RELEASE: Memphis Coalition Remains Focused on the Real Problem with Saturday's Police Violence

Memphis Coalition Remains Focused on the Real Problem with Saturday's Police Violence

MEMPHIS— After the Memphis Police Department's attempts to deflect responsibility for the police violence at Saturday's No King's Protest, the coalition responded with the following statement:

The Memphis Police Department is focusing on the issue of an unpermitted march to avoid accountability for their violence against peaceful protesters. After most of the participants had returned to Robert R. Church Park and the remaining participants were approximately 50 feet away from reaching the park, MPD officers recklessly deployed chemical agents and began attacking participants and safety marshals. There was no threat to public safety and no need for police intervention.

Throughout this country’s history, every meaningful grassroots movement has challenged the boundaries of what was considered acceptable or “authorized.” Progress has never come from waiting quietly for permission. It has come from people willing to stand up, speak out, and disrupt the status quo. From the Boston Tea Party to the Civil Rights Movement, from the fight for women’s suffrage to labor uprisings across the country, none of these defining moments were about permits. They were about people demanding change.

The fixation on permits is an attempt to deflect from what actually matters: millions of people losing access to health care, families being torn apart through deportations without due process, workers watching their livelihoods disappear overnight, and communities facing rising costs that make basic necessities harder to afford.

And here in Memphis, where our communities are being devastated by a federal occupation and backroom deals with out-of-state corporations, those pressures are only intensified. Instead of standing up for the people of this city, Mayor Paul Young has chosen to prioritize the interests of Donald Trump and Elon Musk over the communities he was elected to serve.

For those intent on criticizing, the issue is never really about permits. If a permit had been secured, there would be some other complaint—that the march was too loud, too disruptive, or too visible. Those more concerned with whether a protest is convenient than with the injustice being protested are repeating the same arguments used to resist civil rights, delay equality, and preserve the status quo. Those arguments were wrong then, and they are wrong now.

Permits are not the issue. Police violence is. What we saw was excessive, disproportionate, and unjustified force used against people who were peacefully protesting and posed no threat to public safety. MPD’s response was about silencing voices, intimidating communities, and discouraging people from exercising their fundamental rights.