestors wear masks and take heed of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was a big group, with reports from OPD suggesting that the crowds numbered almost four-thousand demonstrators at their peak. "Some were wearing masks and others weren't," Gentry added.
James Scurlock
As people marched against the loss of life, another was taken. 22-year old James Scurlock was killed outside the Omaha nightclub, The Hive by the club’s owner Jake Gardner. Gardner, according to a post on a gofundme posted on his behalf, has been released from police custody. There was a video taken moments before shots were fired on Scurlock - the video was placed on Facebook and was repeatedly taken down throughout the night. Gardner has yet to comment on the murder.
Secondhand accounts allege that Gardner was out on the streets yelling insults that included racial epithets at protestors, that he had a gun and that Scurlock was shot in the neck when he attempted to disarm Gardner. Scurlock was transported to UNMC where he later died.
Gardner being armed is corroborated by a Facebook post he put out earlier that night where he said "just when you think, ‘what else could 2020 throw at me?’ Then you have to pull 48 hours of military style firewatch."
This is not Gardner's first scuffle with controversy, according to a report by the Omaha World-Herald. In 2019, officers were dispatched to The Hive to investigate an assault that left a man bleeding and after being denied entrance by security. This led to the owners getting a warning from the Nebraska Liquor Commission.
Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert has instituted a curfew for Omaha that will continue until Wednesday morning at 6 a.m. It is possible that the curfew will be extended further into the week. Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts has enlisted the help of the National Guard in enforcing the curfew.
The activist group, Nebraska Left Coalition, reported twenty-four arrests Friday night - most of whom have been released. OPD reported fifty-one arrests on Saturday night.
Terrell McKinney pushed for those who are angry to engage in the legislative process, "People should be calling the mayor, their city councilman, and the chief of police to demand community input in the police contract negotiations and advocate for independent police oversight with subpoena power." The contract for the Omaha Police Union is up in December.
The Douglas County Attorney's Office will not be pressing charges against Jake Gardner, arguing his use of lethal force was valid employment of self-defense.
In a press conference given to KETV, Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine criticized the role social media has played in the case and said of the claim that Gardner was using racial epithets, "we do not have any audio of that - and none of the eyewitnesses we interviewed have said that he (Gardner) was using racial epithets." Kleine also criticized the shooting, calling it "senseless."
"Now is the time for strategy - not destruction," Morgann Freemann said in a Facebook post on the subject Monday afternoon.
Business in the Old Market closed early on Monday in preparation for the protests. Tensions are high.
NOISE will continue to follow, update, and revise this developing story.