Osagie family, hourslong sit-in part of latest Black Lives Matter protest in State College

For the third Sunday in a row, protesters gathered by the Allen Street Gates to stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and demand justice for those who have been killed by racially-charged police brutality.

Planned for 12 hours, the longest of the recent protests was primarily organized by area youth — students from the State College Area High School, the Delta Program and more, with support from local organizations like the 3/20 Coalition and the State College NAACP.

After meeting at the Allen Street Gates, community members marched toward the State College Municipal Building, where speakers including the parents of Osaze Osagie, the 29-year-old Black man who was shot and killed by a State College police officer serving a mental health warrant in 2019, addressed a crowd of hundreds.

Sylvester Osagie said it was “heart-wrenching” to participate in such activities, but “the time to remain silent is in the past.” Iyun Osagie said the family stands in solidarity with the national call for police reform.

“Reform begins with accountability and transparency in our own region,” Iyun Osagie said. “Excessive force, microaggressions, systemic racism and injustices of every type must stop.”

After gathering at the municipal building, protesters made their way back to the intersection of Allen Street and East College Avenue to sit and draw on the street with chalk, filling the sidewalks with messages and the names of Black people killed by police.

Kyra Gines, one of the protests organizers and a rising sophomore at Penn State, has been arranging protests since her sophomore year of high school at State High, including a local “March for Our Lives” rally in March 2018. Gines joined local high school students Ana Perciado and Ava Schreier to make the sit-in a reality.

Gines said she was inspired by other protests across the country, but wanted to show local officials that people were “willing to stick somewhere and stay.”

“If you think about the 1960s protests, they weren’t just a couple hours or a weekend protest. People sat in those shops for hours, people walked and boycotted for hours,” Gines said. “It made sense for me to push it and see how far people would stick with us.”

Melanie Morrison, a founding member and media spokesperson with the 3/20 Coalition, said the organization became aware of a third protest when Gines spoke in front of the State College Municipal Building on June 7.

“We love her spirit and her energy,” Morrison said. “We reached out to her as a coalition and brought her into our planning meeting group that had planned the prior protest to give her what she needs, find out what the shape of (the protest) would be, and how we could help.”

The 3/20 Coalition was formed after Osagie’s death, and has a list of ten demands for State College officials, including the implementation of a Community Advisory Board to address discrimination, bias and racism in local government and police, release of the name of the State College officer who shot Osagie and divestment of guns during the service of mental health checks and mental health warrants.

On Thursday, State College Borough Councilman Dan Murphy released a letter to the community with a six-part plan for addressing the concerns. Initiatives include establishing a citizen review board with independent investigative authority for the State College Police Department, reallocating funds from the police department budget to support community services that decrease “dependence on police intervention” and hiring a community equity officer and responding to protesters in “direct and meaningful ways.”

For many 3/20 Coalition members and student protesters, however, the councilman’s words cannot substitute concrete action.

“Of course we support this work being done and we’re glad that people are finally listening and we hope that the work being done is not performative,” Morrison said. “But we want it to work toward a place in which Happy Valley is actually happy for everyone.”

Morrison, however, is hopeful that the rallies will bring about the changes demanded by protesters. The 3/20 Coalition plans to attend Monday’s State College Borough Council meeting to ensure Murphy’s plans move forward.

Until demands are met, protesters say they will meet on the streets, demand justice and an end to systemic racism.

“We are the change-makers,” Iyun Osagie said. “So let us make the change we want to see, until justice runs through our streets like a mighty river.”

This story was originally published June 14, 2020 at 5:41 PM.