‘Orange Crush is not going away’: Activist says more Tybee Island policing won't end festival

Caption

Savannah activist and volunteer Jaydon Grant, right, poses for a photo with Fight Dirty Tybee organizer Tim Arnold during a beach cleanup on Tybee Island after this year's Orange Crush gathering.

Credit: Jaydon Grant

An activist and recent graduate of Savannah State University is describing the police presence on Tybee Island as “overbearing” during this year's Orange Crush spring break gathering, after the city's police department deployed more officers despite a smaller turnout than last year's record turnout.

“As people have seen this year, Orange Crush is not going away just because of the police presence,” said Jaydon Grant, a 2023 graduate of the HBCU whose students in 1988 originated the gathering, which has become a popular destination for young Black adults like himself.

Data provided Monday by TIPD in response to a request by GPB showed that the department made 29 arrests over the festival's three-day weekend of April 19 to 21 — an increase over the 18 arrests it made during last year's three-day festival weekend.

Grant, who attended this year's Orange Crush and who organized a cleanup of Tybee Island's beach afterward, attributed the rise in TIPD arrests to heavier police deployments along the main road leading to the beach.

“Orange Crush is still going to be here regardless of the facts, but we need to work together to make it great for both sides,” the 23-year-old Savannah native and resident said, referring to festivalgoers and Tybee Island's population of about 3,100 residents.

To that end, Grant — an organizer with the community service nonprofit group RETIREMOMSSOS — said that he will be working to see that Orange Crush gets permitted by the city next year.

As reported by the Savannah Morning News, two permit applications were denied by promoters ahead of this year's Orange Crush, with Interim City Manager Michelle Owens saying that the applications were incomplete or inaccurate.

Grant elaborated that he thinks police should be deployed closer to beach activities and downtown businesses, with less of an emphasis on traffic stops of motorists as they access Tybee Island from U.S. Highway 80 — the only road leading onto and off the island.

He said that he believes the city's intent is to ultimately banish Orange Crush from Georgia's largest public beach — a motive that Tybee Island Mayor Brian West has himself acknowledged.

“This has to stop,” West told the Associated Press ahead of this year's festival. “We can’t have this crowd anymore. My goal is to end it.”

West, a first-term mayor elected in November, also told the AP that the city's policing and restrictive measures around Orange Crush “have nothing to do with race.”

Tybee Island has a racist history: Black beachgoers were long prohibited from a whites-only beach until 1963, when “wade-in” activism by Black students — many of whom were arrested and jailed for merely swimming — compelled the city's leaders to integrate the beach.

Institutional racism is not confined to the past, Grant said, but rather practiced in the present, and perpetuated by a fearful narrative that falsely portrays young Black individuals as “delinquents” who are “coming just to cause trouble.”

“They're not people that are going to going to do any harm,” Grant said of Orange Crush participants. “They're just young kids that want to have fun.”