From
Durham, North Carolina, to Tokyo to San Francisco
to Berlin, thousands of people took to the streets
to protest George Floyd’s death, police
brutality and racism
While
mourners filed past George Floyd’s body
in a Free Will Baptist church in his hometown of
Raeford, N.C., just 12 days after he was killed
under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer,
tens of thousands of people across the country and
around the world came together to protest his
death.
They
shut down part of the Golden Gate Bridge in San
Francisco, and they shut down Lake Shore Drive in
Chicago. They marched past U.S. President Donald
Trump’s hotel in Manhattan, waving Black Lives
Matter signs, and they marched under the gaze of
the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. They
gathered in the rain in Parliament Square in
London, and they rallied in front of JR Shibuya
Station in Tokyo.
After
many days of unrest, police beating protesters,
police shoving elderly people, and police
arresting journalists, for the first time in a
generation — or perhaps in history — the civil
rights of Black people appear to finally matter to
almost everyone.
The
world has reached a boiling point.
In
London, protesters clashed with police on
horseback and sat in silence in front of Prime
Minister Boris Johnson’s home, calling attention
to the Conservative leader’s history of racist
remarks. In Berlin, thousands packed
Alexanderplatz in the city’s center, wielding
signs with English slogans: “Black Lives Matter,”
“I can’t breathe” and “Germany is not
innocent.” In Paris, a crowd formed outside the
U.S. embassy, despite officials banning protests
over fears of the coronavirus, while another
unsanctioned rally took place near the Eiffel
Tower.
“I
find it scandalous that all these injustices go
unpunished,” one 21-year-old Senegalese Ivorian
student told France24 amid a crowd of people
holding up signs that read “Being black is not a
crime” and “Our police are assassins.”
At
least 100 people marched in Seoul through the city’s
central district, demanding that South Koreans “form
an alliance” to combat racism in one of the
world’s most ethnically homogeneous nations. In
Tokyo, protests took on a local flare as
demonstrators condemned a May 22 incident in which
Japanese police stopped and shoved a 33-year-old
Kurdish man to the ground. The demonstrators also
picketed outside Twitter’s Japan office to
denounce the suspension of an antiracism account.
“I
feel very sad,” Tomohiko Tsurumi, 43, who joined
the march with his wife, told Reuters. “I always
thought of this country as very safe and I
realized that there is so much [police action] we
cannot see.”
In
Brazil, where the far-right President Jair
Bolsonaro draws frequent parallels to the United
States, hundreds of people marched in the
northeastern city of Recife to protest the death
of Miguel da Silva, a Black 5-year-old who fell
Tuesday from a ninth-story high-rise where his
mother, a maid, was working. Protesters cried “Vidas
negras importam” — “Black lives matter”
— while criticizing the white employer whom da
Silva’s mother had entrusted with looking after
the boy.
While
Saturday’s protests were mostly peaceful yet
passionate, throughout the day, Trump largely
ignored this reality and tweeted “LAW &
ORDER!” on Saturday evening.
Affecting
Change, Albeit Lightly
Some
states are taking steps to walk back some of the
harsher tactics that police have used during
protests. In Minneapolis, the city where George
Floyd was killed by police, the state has already
withdrawn its curfew and is sending state troopers
and National Guard members home. The city on
Friday also announced an agreement to ban police
from using chokeholds and strangleholds, requiring
officers who witness such uses of force to
intervene and file a report.
However,
after Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told protestors
on Saturday that he would not commit to defunding
the city’s police department, he was forced to
leave a rally to resounding chants of, “Go home,
Jacob. Go home,” and “Shame, shame, shame.”
In
other cities, efforts are already underway to try
and limit police use of rubber bullets and tear
gas, after images of police officers using the
weapons on often peaceful protestors elicited
outrage. In Philadelphia, four council members are
asking police to refrain from using rubber bullets,
tear gas and pepper spray on demonstrators. In
California, a group of lawmakers is set to
introduce legislation outlining when officers can
use rubber bullets. There, the governor has
already called for police to reform how they treat
protesters.
“Protesters
have the right not to be harassed,” California
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday. “Protesters have
the right to protest peacefully. Protesters have
the right to do so without being arrested, gassed
or shot at by projectiles.”
Spurring
Cultural Change
Beyond
police reforms, the protests also seem to be
spurring some cultural changes. On Friday, NFL
Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized for the
league’s past treatment of players who spoke out
against racism, saying the league believes “Black
lives matter.”
The
apology did not name Colin Kaepernick, the former
San Francisco 49ers quarterback who in 2016
started kneeling during the national anthem to
peacefully protest police brutality against Black
people. Kaepernick has not played since the end of
that season and has accused the league of
colluding to keep him from getting signed to a
team in reaction to his protests.
Goodell,
instead, spoke in generalities about past wrongs
committed by the league.
“We,
the NFL, condemn racism and the systematic
oppression of Black people,” Goodell said in a
filmed statement. “We, the NFL, admit we were
wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and
encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest.”
Also
on Friday, the mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel
Bowser, had “Black Lives Matter” painted in
giant yellow letters on 16th Street. She also
renamed the street in front of the White House to
Black Lives Matter Plaza. While photos and videos
of this act of defiance went viral, the D.C.
chapter of Black Lives Matter criticized Bowser on
Twitter.
“This
is a performative distraction from real policy
changes,” the group wrote. “This is to appease
white liberals while ignoring our demands. Black
Lives Matter means defund the police.”
Holding
The Police Accountable
Such
calls fell flat earlier on Thursday when the city
council of Buffalo, N.Y., voted 6-3 to fully fund
the police budget. That same day, two police
officers in Buffalo shoved a lone 75-year-old man
to the ground, leaving him ? as seen in a widely
circulated video – unconscious with blood
pooling under his head.
