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Group of Yachats residents still show up every Saturday, four years after first protest of George Floyd’s killing

A woman holds a sign on the side of the raod while cars pass.
Quinton Smith
/
Yachats News
Morgan Brodie of Yachats has spent most every Saturday morning for the past four years trying to bring attention to racial injustice by spending one hour along U.S. Highway 101 in downtown Yachats.

This story was originally published on YachatsNews.com and is used with permission.

At 10 a.m. every Saturday for four years a collection of Yachats-area residents grab homemade signs and stand along U.S. Highway 101 in the center of town to ask people to become more racially aware.

They wave to people who honk as they drive past, or smile at others who give them a different type of salute. Sometimes they chat with visitors or residents who stop to ask what they’re doing.

“It’s important to hear everyone,” Morgan Brodie said Saturday as she stood along the highway for the fourth straight year.

The demonstration started spontaneously on May 30, 2020, following the killing of George Floyd, an African American, by police in Minneapolis. It has continued for an hour each Saturday since.

Two people hold signs on the roadside.
Quinton Smith
/
Yachats News
Johnni Prince and Dave Cowden have helped organize and spread the word about the weekly demonstrations for racial justice the last four years along U.S. Highway 101 in Yachats.

That’s 208 consecutive Saturdays — during the brightest days of summer or the darkest mornings of winter. The fewest number of people has been nine; the largest 72, says Johnni Prince, who with husband Dave Cowden helps organize the informal group

The low-key event – people simply holding signs along the highway — appears to be the longest-running group protest in Oregon and likely the Northwest.

While the demonstration started spontaneously to protest Floyd’s killing, the group is spreading its efforts into other endeavors. It created a group called Yachatians for Social Justice, sponsored a well-regarded conference on racial equality and understanding last year, is part of a soon-to-be nonprofit community collaborative, and next month is helping bring the director of Oregon Black Pioneers to town to speak.

“We’re trying to increase our awareness and effectiveness and just not stand out here,” said Brodie, who is also helping with the collaborative. “This is just the witnessing piece … now we want to be more of a presence in the community.”

But the weekly presence along the highway is important, she said.

“We don’t want to forget this happened to someone and it continues to happen to people …” Brodie said.

Jim and Maggie Paul were regular protestors the first year, then less so the second. Last week they rummaged through their garage, found their original signs – and a few others on other political or justice topics — and returned on the fourth anniversary of the protests Saturday.

“It’s important,” Maggie Paul said. “We wanted to show our support.”

The regular Saturday group – Prince has dubbed them the “Dirty Dozen” – had no idea their quiet protests would last for four years or how long it will keep going.

“It’s not that people forget or don’t care,” she said. “But people tend to move on to the next issue.”

“Four years is a lot,” Cowden said Saturday. “But I don’t even know what an end date looks like.”

And so they will keep showing up every Saturday morning. At 10 o’clock. Rain or shine.

Quinton Smith founded YachatsNews in 2019 after a 40-year career as a reporter and editor for United Press International and three Oregon newspapers. He worked in various editing positions at The Oregonian from 1984 to 2008 where he led a reporting team that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News.