Demonstration disrupts busy Saturday evening in Lake Geneva
By Mike Ramczyk
Correspondent
People of color are fed up in Lake Geneva and surrounding areas.
What started with a protest last week in Burlington has spread into a full-fledged movement around the area, as Saturday alone saw marches in Twin Lakes, Lake Geneva and Kansasville, along with a second rally in Burlington.
And Camal Hibbler, a black man who has lived in Lake Geneva the last 20 years, thinks what’s happening across the country and locally is amazing.
“We’re still living this,” Hibbler said while he joined a group of roughly 100 peaceful protesters Saturday night at Lake Geneva City Hall. “It’s great people are understanding how black lives matter, but deep in the soul of this is that it’s still going on.”
“If it had not been for that videotape (of the death of George Floyd), it would not be happening and people would still have blinders on, thinking police aren’t like that. Here it is, first-hand. And it’s peaceful.
The Lord makes a way.”
Organizer Jordan Patino, a recent Lake Geneva Badger High School graduate, is of Latino descent and set up Saturday’s event, which began at City Hall at 5 p.m. and included passionate speeches from community members and nine minutes of kneeling to honor Floyd.
The event came three days after a demonstration at the Riviera, where Walworth County Sheriff Kurt Picknell spoke.
Saturday’s rally, in part, was organized because several area minorities said the first protest was more about anti-rioting and anti-looting, and took away from the message of honoring Floyd with a “Black Lives Matter” protest.
Read the rest of the story and see more photos in the June 11-12 Southern Lakes Newspapers’ publication including the Lake Geneva Times and Elkhorn Independent.
