The group marches through downtown Spokane as a trial against an officer charged with George Floyd’s murder nearby

A few dozen protesters gathered at the Riverfront Park Pavilion Saturday to mark the start of the trial of Derek Chauvin, the police officer charged with murder after kneeling on George Floyd’s neck in Minneapolis last year.

From there, the group, organized by human rights activist Coterie of Spokane, began a leisurely march through Spokane’s sun-drenched downtown area to the Black Lives Matter mural, with each letter painted by a different local artist.

Sarah Torres, the artist behind the letter “L,” admired a colorful chalk rendering of Floyd by Harpman Hatter before the first speakers began.

“Art is a way of making these issues accessible to everyone,” said Torres. “It’s a way of documenting moments in time in a way that is itself an act of resistance. Art is a way not to let a moment fade away. “

She said events like that on Saturday would inspire people to question dominant beliefs about race and policing.

More than 1,000 miles east of Spokane, the city of Minneapolis was preparing for possible unrest during the trial, NBC reported. The selection of the jury begins on Monday.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey described Chauvin’s trial as “probably the most significant trial our city has ever seen,” NBC reported.

Although the protest on Saturday in Spokane was many times less than that in the spring and summer sparked by Floyd’s death, which attracted thousands of protesters, she does not believe the movement in Spokane has subsided, but that as the pandemic progressed many people have moved to do their part from home.

Native American musicians began the event with a Nimiipuu song for war victims. Andrea “Drea Rose” Gallardo, who said police officers used a knee-to-neck maneuver on her during the Spokane protest on May 31, walked through the crowd with a bunch of sage smoked from an abalone shell.

Angel Tomeo Sam, who is handing bail on the Spokane branch of the national nonprofit The Bail Project, spoke first, admitting that “Spokane” is an indigenous word and that the city exists on the land where indigenous peoples lived for centuries. She said that indigenous and black issues are linked.

“That’s why we’re here,” said Sam. “Because of the devastating consequences of colonialism.”

Sam then listed the names of people killed by Spokane police.

Sam and the next speaker, local activist and city council candidate Lacrecia “Lu” Hill, said they support defusing the police. Sam said people sometimes shy away from the term, but for them defusing the police would also mean “investing in the divested”.

Hill said Americans need to introduce an entirely new system in which the police are not the “solution to every social problem.”

“Our first approach to the crisis is to send in an armed man,” said Hill.

Hill also pointed to the city council’s approval of the Spokane Police Guild’s new contract, saying the contract did not allow enough independent oversight of the Spokane Police Department.

She said although Chauvin’s trial sparked that march, the outcome would not matter until the police are not subject to qualified immunity, a principle of law that protects government employees from some civil suits.

After the marching group stopped at the Rotary Fountain in Riverfront Park, Gallardo picked up the microphone and referred to statistics recently released by the Spokane Police Department. These showed that blacks and Indians are over-represented in reports of crime relative to their proportion of the population, and that also found that blacks and Native Americans were more likely to use violence.

The same report found that police did not arrest more blacks or Native Americans than researchers would expect based on the number of blacks and indigenous peoples cited in crime reports.

Dave Bilsland, a Navy veteran with long white hair and a flag from Black Lives Matter, said he wished more people would get out of previous protests.

“I’m here because I’ve been fighting this damn fight for almost 60 years,” said Bilsland. “And if we don’t listen to our young people, we’re dead. It comes from a former young person. “