Nightingale, Flocking to Support Others for Radical Change

A Selfless Group

The idea of “people enacting radical change” has been around years. Now in Reno, it’s actually a formal group of community members whose primary goal is to organize protests and be “here for support,” says Nightingale, a core member of the group known as PERCh, an acronym for People Enacting Radical Change. 

On a recent Friday evening, members of PERCh were at the intersection of Plumb Lane and Harvard Way. They consider themselves a democratically run group that organizes protesters. They lead their own protests, but unlike most other groups who just do their own thing, PERCh will go out of their way to help other groups in northern Nevada.

“We hear about other protests, we'll give them our numbers, you know, as long as it falls under our umbrella of things that we support as a group,” Nightingale says as a few more protesters arrived on the scene.

Also unique to their methodology, PERCh utilizes social media to spread information about protests but doesn't promote themselves through social media.

Nightingale took out a gun at the protest, but of the plastic kind to disperse bubbles of joy. “Sometimes we’ve gotten a lot of honks and support and in other places [it] generally tends to be kind of like a 50-50 kind of thing,” she said of public reception of the protests.

Solidarity Crosswalking

Since April, PERCh has also been doing “solidarity crosswalks,” explains Nightingale. “Right now we’re doing it in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.” These mini-protests now happen once a week at different intersections throughout Reno and Sparks, and used to happen more often.

“It’s only for two hours and we try to have it finished before the sun goes down,” Nightingale said of the current iteration. Cars go by and mostly honk in protest, but there have been many cases of intimidation, animosity and counter-protests as well.

Nightingale talked about members being stalked, having a gun pointed at them, and counter-protesters showing up in their faces, yelling at them drunk, in one of their early protests in South Reno. These incidents were all defused but it did cause PERCh to slow down and alter their tactics for the safety of their members. They have now decided to be at a new location for every protest. 

But change doesn’t happen when people give in to pressure. “It’s trying to make that push to inspire compassion for our community,” explains Nightingale. She hopes to keep the pressure and protests up in light of the animosity in order to enact radical change. 

Photo provided by PerCh of other members at a downtown Reno protest.

Helping Neighbors in Need

PERCh members say they are in the process of also establishing a community outreach program. While the idea is still in early phase, Nightingale says they want to try to “feed our street family” and have “a vision of possibly doing their laundry for them.”

These little steps go a long way at helping our neighbors in need. They are hoping to establish a budget and “be as transparent as possible so that people do donate to us. They can feel comfortable with that.” But Nightingale explains they are not quite ready for donations yet.

Nightingale believes in the benefits of the solidarity sidewalk protests and the high visibility is important for spreading their message. The idea of PERCh is based around “the image of birds [that] are flocking to support.”

This is evidenced through their organization of community clean-ups, supporting other protests, such as the Power and Liberation Movement, who have been holding regular protests in Carson City. Nightingale is fired up about building the PERCh organization and looks forward to the coming months.

“It’s all around very positive,” Nightingale concluded before rejoining others in their celebration of creating rush hour traffic public awareness for change.

Reporting and Photography by Richie Bednarski for Our Town Reno