Great Barrington — Her heart racing, she knew what she had to do.
It was Monday night (September 20) and Jennifer VanSant had just watched a video of Tulsa, Oklahoma police killing an unarmed black man, Terrence Crutcher, then leaving him there on the road to die.
She went out to the shed. She got an old poster board and some ceiling paint. She needed to sleep, so she got up early Tuesday and made a sign while the rest of the Berkshires still slept, ate breakfast, or went about their usual routine.
“DEMAND JUSTICE FOR TERENCE CRUTCHER”
Heart still racing, she knew what she would do.
“I almost talked myself out of it so many times,” she said.
Southbound in downtown Great Barrington, she stopped her car, put on her flashers. She sent a group text to her family about her “symbolic” stop: “I’m really scared, but I’d be a lot more scared if I was black.”
In the Main Street southbound lane Jennifer VanSant talks with Great Barrington Officers Jonathan Finnerty and Adam Carlotto whom she described as ‘very kind.’ Photo: David Inglis
But she is a woman.
“Get the fuck out of the road you stupid bitch,” is the first thing she hears from another driver, who makes a dangerously close turn as she settles in.
“Racism and sexism go hand in hand,” she tells me. “I was nervous but not surprised.”
It was the only bit of unpleasantness in 20 minutes. Many drivers honked and waved in support.
Along came Officer Jonathan Finnerty from the Great Barrington Police Department.
He asked VanSant how she was doing. “Then he asked me what I was doing.”
He explained that she couldn’t protest in the street, but VanSant held her ground, and tearing up, said she wouldn’t move. She explained why she was there.
“I’m with you, but I can’t let you protest in the street,” Finnerty reportedly said.
“You have a chance to stand with me,” she told him.
She said he was “very kind and very supportive of my efforts,” but told her he would have to arrest her for disorderly conduct if she didn’t move to the corner, and relocate her car.
VanSant described her feelings at that moment. “As uncomfortable as I feel, Terence Crutcher’s family is going to feel this way for the rest of their lives.”
“You’re under arrest you need to stand up.”
She held tight to her chair. “You’re going to need backup because I’m heavier than I look.”
Finnerty smiled. Backup came. Now there would also be a “resisting arrest” charge.
Jennifer VanSant, the day after her Main Street protest. Photo: Heather Bellow
“I had to be at work at 10, I only had an hour and wanted hundreds of people to see the sign and a white person holding it. Then I looked at him and I couldn’t ask this young guy to drag me down to the police station.”
He and Sergeant Adam Carlotto helped her set up her chair and sign on the corner, and she moved her car.
“I caved. I’m the worst protester in the world.”
Naw, I tell her. You did it. No one else was out there. You don’t do that everyday.
“I was pretty sure that my white privilege would protect me, but I was really scared because the world feels really out of control and crazy. I know Americans of color live with that on daily basis. I got to feel that feeling of, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen today’.”
VanSant said she knew police killings of unarmed black men is nothing new. “But it’s new to me as someone who hasn’t been affected personally. The digital age has brought it to my attention.”
She found it “chilling” to watch the Tulsa officers’ “complete inhumane disregard for him after he fell.”
Jennifer VanSant’s sign is now posted at her home.
The shooting is now under a U.S. Department of Justice investigation for civil rights violations.
“Unarmed black people were killed by police at five times the rate of unarmed whites,” according to Mapping Police Violence. In 2015, police killed 102 unarmed blacks.
VanSant, who co-owns felting crafts business, Going Gnome, said she’s been touched by the photos taken of her protest and passed around Facebook.
“I was glad I did it,” she said. “It would have been easier to stay home and get ready for work.” She said it is “time for whites to step forward,” on this issue, and keep the police brutality story alive. “We are in a crisis of Americans being murdered.”
VanSant’s 16-year-old was on the sofa, earbuds in, when she passed him with the sign that morning.
“He took one earbud out and said, ‘nice sign mom.’ For a fairly sheltered child I was happy that he said something at all. It’s the kids; that’s what’s going to drive the revolution.”