Meet one of the peacekeepers in Charlotte protests
CHARLOTTE — A narrow gap opens as protesters scream at unmoving police padded in riot gear in this seemingly genteel city, now divided over the shooting death of a black man. In the space between the two clashing groups, peacekeepers try to ward off the escalating confrontations.
This scene has been repeated dozens of times since Keith Lamont Scott's death at the hands of a police officer triggered long nights of demonstrations, including violent encounters between protesters and police earlier this week.
Toussaint Romain, 39, a Mecklenburg County assistant public defender for more than eight years, frequently entered the fracas in an attempt to quell tensions.
In the more intense protests, Romain emerged coughing from tear gas. One time he was hit in the back with a bean bag shot by police, he said. Other times, he walked alongside marchers deep into the night, outfitted in the collared shirt and slacks he wore to the office that morning.
As a drumbeat for answers in the Scott shooting continues with a Saturday march, leaders point to a host of issues in North Carolina and across the country that they say contribute to outrage, from economic inequality to criminalization of African Americans to institutional racism.
But as Romain sees it, the recent outrage in the black community over police shootings has a simpler origin: technology. Most everyone has a cell phone in their pocket, able to take video that might question or contradict a police narrative in a shooting.
Romain represents habitual felons, those repeat offenders who are near or have crossed a “three strikes and you’re out” line, which brings long-term prison sentences.
Of his 60 or so clients, none are Caucasian, he said. Many were charged with felonies as young black men, giving them a record that can serve as a barrier to education, employment and housing, in turn perpetuating a life in crime.
“It’s not that the system is rigged, it’s who we put in the system that’s rigged,” he said. “It’s the fact that we have discretion. Is it criminal to be black? Is it criminal to be male? Is it criminal to be a black male? As we walk by young black men on the street, do we sometimes feel they are criminals? Are we quick to call them thugs?”
Too often we are, he said.
Moving among the hundreds of people chanting protest slogans around him, Romain often paused this week to chat individually or with a small group of demonstrators, frequently talking about his optimism for peace and hope.
“I’m committed to this, because it has to get better. There has to be hope. Does my black life matter? Yes it does,” Romain said. “If I push the issue that much, and all the other leaders, who are the real leaders stand up, and push the issue this much, and if over a certain period of time we keep pushing the issue, maybe we won’t have to have interview like this, where we’re talking about the killing of an armed or unarmed black man who was peacefully in his place and the world is now divided between us and them, cops versus thugs."
"We’re all in this together.”