A Black Lives Matter protest took place in Seminole last Saturday, June 6. Protesters carried signs and chanted as they marched from Boomtown Playground to N. Milt Phillips Avenue, where they demonstrated for about three hours. Jessica Hinton was one of the hosts that organized the rally, and released the following statement in regard to the reason for the protest:

“The protest on Saturday was not only for Black Lives Matter, it was the breaking point of a society that has been in division for many decades. It was the breaking point for those who have lost the love ones that were killed by police officers, killed by the hands of another man or woman, but never got the Justice that was due. It was for those closed cases that go unsolved, or those cases that are rushed to be solved but not thoroughly looked through.

But it was also to show that a community could come together for those indigenous women who have gone missing for decades, for the Lighthorsemen to have more jurisdiction to help protect those women/children from going missing, and for those cases to be opened up and solved.

We as a black community are not alone because the Native Americans, because of the Hispanics, and the other ethnicities and nationalities that are not seeing Justice where it is due. We have all come together as a people to ask for Justice, but that March was also to show that we understand as a people that one police officer’s decision to do something crazy does not justify the whole department.

We understand that the whole department and the whole world of police officers are not to blame for one police officer’s action. Those police officers who decide to do something crazy, that’s on them, but we also understand one bad cop does not mean all bad cops. We do like to unify with the police officers, that’s why we asked them to be part of our March. That’s why we asked them to be there with us, not only for the community’s protection but for our protection. Also, because without them we would not have law-abiding protection. We don’t want to take it into our own hands, we want to leave it into the law’s hands, and we understand that. And that’s why we asked them to be a part.

Those are the things that the March stood for, not because we wanted to be on social media, not because we wanted to be on television. If we wanted those things, we could have had those things, but that’s not what it was about. It was about Justice, it was about unity, it was about ending police brutality!

We want to thank the Seminole Police Department, the Wewoka Police Department, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office and the Lighthorsemen for their support!”