Extra

A coalition of clergy leaders staged a die-in and marched with university students through Berkeley today to respond to the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of white police officers. 

The march, organized by the Way Christian Center in collaboration with more than a dozen other clergy organizations and houses of worship, corresponded with "Solidarity Sunday," a national call to action by clergy members to remember the lives of black residents who died from police violence, said Church Without Walls member Wendy Hu-Au.  

The Way Christian Center Pastor Michael McBride said the atmosphere today was sometimes festive and sometimes somber as several hundred people walked through the streets and listened to black students at the University of California at Berkeley.  

"We marched using the voices of Cal students," McBride said. "We used some of the chants from Ferguson and sang civil rights and church hymns."  

The demonstration started with an orientation for the community leaders at the Way Christian Center at 12:30 p.m., when participants were briefed on how to engage in non-violent civil disobedience. 

Church Without Walls administrator Kim Winkleman said McBride briefed the group on what to do if confronted by police and told them not to resist officers if arrested. 

McBride decried actions by anarchists and others who have infiltrated demonstrations against police brutality in the Bay Area and have smashed windows, lit fires, and vandalized businesses in the name of black lives. 

"If they're not willing to follow black leadership then they should find another cause," McBride said. "We will get our liberation and freedom by our own means and decisions and we ask them to respect that." 

The group met up with a march that was already planned at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley and then walked back towards the Way Christian Center on University Avenue at West Street. 

McBride said the group held a moment of silence for four and a half minutes to commemorate the four and a half hours that Michael Brown was laying in the street after being shot by Ferguson, Missouri, police Officer Darren Wilson. 

Then, the crowd staged a "die-in" for 11 minutes to represent the 11 times Eric Garner said "I can't breathe" as a New York police officer used a chokehold to restrain, and ultimately, kill him. 

The deaths of Brown and Garner, as well as two grand juries' decisions to not indict the officers who killed them, have been used as a rallying cry across the country for demonstrations against police brutality in recent weeks.  

McBride said it was important for clergy leaders to stand in solidarity with the young people who have been protesting in Ferguson, at Berkeley, and throughout the nation.  

"We all owe these young people a deep gratitude. They have 425 days plus of organized non-violence and peaceful resistance to the armored tanks and a militaristic police response," McBride said. 

McBride said he wanted to make sure young people felt supported by the institutions in their community and to also use the clergy leaders' collective voices to amplify their message. 

Rabbi Menachem Creditor of the Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley said the demonstration coincides with the mission of many synagogues, churches or mosques. 

"People of faith have a lot to say about human dignity," Creditor said. "Both as an American citizen and a Jew, the image of God is one I'm compelled to protect." 

Winkleman said there was a tradition and history of clergy leading the civil rights movement. 

"Our black brothers and sisters, their lives are being treated as less than others and it breaks the heart of God and breaks our heart as well," Winkleman said.  

Creditor said the demonstration was very much led by black voices and UC Berkeley students in particular. 

"It felt really beautiful because on one hand, it fit into the pattern of demonstrations throughout the Bay Area but the voices leading it were black voices," Creditor said. "Those who were not were there to be supportive and to be allies but not to be out front." 

The action was specifically targeted at changing the culture of law enforcement in Berkeley, the state and the country and McBride said the demonstrators issued several specific demands.  

They want Berkeley and Alameda County to immediately put cameras on all police officers working in the community or schools, McBride said. 

They also want the government at local and federal levels to publish the number of officer-involved shootings in cases of excessive force. McBride said the group is asking that the list be made public as a form of accountability. 

The group wants to end the militarization of police agencies and do not want officers in Berkeley to ever use teargas as a means of dispersing crowds engaged in exercising their First Amendment rights, McBride said.  

The group wants the federal government to withhold grants to police departments that have a history of racial profiling or officer-involved shootings as another form of accountability. 

Lastly, McBride said they want to do away with grand juries or to appoint special prosecutors in all instances of officer-involved shootings.  

"We need law enforcement to deliver policing and public services that are not biased or fueled by irrational fear or irrational hatred of black men in our communities," McBride said. "We don't presume to say that every police officer has an irrational fear or irrational anger but there are a number of officers who are involved in a structure that does not reel them in."