The San Jose State football team’s People of Change committee led a march on Tuesday, which started and ended at the Olympic Black Power Statue on campus in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The team created this committee a few months ago and this was its first event. In order to get the support they wanted from the athletics department, the committee began reaching out to different SJSU teams on Sunday.
Jordan Cobbs, a biology sophomore, linebacker and People of Change member, wanted to get involved.
“Just from looking around the country, seeing what other people were doing, we were like ‘we could do something like this in our university,’ ” Cobbs said. “And our people followed and our people showed.”
Cobbs talked about how important it is to speak up about injustice.
“If you speak up and you’re really passionate about something people will see that,” he said. “I think people [have] seen how passionate we were about it.”
The event started at 10 a.m. with opening words from Christian Webb, a communications graduate student and linebacker for the SJSU football team.
“These issues matter,” Webb said. “They matter to us, they matter to our nation and they matter to our university.”
Webb also said he wanted to establish this event as a peaceful protest before leading the crowd toward city hall.
Student-athletes from several of the university’s sports teams came to support the event, like the women’s basketball, track and field, volleyball and water polo teams.
“We had a lot of athletes and staff that came out to support us and that’s really our number one thing right now,” Diamond Tabron, a senior criminal justice major and women’s track and field hurdler said. “We just need the support of the community, we need the support of people around us so our voices can be heard.”
During the march, the front half of the crowd was chanting “No justice, no peace,” and a few of the members held up homemade signs reading, “Black Lives Matter.” Even people in cars driving past the route engaged with the marchers, honking in support of the movement.
Once the marchers reached San Jose City Hall, they formed a circle and people volunteered to go into the middle to share their reasons for coming.
There were a few volunteers from SJSU sports teams and from supporters who weren’t associated with the university.
Among other speakers was Kiana Munoz, a member of the African American Community Service Agency, which provides services and resources to the community to strengthen African American culture, identity, values and traditions.
“We should all be chanting, we should all be talking, we should all be saying something, we should be walking through the streets and they should know why we’re here,” Munoz said. “Now is the time to be heard.”
After hearing from a few more speakers, each member of the crowd took a knee and put their fists up. Once they got up, they shouted the names of some of the recent victims of police brutality such as George Floyd Jr. and Jacob Blake Jr.
Then they marched back to campus and reconvened at the Olympic Black Power Statue where the organizers of the event spoke about their thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement.
Caleb Simmons, a kinesiology junior and guard for the men’s basketball team, explained that Black Lives Matter supporters should feel athletes are humans first and foremost.
“The people who donate money to us, I hope you understand that after we’re done playing that game we still have to be Black, we still have to wear the color of our skin,” said Simmons. “If you’re going to support us in our activities, in our sport, support us in life. We’re people first, we
just play sports.”
Natasha Harris, communications senior and women’s soccer defender, said for the next march some of the participants should have a more solemn demeanor when fighting for this cause.
“I just hope for the next march, that people come with the intent to chant and make sure that everybody around us knows exactly why we’re here,” Harris said. “This is for Black lives and we need to be angrier, we can’t be laughing, we can’t be smiling, this is serious.”
