Battery Park protesters removed hundreds of copies of Seven Days from local newsstands throughout Burlington and later burned some copies to show their objection to the newspapers’ cover story this week about their movement.
The newspaper’s publisher on Friday announced that 5,000 additional copies were printed to repopulate newsstands, and offered a spirited defense of its coverage.
“Clearing out newsstands because you don’t like what a paper is reporting is a disturbing tactic that has no place in a free, democratic society,” Seven Days publisher Paula Routly said in a written statement. “The individuals carrying out these retaliatory actions are exhibiting the very authoritarian behavior they are protesting.”
On Wednesday, Seven Days ran a cover story called “Battery Power: How Black Lives Matter Protesters Occupied a Park, Captivated a City — and Got Some of What They Wanted.”
The story was a first-person telling, by staff writer Chelsea Edgar, about her time spent reporting on the Black Lives Matter encampment at Battery Park over the last month. It focused on the group’s decision not to speak to the media, and on one former organizer, Anthony Marques, who broke from that decision, and talked to Edgar for her story.
In the article, Marques criticized the Black women and femmes leading the protest, calling the movement a “cult,” and an “exploitation of white people.” Edgar described the protesters as “white girls waiting to be told what to do,” calling them “females of the TikTok demographic, dressed in black, sporting some combination of Blundstones, ironic tube socks and leg hair.”
On Thursday, Battery Park protesters rounded up papers from newsstands throughout the city, ripped them to shreds, and burned those shreds on Main Street.
When protesters took to the streets Thursday, instead of their usual signs — adorned with the names of Black people killed by police, and the names of the two Burlington officers that the protesters are demanding be fired, Joseph Corrow and Cory Campbell — they carried copies of Seven Days. (A third officer, Sgt. Jason Bellavance, recently agreed to leave in return for three years pay.)
On the papers, organizers instructed protesters to write words that represent white supremacy and patriarchy. “Denial,” “Toxic,” and “Hateful,” the signs read, “Your words are empty.”
As the papers burned, protesters chanted “Fuck Seven Days” and “Chelsea about to lose her job.”
Once the papers had been destroyed, the Black femme organizers had one last request: for the white men at the protest: to clean up the shredded paper left in the road.
“May it be representative of the system you all are responsible for dismantling,” they said.
On Thursday, the protesters’ march was intentionally BIPOC femme-dominated, to combat the narrative of the Seven Days story, which organizers described in social media posts as insulting and sexist.
“Black anger is powerful. Black women are angry — and they deserve to be,” protesters chanted Thursday night.
The crowd Thursday was slightly larger than in recent days, but continued to be a peaceful protest, as it has been for the last month of hundreds of people marching each night from Battery Park to City Hall, to call for the firing of three police officers accused of excessive use of force.
At a Friday afternoon press conference, Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger at first declined to comment about the protesters’ Thursday night conduct. When asked why he wasn’t willing to comment, he explained that the image of burning papers worried him.
“To me, the idea of burning printed material, burning words, does conjure up historical scenes that it’s uncomfortable to see playing out here in Burlington. I was not comfortable seeing that,” he said.
Anthony Marques has since apologized for his decision to speak to Seven Days.
“Everyone had the right to be upset and when I say everyone, I mean everyone,” he wrote on Facebook. “There has been ongoing issues with myself and individuals within the Black Community and instead of everyone sitting down and talking about it, there were fingers pointed.”
One of the leaders of the protest, Harmony Edosomwan, called Marques’ public apology “BS” in a Facebook post.
“Not only does it gaslight black femmes experiences with him but it’s not a direct apology. His presence at camp made many women and femmes feel uncomfortable,” she wrote.
Edosomwan also took issue with the fact that Seven Days was telling the story of the protest from the perspective of a man with a history of abuse. Anthony Marques, who also goes by Anthony Bathalon, was found guilty of domestic assault in 2018 after he punched his girlfriend in the eye, breaking her orbital bone.
“When I first said that he threatened a black women organizer with violence many people said I was lying,” she wrote. “But considering that he has an extensive history of domestic violence towards women I don’t understand why you thought I was joking. Does this make sense to you now? Do you believe us now?”
In a separate post, Edosomwan continued to call out Seven Days for its reporting.
“Fuck Seven Days! Seven Days just said they stand by: misgendering non-binary folks, giving a platform to abusers, mocking black lives and our movement, and printing and publishing lies that put black femmes lives in danger? Cool [sunglasses emoji] You guys suck.”
Routly, the publisher, said it was the newspaper’s duty to cover the public protest.
“Protesters have occupied Burlington’s Battery Park for a month. It’s our job, as a local newspaper, to let city residents know what is going on there. We have to cover the story, even without the cooperation of the protest organizers, who have refused to speak to our reporters or any other media,” she wrote.
“We’ve always welcomed criticism and discussion of our work,” she added. “But we strongly believe that people should be able to pick up a copy themselves and decide what they think.”
In announcing the additional printing, Seven Days said it would “continue to replenish racks as needed until next Wednesday” when the next print issue appears.
Protesters are planning to boycott the Church Street Marketplace on Saturday, with the goal that “not a single dime” will be spent at any of the downtown stores.
As they marched back to Battery Park Thursday night, past throngs of shoppers and restaurant-goers, the group started up a lively chant of “Shut down Burlington — the revolution has begun — we’re ready — fuck this city.”
