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Appalachian Students To Assemble in ‘Non-Violent Protest of Police Brutality, White Supremacy’ on Monday

Lyons
ASU student Mary Lyons said she organized the “first protest out of sheer frustration and it took on a life of its own.” On Monday, a second demonstration is planned on the campus.

Dec. 8, 2014. Appalachian State students are holding a “Die-In” at several locations on campus as a part of their second protest of police aggression and racism on Monday, Dec. 8, at 3 p.m. The protest is in solidarity with ongoing protests in Ferguson, Staten Island, and across the nation in an attempt to end the “over-aggressive policing culture”, according to organizer Mary Lyons.

“This is about a larger issue than one or two incidents of police brutality. This is about the systemic, ingrained, and ever perpetuating effects of institutionalized racism,” Lyons said.

Lyons is a junior art education major who organized the first protest on Friday out of anger and anguish for what happened in Ferguson, Mo.

The protest started from an active Facebook page, started by a student, called “ASU In Solidarity.” Monday’s protest will begin at Belk Library and will including multiple “die-in”s, where participants lay silently on the ground for four and a half minutes in reference to the four and a half hours Michael Brown laid dead in the street. Names of other unarmed black men that have been killed by police will be read throughout the protest.

“I organized the first protest out of sheer frustration and it took on a life of its own,” Lyons said.

Approximately 200 people participated in the first protest on Friday, comprised of four die-ins and a march on campus. Anyone is interested in joining or documenting Monday’s protest is invited to meet at Belk Library at 3 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 8.

On a Facebook event page about the protest, Lyons said that the protest will begin with participants covering their mouths with white tape that reads “White Silence=White Consent.” Then the protesters will enter the rotunda of the library and enact the “die-in” before a call-and-response march to the Central Dining Hall, where on the second floor, protesters will recite the last words of Eric Garner’s life – before continuing to B.B. Dougherty Hall.

At the administration office, another “die-in” will occur before a final “die-in” happens in the Student Union near Cascades. Protesters will read a list of names of “unarmed victims of the police” before an open-mic finale in the Parkway Ballroom.

For more information, visit the protest Facebook page “Black Lives Matter Solidarity Demonstrations.”