Josh Yeboah Gyasi at the May 30 protest
Photography By Allie Ippolito
By: Grid Staff
The last week of protest gatherings in Philadelphia have been nothing short of historic. In an effort to get to know some of the movers and shakers behind the movement, Grid interviewed 22-year-old Drexel Hill native Josh Yeboah Gyasi, who organized a gathering at City Hall on May 30 to honor George Floyd that doubled as a pantry drive to help those struggling with food insecurity.
The following interview has been edited for length, clarity and style.
Do you have a history with activism in the past?
Interestingly enough, my father owns a nonprofit organization. Both my parents are immigrants and came from Ghana, West Africa. My father came to America dedicated to getting educated, now he’s a doctor of ministry. He came dedicated to get an education and get a good job so he could go home and support his hometown and his home country. So, you know, that’s where I’ve gotten all my experience from.
Nice. Are they local?
Yeah, they’re still here.
What did they think of all this?
Well they were not happy at first. Definitely not, especially how it kind of happened very quickly, and all at once. So it hit them kind of hard when I told them, but I wanted to be honest with them because it’s a big event and I wanted them to be completely prepared for anything that might happen because of it. Yeah, they were not happy at first, but now that we’ve seen that it’s possible to protest peacefully and it’s possible to help your community at the same time, they were really happy to see everything went well.
How did you decide to create the event?
Yeah, well, I was waiting. I was literally waiting and waiting for somebody to step up and create an event to keep people informed about a possible future event or whatever. I kept seeing people in Philadelphia like, “oh, what are we doing?” And you know Philadelphians: we’re not gonna stay quiet. We’re the city of brotherly love and if we would riot for, or go crazy for a Super Bowl win, we’re going to step up when real social injustice is continuing to face the entire country. We’re going to step up and make our voices heard.
So to see all those people have no organization I was just like, you know I don’t want anyone going out by themselves or with a group of 10 friends, and you know, not having organization and directing all their anger and sorrow at the police. I wanted to help coalesce everybody to one singular goal: demanding better policies from our politicians, and a real change in the way that the police treat their citizens.
Are you advocating for any specific policy reform within the police department?
I haven’t gotten too deep into policies. My main focus, honestly, right now is just helping the community, because especially with the COVID crisis there are so many low income and no income people who are sitting at home slowly starving. You know, it’s not just them, it’s their children. There are people who are literally scraping by, and doing everything they can not to go out and steal or commit crimes to survive.
So, that was my main focus. That’s why I organized a food drive as well as the event. Because I wanted to make sure that at the very least, even if police intervention was to come, even if they tear gassed us, even if they hit us with nightsticks or use the rubber bullets, people were going to get fed.
Can you tell me more about the nature of the event itself?
I’d love to tell you a sustainability element of the event. I made sure that I bought… for the event I bought three trash cans, right, because I wanted to make sure that people saw that not only could we peacefully protest, but we could without interference or people forcing us to, we could throw away all the water bottles. Because it was a scorcher, right? Yeah, it was 80 degrees and I tried to make sure that we got as many X’s as socially distanced possible within the shade, but there were so many people that you had to spread out across where they should be.
We raised about $620, and roughly $250 of that went to the food drive. It’s very important to me that our community stays fed through all this because it’s a huge problem to see people with no avenues of revenue, and some of them have to do undesirable things in order to just get by, you know? And they should have every opportunity to at least be able to eat some sort of meal and give themselves the energy to get through their hard days.” So we bought non-perishable goods, such as canned tuna and peanut butter, rice, things of the like.
Food Bank Photographs by Jacob Mejias
The thing I was very proud of is, when we put out the three trash cans, everyone used them. There was not a piece of litter in front of City Hall. I don’t want our streets to be dirty. I know pollution is such a serious topic, contributing to that is something I was very much trying not to do.
I did have a question whether or not there was a fundraising element to the event? You mentioned there was $620 raised? Was that through a GoFundMe link or on site? How did that work?
Yeah. It all happened very quickly. I was scrambling to find a way, people wanted to donate to it and the funds would really help, to raise money to be able to have at least a certain amount to give to the food bank. So I gave them an avenue, I used the Venmo to be able to give people the opportunity to donate. So far they raised $620. People were still giving yesterday, I was begging them to stop. I was like, I understand, but right now it could go to the Philly bail fund and others, like the Minnesota fund, or the Memorial Fund for George’s family. I tried to turn people away but they continue to give.
What I plan to do is, right now it seems like the Philly bail fund could really use the donation, so I plan on donating the rest of the money that wasn’t spent to the Philly bail fund. However, I also promised people who supported my event that the rest of the donations would go to his memorial fund, so I plan on giving $70 of my own money to his Memorial Fund to make sure that everyone’s square. We spent about $250 on supplies. Chalk to mark social distancing, so that way everyone would have a safe space to be able to make their voices heard. Signs, markers, water bottles, the trash cans…
How many people would you say were there by noon?
We had like a solid crowd of maybe like 50 to 100 at noon. I was facing outwards. In solidarity I wanted to face with everyone who was protesting. By the time I turned around there was like 500 people. I was like, “Wow. This has gotten pretty real.”
There was a second rallying point at the Art Museum at 2pm, that was organized by Philly for Real Justice?
Yeah, in conjunction with Black Lives Matter. The 2 organizations were the ones who threw the two o’clock event.
And that event came after yours right? Did they reach out?
Yeah, it was very crazy. They posted the two o’clock event and then there was the question of who I was as a person. If I was the real thing, was I you know, alt right undercover agent, was I a police officer, you know, was I a cop? So that got pretty crazy but I was able to connect with those groups, and I was able to assuage everybody who was curious.
