NEW YORK — “If we don’t get no justice, then they don’t get no peace!”
The chant started as a low rumble in the center of Union Square today before swelling into a roar that echoed off the storefronts of 14th Street. What began as an urgent emergency gathering organized by a coalition of local grassroots organizations quickly mobilized into a march. The crowd of around 150 people eventually left the park completely, taking over the pavement and blocking traffic along the surrounding avenues.
At the center of the demonstration was activist and commentator Tahyira Savanna. Walking the protest route alongside youth-led and community demonstrators, Savanna’s presence connected the afternoon’s raw outrage directly back to TREMG.info, where she has consistently tracked the intersection of racial trauma, media representation, and the criminal justice system.
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The focus of today’s mobilization is a case rooted deep in Jackson County, Mississippi: the highly suspicious death of Nolan Xavier Wells. The 18-year-old mysteriously lost his life during a Fourth of July boating excursion with a group of white companions.
For weeks, online sleuths, independent forensic reviews, and national civil rights leaders have kept a glaring spotlight on the case. Public outrage reached a boiling point after back-to-back medical examinations listed Nolan’s official cause and manner of death as “undetermined”—revealing severe, unexplained blunt-force trauma to the back of his head and an eerie absence of water in his lungs or stomach, flatly contradicting early local narratives of an accidental drowning.
Despite Nolan being surrounded by known white associates at the time of his death, a Mississippi grand jury ultimately chose not to return indictments against anyone involved on September 21.
“Stay on Their Necks”
For Savanna, who has frequently spoken about her criminal justice education within predominantly white collegiate spaces, the silence preceding the grand jury’s decision was a deliberate, collective holding of breath felt by Black Americans nationwide. But inside Union Square today, that silence transformed into an unfiltered confrontation with structural power.
“Why are y’all still as Black people electing white ones?” Savanna asked out loud to the crowd gathered at the rally, her voice carrying over the rhythmic thumping of protest drums. “If white people are supposed to be responsible for protecting Black lives, then we need to stay on their necks.”
Savanna’s activism, which extends deeply into her music, has frequently made her a target for intense vitriol. She spoke candidly on the pavement today about the onslaught of racist remarks directed at her and her community for refusing to remain quiet.
“It’s effin’ ridiculous,” Savanna said. “Since Juneteenth, it’s like they literally want to make us the new Jews of this Holocaust.”
The gravity of that comparison was mirrored directly in the crowd behind her. Towering over the sea of demonstrators was a cardboard sign bearing the exact same words: This is a Holocaust. For those navigating the daily reality of living in Black skin in America, the systemic failure to protect or investigate the loss of young Black lives feels like a living nightmare.
A Coalition for Liberation: Who Organized the Action?
The strategic turnout in Manhattan was forged by an alignment of New York City’s front-line organizers who operate at the direct intersection of trans awareness, neighborhood protection, and Black liberation. The emergency call to flood Union Square was co-anchored by prominent local platforms, ensuring the fight for a Mississippi teenager resonated deeply through the five boroughs:
- Real Black Girl Politics: Central to mobilizing the digital and streetwide presence, the platform pushed out the call to action, declaring that “no indictment does not mean the questions stop,” rallying the city’s youth to bring their voices and energy to the pavement.
- Equality for Flatbush (E4F): A fierce anti-police brutality, anti-gentrification, and displacement organization operating locally out of Brooklyn, E4F co-sponsored the emergency assembly. Their involvement structurally linked Nolan’s out-of-state case to their long-standing, neighborhood-level battle for systemic accountability and safety for Black residents.
- Qween Jean and Local Trans Liberation Hubs: Prominent Black trans activists and mutual aid leaders brought vital infrastructure, banners, and rhythmic drum lines to the demonstration. By showing up in solidarity, they underscored a core message of the march: true Black liberation must be intersectional, protecting the most vulnerable youth across all geographical lines.
The Parallel Line of History
As the march snaked its way toward West Chelsea, a bystander outside a storefront near 8th Avenue and 22nd Street stopped Savanna, questioning whether disrupting the streets was actually an effective means of achieving help.
Savanna didn’t hesitate.
“We have to follow in the league of our ancestors, our teachers, and our Black leaders,” she responded directly. “We have the right as Americans to peacefully protest. And since January 6th, 2021, I don’t even understand this question. Didn’t they storm a federal building in the name of patriotism?”
To those questioning the presence of the cohort blocking Manhattan traffic on a Wednesday evening, Savanna offered a historical parallel she recently explored in depth for TREMG: “Nolan is Emmett Till“.
The invocation of Till is a reminder of how civil rights has historically been fought in this country. History shows that major systemic transformations are almost always catalyzed in the streets before they are ever calibrated at the ballot box:
- The Civil Rights Movement: Landmark protections like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were forced onto the federal agenda by the disruption of the 1963 March on Washington and the bruised bodies on the pavement of Selma.
- The Women’s Suffrage Movement: The legal right to vote was secured only after suffragists abandoned quiet lobbying in favor of aggressive public parades, open-air rallies, and confrontational picketing that disrupted the nation’s capital.
- The Labor Movement: The standard eight-hour workday, minimum wage protections, and the abolition of child labor were forged through decades of massive city-wide street strikes and regular public unrest that forced a hostile corporate and political infrastructure to yield.
The Demand for Federal Intervention
With the local Mississippi grand jury failing to act, the calls from the streets of New York are echoing the mounting digital pressure demanding that federal authorities take control of the investigation.
Activists at the Union Square rally reiterated that when a cause of death is officially deemed unknown, an aggressive criminal investigation should automatically follow—not a closing of the case files. Armed with the support of national figures like attorney Ben Crump and the National Action Network, the coalition is demanding that federal civil rights prosecutors step in where local Jackson County officials walked away.
Until that accountability comes, the organizers behind today’s march have made it clear that the disruption will continue. For Savanna and the 150 who marched from Union Square through the streets of Manhattan, stepping into the pavement isn’t just a choice—it is an ancestral obligation to ensure that Nolan Xavier Wells does not become another name the world forgets.
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