About 250 men, women, and children marched through Philipsburg Saturday, carrying candles for victims of violent crimes and waving placards with anti-crime slogans.
The anti-crime walk was the first for the newly-formed UTFAC.
Another 1,000-plus Haitians and others marched in the opposite direction about the same time to celebrate the life of Clemencia Josie-Ann Julot, a St. Maarten-born girl with Haitian parents who was killed about a week and a half ago.
Organizers of the town march, United Task Force against Crime (UTFAC) urged the community to watch out for and support each other for a less crime-wracked island. UTFAC organized the walk Monday in response to several recent violent crimes including two homicides in July.
UTFAC Chairman Clarence Richardson called on residents to take individual responsibility to stop crime by taking care of their neighbours and families. “I won’t tell you to hold the hand of the person besides you,” Richardson said to the gathering outside the Government Administration Building after the march. “Hold your own hand, and ask what you can do.”
He asked that residents look inwards and better themselves to ease the impact of crime.
Marchers walked, mostly in white T-shirts, to protest crime on the island. Poet Lenworth Wilson Jr. delivered a spoken-word piece on the deteriorating state of the island in the wake of rising crime. Pastor Wycliffe Smith asked residents to become a stronger community by participating and assisting each other through difficult times.
Acting Lt. Gov. Reynold Groeneveldt also thanked the public for its support.
On the other side of the Cole Bay Hill, hundreds of marchers walked from Harold Jack’s Lookout Point to the Faith Baptist Church (FBC) in honor of Julot who would have turned 21 Saturday. Witnesses described the Cole Bay march as an overwhelming throng of people descending from the hill. “People just kept coming, they were walking and running,” one woman said of the march. They were all wearing shirts with Julot’s face and her birth and death dates written down. She was found dead exactly nine days before her birthday.
Organizers of the Cole Bay march, who recruited support from Haitians living on both sides of the island, had told The Daily Herald last week that they didn’t know of UTFAC’s march. The organizers said Thursday that combining their marches was impossible.
UTFAC Vice Chairman Lenny Priest reminded marchers that their protest could not stop with the one night. He called for social reform, urging community and church leaders to go to affected youth who become criminals because they think there is nothing else. “We have to go deep into Dutch Quarter; deep into Middle Region [to stop crime at its source],” said Priest, who is president of the Middle Region/Defiance Community Council. He also asked for the business community’s support.
UTFAC had invited business representatives, community leaders and others to march, hoping to flood the streets with bodies of concerned residents.
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