COMMUNITY

In the wake of Salem protests, a new community leader emerges

Gregg Simpson stands in Lee Park near to where he grew up on Thursday, July 16. (Amanda Loman/Salem Reporter)

Gregg Simpson was stunned as he looked over a crowd of thousands of people gathered for the March for Floyd on June 6, an event he helped organize and lead.

“I was floating on a cloud, honestly, to see the city of Salem come together like that,” he recalled.

Simpson has emerged as a leader in the demand among Salem residents for justice and social reform. He participated in staging Black Lives Matter demonstrations and started a group called Save our Selves – SOS – which has been meeting weekly to discuss issues of racial justice.  

He said the June 6 event became an opportunity for Salem to show how it was going to react to what’s going on in the country in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

“I felt like the white allies that I saw come together, that probably for me was the biggest part. White allies that cried due to being silent for so long, whether silent or ignorant to what is going on,” he said. “It spoke volumes to me, because what it said was a change is going to come.”

Simpson, 31, was born and raised in Salem and said growing up he felt alone, often the only Black kid in school.

He was raised in a neighborhood sandwiched between the Oregon State Penitentiary and the Oregon State Hospital.

 “When that’s all your surrounded by, that’s all you’re going to see in your future,” he said.

Simpson said as a Black resident in the community, he doesn’t go certain places because he knows he’ll get dirty looks or face racism.

He said there wasn’t a lot to do in Salem growing up, so in 2015 he started a company called 4D Media that brought entertainers to venues like the now shuttered Shotski’s.

“I’ve been a community leader for a long time, it was only in a certain community though. This last year has broadened my leadership,” Simpson, who now works at a Black-owned care home, said.

He wasn’t political until this year when he attended his first protest on June 1 at the request of a friend and ended up helping lead the march back to the Capitol from just outside the new police headquarters where protesters left candles during a vigil.

Simpson has been catapulted into a leadership position since and he said he’s putting himself out front of demonstrations because he believes in the movement, but other members of the Black community have been reluctant to participate in the past.

“There’s such a big Black community in Salem, Oregon. When we try to become a part of our community, it’s not comfortable for us,” he said.

When Simpson helped out with events in early June, he said there was coordination with police with roadblocks and some officers taking a knee during the vigil on June 1.

“The majority of Salem feels better going about things that way,” he said. “It just felt really professional. If you don’t have that environment people aren’t going to show up.”

As he was leading the group on June 1, he ran ahead of the crowd of about 1,000 people and asked police if they could move closer to the new station for a vigil. Police said no, because of safety concerns around the construction site, so Simpson turned the group around back toward the Capitol.

He said when Salem police saw what he was trying to do, it opened a dialogue between citizens and officers that ultimately helped when he planned the March for Floyd five days later.

Simpson said Black members of the community don’t feel comfortable around police, but he took it upon himself to reach out to the department to be able to deliver a message without protesters getting hurt.

He has endured social media criticism, though, that questions his conduct. Recent posts said he appeared to be dismissing LGBTQ concerns by holding SOS meetings at The Salvation Army Kroc Center. The Salvation Army has been criticized as being anti-LGBTQ.

Local activist Adrien Lockhart posted a video to YouTube titled: “There’s someone gaslighting the Salem community,” referring to Simpson.

Lockhart said Simpson told people not to attend an event on July 4 organized in solidarity with LGBTQ people and the Black Lives Matter movement. He said multiple people from the LGBTQ community reached out to Simpson and said it was hurtful, but he dismissed their concerns.

“If somebody’s going to pretty much pretend like they’re a leader in the Black community then they need to be able to listen to people when they say: ‘hey you hurt me,’” he said.

Simpson said he never told people not to attend and organizers reached out to him for advice on the event. He said he disagreed about the original title of the event, Black Lives Matter in solidarity with LGBTQ, and initially said he wouldn’t attend.

He said he didn’t want another movement attached to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Last week, Simpson told Salem Reporter the community needs to organize and get on the same page, because people are losing focus of what the movement is about.

“Don’t take the narrative of a movement that already exists,” he said. “Stay focused on racism within the system, racism in society.”

Lockhart said he waited to post the video because he was hoping the issue would be resolved behind the scenes.

“The last thing I wanted was it to look like a source of drama,” he said.

Transgender women, especially Black transgender women, face a heightened risk of fatal violence, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Last year, advocates tracked 27 deaths of transgender or gender non-conforming people in the U.S. due to fatal violence, the majority of whom were Black transgender women.

Lockhart said that’s a key piece of the Black Lives Matter movement that gets cast aside.

Simpson addressed some concerns in his own Facebook videos, saying that no one, specifically LGBTQ people, would be mistreated during SOS meetings at the Kroc Center.

He told Salem Reporter he wasn’t aware the Kroc Center was an issue when he first chose the location and said choosing it doesn’t mean he condones LGBTQ discrimination; that in fact he wants to address it.

For his part, he said he’s still learning about the LGBTQ community and getting educated about using people’s correct pronouns.

“We don’t need to try to take each other out of the game, that’s not productive, it’s counterproductive,” Simpson said of Lockhart’s criticism.

He has multiple goals for SOS, which he said he registered as a nonprofit this week. He said he wants SOS to help feed people experiencing homelessness, start a community garden and host debates.

Simpson said he has nieces and nephews that need a safe environment to go to.

“There’s no space for Black people to come together to feel safe right now in Salem,” he said.

Simpson said Salem needs a new system of policing, and the community needs to come together to figure out what that would be.

“It’s time for a change. This is the most depressing part of it. This change we’re asking for is so huge, the people in charge feel like it’s too much work to change,” he said. “I’m sorry that the system that you built is broken or the system that you built is not for everybody. We need a system that is for everybody.”

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Have a story tip? Contact reporter Saphara Harrell at 503-549-6250, [email protected] or @daisysaphara.