Richmonders march in protest of “Mass Incarceration”
Students, alumni, Richmond residents and activists marched on Saturday, Nov. 16 from Abner Clay Park to West Broad Street to increase awareness about the criminal justice system in Virginia and the United States.
Cyrus Nuval
Staff Writer
Students, alumni, Richmond residents and activists marched on Saturday, Nov. 16 from Abner Clay Park to West Broad Street to increase awareness about the criminal justice system in Virginia and the United States.
The event, called the March Against Mass Incarceration, was hosted by a Richmond-based social activism organization called Collective X.
The participants marched out of Abner Clay Park, into the streets of Jackson Ward and onto Broad Street, and held signs saying “Justice Not Jails,” “Solitary Confinement is Torture” and “Stop Deportations and Restore Our Families.”
Several other Richmond-based organizations including the Living Wage Campaign at VCU, Amnesty International at VCU and The Students for Social Action at VCU attended the event to show their support for Collective X and the cause.
“Our system is supposed to be a correctional system … instead of helping correct what was wrong, we now have a prison-industrial complex that only sees numbers instead of people … dollars instead of lives,” said Queen Nzinga from the Resource Information Help for the Disadvantage.
Phil Cunningham, a recent VCU graduate and one of the members of Collective X, said the organization was born out of the Occupy Richmond movement that happened in 2011.
Cunningham said this is the third event Collective X has hosted. The first event was “Stand Loudly with Silence,” where participants made a silent demonstration in front of the Virginia State Capitol to protest against abortion regulations. The second event was a clothing drive called Socks for Inmates.
Manuel Leiva, a junior international relations major and member of Collective X, marched to show support for the organization and because he said he was personally affected by the prison system.
“I have friends and family who have went through the prison-industrial complex with unjust results based on factors such as race and income level,” Leiva said. “This rally is a good step towards something greater, but I doubt this will be the main goal for Collective X.”
