Generation of justice

Mar. 22—NEW WILMINGTON — With a sense of purpose in his stride and a bullhorn in his hand, Isiah Canton led 100 marchers Sunday through the Westminster College campus, chanting slogans as spectators at a Titans' lacrosse match turned from the contest to view the procession.

"No justice," Canton called out.

"No peace," the other marchers chanted in reply.

"Say her name ... Breonna Taylor ... Say his name ... George Floyd."

Canton, a junior criminal justice major from Carnegie, and event organizer Journey Washington, walked at the head of the march Sunday from the Anderson Amphitheater off campus and into New Wilmington borough.

Washington, who had participated in other social justice protests last year, took over the reins of a Black Lives Matter march for the first time. The sophomore business major gave Sunday's march a "thumbs up."

"I'm very pleased with how it went," she said.

The event program included speakers before and after the march, escorted by New Wilmington police.

Washington said she sees the current racial justice movement as an extension of previous civil rights demonstrations to win legal equality and voting rights. This time, though, the fight is against systemic racism.

That movement took on a new urgency last week, she said, with the mass shooting Tuesday at two massage parlors in the Atlanta area. Of the eight victims, six were Asian American women.

Even though the shootings did not directly affect the Black community, Washington said the killings and their aftermath exposed some of the same biases behind anti-Black systemic racism.

Law enforcement officials investigating the shootings were hesitant to call them racially based hatred, and one sheriff's department spokesman said the suspect had, "a bad day." Washington said the spokesman's statement indicated that he had more compassion for the shooter than his victims.

And in her estimation, that's not a rare phenomenon.

"I feel like they always do that," she said. "They flip the story. There's always an excuse."

After the march, Dwan Walker — mayor of Aliquippa, a neighboring municipality to Washington's hometown of Beaver Falls — and Angela Valvano, vice chairwoman of the Lawrence County Democratic party and western Pennsylvania organizer for Keystone Progress, spoke at the amphitheater.

Both Walker and Valvano called on young people, like Westminster's students, to work toward social justice.

The Aliquippa mayor said he wants to work toward justice for the benefit of those, including his three daughters, in future generations.

"I'm not fortunate enough to see the shade," he said. "I'm just fortunate enough to plant the seeds of future trees."

In a data-heavy speech, Valvano said the generation of students now in college and those just a little older, would soon — by 2028 — make up a majority of the electorate. The 2020 November elections, when a large voter turnout swept former President Donald J. Trump out of office and swept two special elections in January to give Democrats razor-thin control of the U.S. Senate.

But those results, and the prospect for even larger turnout of young progressive and minority voters in the future, has attracted pushback, in what Valvano called the "new Jim Crow."

"When the people making the decisions are white, wealthy and old, they don't like that," Valvano said about increased voting participation by young people.

Republican-controlled state legislatures, including Pennsylvania's, have introduced more than 250 bills designed to restrict voting rights, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a think tank reviewing law and policy. In Georgia, a proposal would restrict Sunday early voting and impact "Souls to the Polls" Black church-based voter participation, and make it a misdemeanor to provide food or water for anyone waiting in line to vote.

Valvano, a former Ellwood City borough councilwoman, urged young people to register, if they hadn't done so already, vote and get involved.

Erin Wilson and her children — Daniel, 12, and Sydney, 9 — are getting an even earlier start. Wilson, of New Wilmington and a Westminster employee, said she attended the march at her children's behest.

Daniel said he had been reading the book "Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism and You" by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi in school and that he was interested in social justice.

"I'm glad that it's here," Daniel said. "I'm glad people here can fight against racism."

In a couple of years, Canton, who scored a touchdown Friday night in the Titans' 42-21 victory over Bethany College, said he's going to fight for social justice in his own way. As a criminal justice major, he wants to work on law enforcement reform from the inside.

Canton said he isn't certain of the exact path his reform journey will take.

"The most interesting one to me is the police," he said.