Venice Beach Black Lives Matter Protests Continue Amid Pandemic
VENICE, CA — The American flag was upside down—a distress signal—at Venice Beach Friday as a group gathered on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream Speech" and March on Washington.
"When life is in distress, when people are in trouble, they raise the flag upside down," Ted Hayes, a homeless and civil rights activist in Venice, told Patch. Hayes has worked in the Venice community for more than 35 years.
Today, America is facing an awakening, one King warned of years earlier, Hayes told Patch.
"On this day he said that America if you do not solve your racial issues you're going to have an issue one day," Hayes said.
Between the Black Lives Matter Movement and the coronavirus pandemic, people are turning up to protest each week during the afternoons, he said. The group meets under the sculpture "The Declaration," created by Mark di Suvero, near the skatepark. They pray and meditate together, sit on blankets and lawn chairs, speak out about what's happening and call for change—local and national.
"Obviously the politicians cannot do it or we would not be here," Hayes told Patch.
"The revolution is in the mind. It's not in the guns. It's not in violence or name-calling," Hayes said. "I'm hoping that the locals are here, that people are watching."
USC Ph.D. student Sultan Sharrief is part of a group called the Venaissance collaborative network, a group that formed during the pandemic and started organizing to seek justice for Black lives.
"We started working really organically at the start of COVID," Sharrief said. Sharrief has worked in organizing in Detroit and lived in Venice since 2011. He saw what was happening in Venice in the early days of the stay-at-home order and as the Black Lives Matter Movement grew.
"I was waiting for the FEMA trucks," Sharrief told Patch.
But they never came.
As the nation pushes forward in the wake of the pandemic, the Venice homeless community is reeling.
Along the boardwalk, the balance has shifted, Sharrief told Patch. As businesses remain closed, along with libraries, volunteers have stopped arriving to help feed the homeless population. The impacts have only worsened, he added.
"If you close everything you're actually disrupting a whole system," Sharrief said.
The group wants justice for Black lives in the U.S., and a change to the status quo for those struggling in the community.
There's still work to do, but the group plans to keep coming out.
"It's not about politics, left or right, Republican or Democrat," Hayes said. "We want to turn the flag right-side-up."
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This article originally appeared on the Venice-Mar Vista Patch