I’m a very personal guy. I’m very reserved. So this is, you know, it’s very different for me to have so many eyes. I was a good wrestler but yeah, that was about it. This is very different for me. I hope that people will see that I tried my best to handle business with grace.
Were there any talks of combining the events?
Yeah, there were talks of trying to coalesce and combine our efforts but, you know, they are not a singularly led group, right? They’re led by committee… and they decided to not necessarily endorse my event. We tried, and they came together and decided that it was for the best that we separate the two events.
I did see a video that started at one event and then continued as the group combined into the other…
I took note of a lot of people that wanted to go to the Black Lives Matter protest, and one of my organizers was helping me communicate with the police so we could have a joint effort and be organized in the moving of so many people at once. So we connected with the police force that was there at that time, and they agreed to shut down a route for us to be able to peacefully, quickly and neatly get to the art museum steps for the people who wanted to support the Black Lives Matter event.
“I only witnessed protesters giving their time, resources, and voices to tell our local government that we refuse to accept the Mayor’s irresponsible budget and we refuse to allow any more lives to be lost to police brutality. “
And when would you say that happened?
We took a kneel at about 12:15 p.m., and then we left at about 12:55 p.m., we got to the steps at about 1:20 p.m.. I continued the rally with the help of those around me until about 2 o’clock.
From there we handed off the event to Black Lives Matter, and other groups that were organizing the event.
Were you also part of the walk then back to center city?
No, I was not. I had to leave because the two days were very, very stressful. After the event I hadn’t eaten in like 40 hours, like I had gotten like eight hours of sleep in like the last three days. So, by the end of it, I was in the hot sun, I was exhausted. I had to rest for like 30 minutes in the shade before I could walk back to city hall to check on how the food bank went and if there was any litter left.
And that was an actual donation drop off point for food?
Yeah!
Around that time it seemed like everyone marched north on broad towards the vine street expressway, but then just suddenly stopped. Did you see that, were you there for any of that?
No, I wasn’t. I had to go home because I was so exhausted I felt like I was about to faint. And then when I got home I slept for like nine hours.
I bet. When you first put the event up, it was a whirlwind right?
Yeah, it really was. It just started out as me gauging interest, you know? I didn’t want to just throw out a time and then just let it escalate by itself, I wanted to see how many people were interested in having some sort of event to peacefully protest the injustices of the American judicial and prison system. And a lot of people were interested, so I just tried to put it on my shoulders and do everything that I could to make sure everyone had a chance to go to a protest peacefully and with goals, and to unite and just make our voices heard.
Your event page was the 1st to go up, when did it first go live?
I want to say maybe like Wednesday night, into Thursday. Somewhere around then.
And then I saw you got a retweet from a big account?
Yeah, I actually saw Jamal Crawford, who I love. He’s one of the top three ever ball-handlers of the NBA. So I see him protesting, and I figured we already had the talks of when and where, and I wanted to gauge how much interest, so I hit him up and was like, “Yo I know you were never a Sixer, but could you promote this? We’re trying to see how many people are interested.” and he responded back and was like, “Bet.” [with the retweet] After that point that’s when it got really, really real.
Did the event page take off immediately?
Yes, it was very, very quick. My phone was like dying, I had to keep it on the charger all day. My phone was ringing off the hook. I was like, “well this is real. I have to make sure this is totally organized and safe, because families are depending on these people to get back home safe.” So it was very important to me to organize..
You mentioned organizer friends of yours helping? How did you go about getting people on board to help you with such a huge task?
Well, people saw the interest and they were ready to hop on board and provide me with whatever I needed to make sure everything was safe and organized.
Big shout out to Philly Socialists, they helped so much. Mara, she was so helpful and so kind to me and so forgiving for me just swooping in and just having this event.
Did you ever feel like at any point that you were in over your head?
No, never, because the moment I accepted the responsibility of being a lead organizer, I understood that whoever came was in my care. I taught at a kindergarten before I did this event for actually about two years. To care for a human life is something that’s so vital, and very important. And granted, these people are adults, a lot of them are teenagers, people brought their kids. It’s a real, very tangible thing to have all those people there trusting you that the event will go well. So you know, that was a very very important aspect for me was to make sure people were able to protest peacefully and safely.
“The biggest reason that things got out of hand were undercover ‘protesters’ that only came to create fear and panic in an otherwise completely peaceful community dedicated to bettering the future of Philadelphia and America.“
Are you planning to do any future meetup or what’s the next move?
I’m working on a project right now, but I’ll probably get into that a little bit later on my page, but I’m waiting to coalesce with some of these groups. I’d like to try to do another food bank. It’s very important to me that our community stays fed through all this because it’s a huge problem to see people with no avenues of revenue, and some of them have to do undesirable things in order to just get by, you know? And they should have every opportunity to at least be able to eat some sort of meal and give themselves the energy to get through their hard days.
So I’m working on trying to do another food bank.
That’s great. If you want to reach out when you get that project rolling, we’ll be happy to cover it.
Fantastic. I will definitely let you know.
Did you have any message for the readership, or anything you’d like to say in closing, anything you want to bring attention to?
The biggest thing is that I’m proud to be from the area Philadelphia, like, like that’s something that I’m very extremely proud of, you know, I cried when Brandon Graham and Derrick Barnett combined for the strip sack. This city means so much to me, so it breaks my heart to see people getting hurt just for exercising their first amendment rights. I just want to show my love and support and solidarity for those people out there sacrificing their body, and a lot of them, their lives to do the right thing. So I just want to, in closing, just put my heart and my love out to them and tell them all I’ll see them very soon.
