Demonstration Remembers Dashawn Evans, Found Dead in the Durham Jail

Report from Durham, North Carolina was anonymously submitted to It’s Going Down.

Children chanting in unison, caring for each other, and mourning together accounted for two dozen of the 150 person crowd who gathered outside the Durham County jail Friday night to celebrate the life of Dashawn Evans and grieve his death in the hands of the State.  On May 27, twenty three year old father Dashawn Evans became the seventh person in five years to be found dead in the Durham jail.

The crowd carried signs and banners and passed around stickers as we marched to different sides of the jail, chanting, “We see you; we love you!” to those inside as well as lifting our voices specifically to celebrate Dashawn.  Returning to the front of the jail, the bullhorn was passed between Dashawn’s loved ones — his father demanding answers, someone no older than ten expressing gratitude that such a big crowd had gathered for Dashawn because all of us should be friends, and several others — people grieving, people screaming in rage.  When no one else stepped up to the bullhorn, the crowd broke into chorus with “Show me what community looks like!  This is what community looks like!”

One woman reminded us that she’s been demanding answers about Matt McCain’s death since 2016, when he was found dead in the Durham jail, but she’s received none.  A loved one of Evans’ reminded the gathered crowd, the pigs in the jail laughing on the other side of the glass, and the prisoners holding up signs that read “RIP DAE DAE” that Evans was a healthy twenty three year old.  “Did he just die in his sleep?!” she screamed.  “What happened to him?!”  Someone else suggested that if people don’t get answers about these deaths, “we should set Durham on fire.”

To close, some folks called for everyone to form a circle and hold hands, requesting that we physically connect to one another for strength, and to honor Dashawn with a few minutes of silence while one woman spoke a prayer.  A crowd of friends, family, and strangers held hands through “Amen,” after which the crowd began to disperse to chants of, “We’ll be back!”

Please consider donating to this gofundme for funeral costs and independent investigation of his death:  https://www.gofundme.com/justicefordashawn

-some anarchists