About 100 people gathered in Detroit's Clark Park on Saturday in response to the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse. He’s the armed teenager who fatally shot two people – and wounded another – during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year. Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges last week.
Detroit Will Breathe Organizer Tristan Taylor said protesting in the streets is just one way to change a system that is inherently discriminatory against Black people.
“In the end that's the only way we're going to get justice is if we take it and we take it by being in the streets but more importantly we take it by shutting down the institutions that we work in,” said Taylor.
He said he wasn’t surprised by the verdict. He said it’s not just the justice system that is broken.
“Black people's oppression is a result of capitalism needing our labor, which has been absolutely central in the destruction and maintenance of this country. And because of that power, that's why systematic racism exists,” he said.
Detroit Will Breathe led protests last summer following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
