(Courtesy of KFGO 790 AM)

By Ian Gustafson

Fighting Injustice

Former P.A. radio host reflects on riot in Fargo, N.D.

Jun 2, 2020 | 4:31 PM

A former radio host in Prince Albert is reflecting on a protest turned violent in Fargo, North Dakota on Saturday.

The Regina native, Jamie Birkland, who worked as an on-air host for 101.5 XFM three years ago, moved to Fargo with her husband. She’s now on-air at radio station Y94.

Since the tragic death of black man George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis last week, there have been protests against racial injustice across the United States. As with many other protests, the one in Fargo quickly turned violent, according to Birkland.

She said the event was planned for the day where participants would walk from downtown to the police station. She explained the police were fully involved, sectioned off roads for the protestors and even marched with them.

“At around 6 p.m. things started to get a little bit confrontational, people started to get angry and that’s when it sort of started to escalate and the violence started to break out,” she said.

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Birkland explained people who were protesting there during the day were not necessarily there when the violence broke out.

Local news network Valley News Live reported police said those who started the riots were not from the area and they were travelling from city to city.

“We did have obviously a few people that were arrested here but they weren’t really the ones that had started it,” Birkland said. “We’re about two and a half hours away from Minneapolis where this all started, so there were people from Chicago, there were people from Minneapolis here.”

(Courtesy of KFGO 790 AM)

That evening Birkland was in studio doing an on-air prom event. Once the riots began, they cancelled the show and began talking to their sister station who were on scene documenting the violence. Listeners also started sending them videos and pictures of the destruction.

“I have a friend who works downtown at one of the restaurants that had their windows smashed, they were starting fires, they were smashing windows, they were throwing fireworks, throwing rocks at police officers,” she explained. “The police officers did at one point put off tear gas just to kind of calm the crowds as best as they could. There were people pouring milk in their eyes [to ease the stinging].”

Thousands have been protesting and rioting across the United States and not only in the major centres. Fargo is a city of around 124,000 people.

“I think it’s really frustrating for a community as a whole and now after being part of this community for a few years you get the sense that this is a community,” she said. “Hashtag Fargo strong has been on social media right now [and] we’re just trying to come together.”

She said the next day the organizer of the protest was downtown cleaning up the aftermath and boarding up broken windows. The community even started a Facebook group to organize a clean up the following day.

Birkland summed up the widespread anger being voiced by Americans.

“I think that’s the way things work in Canada and the justice system there is a lot stronger than they have in the U.S.,” she said. “That is a reason why they are doing this. Police officers are not held accountable for a lot of their actions here and that’s a problem.”

However, she added there are also officers who are Black Lives Matters movement supporters and are getting caught up in these riots. She added some even walked hand-in-hand with protestors earlier that day.

“The community as a whole is very united, very strong, still very proud of the protest and the amount of people that did show up on Saturday.”

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Ian.gustafson@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @iangustafson12