A grassroots event in Medway welcomed hundreds to march down streets and listen to guest speakers at Choate Park to honor George Floyd and champion racial justice on Sunday, June 7.

Shortly after 3 p.m., the crowd gathered at Medway Middle School marched down Holliston St. and Main St., raising their signs and voices to advocate for ending police brutality and racial inequality. The marchers reached Choate Park half an hour later and fanned out around an outdoor stage set up behind Thayer Homestead. At around 4:30 p.m., speakers including Medway Police Chief Allen Tingley, Medway Town Administrator Michael Boynton, rising Medway High School junior Trinity Johnson, and Boston educators Tyrell Adeyemi and Joellen Persad emphasized the urgency with which racial injustice must be addressed on local and national levels.

Tingley, with the leading speech, said he was deeply embarrassed by how Minneapolis police officers behaved and insisted that “there’s no place in law enforcement for hate and discrimination.” He acknowledged that some police in America are misguided, but assured that the Medway Police Department strives to treat people equally under the law.

Johnson, a 15-year-old, later took the stage with Medway Middle School student Kennedy Hamm to engage the crowd in self-reflective thinking, asking them to raise their hands if they’ve witnessed or experienced racism in Medway. Johnson then reflected on her own experiences with racism as a person of color, a problem she earlier mentioned is too often ignored by the town and its public schools.

Speakers Adeyemi and Persad, creators of the 2BE podcast, shared these sentiments. Adeyemi emphasized that a disproportionate “whiteness” dominates American culture and is destructive to the identities of people of color. Persad explained the need to be “hyperconscious” of personal bias. Medway resident of color Marques Crosby also spoke about normalizing uncomfortable discussions surrounding race, insisting that “our collective action now is the remedy” to racial injustice.

According to Lisa Sheehan, one of the event’s eight organizers, the idea began organically and spontaneously. Although she didn’t personally know all seven others, she said the national upheaval sparked by George Floyd’s death due to police brutality “moved us all to take some kind of action.” On June 2, these eight advocates came together over social media and gave themselves six days to organize the event. Sheehan’s goal for it was to make conversations about race “more conscious and present” in Medway. Johnson, as head of the Unity Club, a student diversity group at Medway High School, shared this goal.

Sheehan hoped the event would give visibility to minorities that are often unheard in predominantly white towns like Medway. To succeed, she emphasized the importance of reflecting Medway’s diversity among the eight organizers. This group consisted of African-Jamaican American Trinity Johnson, island-born Puerto Rican Angelica Crosby, African American Marques Crosby, Asian-Indian American Raj Saleem, Pakistani American Amna Saeed-Kothe, and white Americans Crystal Buckley, Martin Dietrich, and Sheehan herself.

Both Johnson and Sheehan want to keep this group together and continue promoting their message, as Johnson acknowledged that their June 7 event “can’t be a one and done situation.”

Sheehan suggested continuing this work through “Medway 4 Everyone,” a group created by Julie Dennehy in hopes “to bring community members together to connect and network in response to many different incidents surrounding diversity and equality, including LGBTQ issues.”

Sheehan said the Medway Police Department and Board of Selectmen were very supportive of the event. Police shut down Holliston St. and Main St. for marchers and called in units from surrounding towns to run the operation smoothly. Medway Police Lt. William Kingsbury said that 56 officers total were brought to the event, including officers from Holliston, Millis, Franklin, Bellingham, Hanover, and Ashland.

Although Johnson felt the event was successful, she was disappointed by the backlash over social media. Sheehan shared in this pain, explaining how difficult it was to witness people within her community opposing such an important movement. Sheehan said she also struggled with the potential for accidentally facilitating the spread of COVID-19 at the event. When weighing her options, she prioritized racial equality over COVID-19 concerns, pointing out that many people of color don’t share the privilege of working from home and socially distancing that many white people do. “This issue is bigger than that,” she said.