Hundreds take to streets for Rosa Parks Human Rights Day

Yawu Miller

Last week when Johanna Rosario presented a letter asking permission to leave Charlestown High School early for the Dec. 1 Rosa Parks Human Rights Day march, school officials told her she would get a suspension for missing school.

Last Thursday, she and four other Charlestown students did what dozens of other high school students did — they got up and walked out of class. They rode by bus to Dudley Square and joined up with a 600-strong march headed for City Hall.

“Rosa Parks did a lot of things for us,” Rosario said, explaining her decision to march. “It’s wrong for them not to honor her.”

The march, sponsored by a coalition of union activists, elected officials of color and civil rights activists, had called on city officials to shut down their offices and business owners to close their stores. Although a unanimous city council resolution supported the call for an official Rosa Parks holiday, city officials refused to close city offices or the schools.

The march organizers billed the event as a human rights day, calling for an end to the war in Iraq and the restoration of federal funds to social programs.

Chanting “no work, no school, no shopping,” the marchers made their way into Downtown Crossing as activist Ernesto Arroyo spurred them on from the back of a sound truck with rapid-fire one-liners.

“It’s not a day off,” he said. “It’s a day on. Don’t let school get in the way of your education. We don’t need them to declare this a holiday. The streets declared this a holiday.”

The streets were filled with revolutionary rhetoric, from the march’s beginning at the corner of Blue Hill Ave. and Dudley St. to City Hall Plaza, where the sound truck stopped for speeches from local luminaries.

As the march made its way past Madison Park High School, students from the school were blocked from joining by school security. But students from several schools, including the Social Justice Academy at Hyde Park High School attended the march with school support.

“It’s the right thing to do,” said Megan Andrade, a student from the New Mission Charter School. “The teachers all came with us. This is an event for everyone. We’re talking about racism, war, poverty and remembering Rosa Parks.”

Those themes were represented in the speeches at the beginning of the march and in the placards and slogans shouted during the march.

“Stop the war on the poor,” Arroyo shouted over his loudspeaker, initiating a call-and-response chant from the crowd that resounded off the walls of the Millennium Towers luxury condominiums on Essex Street. “No to racism, no to classism, no to police brutality, no to sexism. Today is Rosa Parks Human Rights Day. It has been declared by the people.”

In addition to social justice messages, the marchers spoke about the gun violence currently plaguing the city.

“Peace is what we need in the world,” said Nation of Islam Minister Rodney Muhammad, speaking at the rally in front of City Hall. “Peace is what we need around here.”

The march was sponsored by a coalition of organizers, including city councilors Felix Arroyo, Chuck Turner and Charles Yancey.