Roll With Us - Seattle Skaters Roll Together to Protest Police Brutality

Published 6/26/2020

In an event entitled If You Roll, Roll With Us, a diverse crowd of Seattle area skateboarders, bicyclists, and rollerskaters moved en masse through the Capitol Hill neighborhood to protest police brutality on June 21st (coinciding with Go Skateboarding Day). The procession started at the edge of Capitol Hill's CHOP area, taking a route ending at the Jose Rizal bridge near Beacon Hill. Organizers encouraged all to wear masks, prepare for a peaceful protest, and even bring their families to participate.

An estimated 300 participants partially blocked the bridge, though traffic was able to squeeze through as some attendees assisted the passage of cars and Seattle Metro buses. At the bridge, the group gathered to chant and show off signs in support of Black Lives Matter, while some took advantage of the slowed bridge traffic to hold an hour-long skate session.

The event was conceived by a local skateboarder that goes by the name of Skoops. He adopted the idea from skaters holding similar events in cities like San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. Skoops has been skating and surfing for over 25 years, and has seen how skateboarding has evolved. Looking back to his earlier years, Skoops remembers, “Growing up and being a black skater and a punk rocker in the most accepting part of town in San Diego, I still wasn't accepted.” Skate culture, ever evolving, has become more welcoming and inclusive in more recent years—women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ skaters are becoming more commonplace on the streets, parks, and in skate media. (Not to say there aren't still those with a narrow definition of what the culture should look like, but there is marked progress towards inclusion.) Locally, Skoops said, “It's a smaller scene, more of a community. Everyone knows everyone.” In the middle of a crisis on race and policing, where Seattle has garnered national attention, he said, “It's not that there's been an upswing in police brutality, but now there's proof of it. Everyone now has a tool to capture it. A lot of people here wanted to speak out but didn't know how to approach it. We said, let's get some people together through skating. Families came out. There's been so much positivity coming out of it. How could we not do another one?"