A Black Lives Matter peaceful protest and march is set for 3 p.m. Thursday, June 11 in downtown Kent.<\/p>\n
Kent Mayor Dana Ralph and Police Chief Rafael Padilla will join residents for the rally, according to a city Facebook post.<\/p>\n
“We invite you to join us,” reads the post. “We have been working with the event organizers to ensure this event is successful and well attended.”<\/p>\n
The event will begin at 3 p.m. at the Maleng Regional Justice Center, 401 Fourth Ave. <\/a>N.<\/a>, and then wind through several streets before ending at Kent City Hall, 220 Fourth Ave. <\/a>S<\/a>. The event will feature speakers from the community.<\/p>\n Keliesha Lovelace and Kendrick Glover helped organize the protest. Glover is co-founder of GEM (Glover Empower Mentoring) – a community based organization that supports youth and young adults in the area. Lovelace attended Kent-Meridian High School when Glover worked there as a counselor from 2012 to 2014.<\/p>\n Lovelace reached out to Glover to help her plan a peaceful march and rally in Kent to bring attention to what’s going on from the perspective of youth and young adults, according to a Facebook post by Glover.<\/p>\n Among the groups that have signed on to help with the protest march are:<\/p>\n • City of Kent Government<\/p>\n • Kent School District<\/p>\n • Kent Rotary Club<\/p>\n • Kent Chamber of Commerce<\/p>\n • Kent Black Action Commission<\/p>\n • Kent Police Department<\/p>\n • Living Well Kent<\/p>\n • John Volken Academy<\/p>\n • New Beginnings Christian Fellowship – Young Adult Ministry<\/p>\n • Hillside Church Kent<\/p>\n • Kent Downtown Partnership members<\/p>\n Streets to close<\/strong><\/p>\n Starting at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, June 11 the city will be closing the following streets for the protest and march:<\/p>\n • Fourth Avenue S. from W. Willis Street to W. James Street<\/p>\n • W. James St. from Fourth Avenue to First Avenue<\/p>\n • First Ave from W. James St. to W. Smith St.<\/p>\n • W. Smith St. from First Avenue to Fourth Avenue<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Several streets to close at 1:30 p.m. for 3 p.m. event <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":46127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-46126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46126"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=46126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}