In the wake of the brutal and senseless murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, I, a young black woman, felt called upon by the Black Lives Matter movement and the current social climate to act. For centuries, this country has continued to oppress and discriminate against black people. Black people, men in particular, have also been subject to police brutality. Amidst a genocide against my own people, and a national health crisis, I decided to protest.
On May 30th I went to my first protest. We convened on 14th street and began marching.
While I observed people of all races, ethnicities and genders, I would have liked to see more diversity in age, specifically people below 18 and over 30. However, I understand why those groups of people were not present as older people are at higher risk for Covid-19, and teenager’s abilities to protest are at the disposal of their parents. Protestors maintained a sense of unity by acknowledging the health crisis at hand; protestors were giving out free water, food, masks, and hand sanitizers.
We continued to protest downtown through SoHo while chanting “No justice, no peace.” We then stopped at city hall to listen to the speeches of Malcolm X, as well as the organizers of Black Lives Matter. Although the NYPD was there, to “protect” us, it instead felt like we were being criminalized. The officers waited for us to make a wrong move as they giggled and smirked at us.
We continued marching towards the brooklyn bridge, simultaneously stopping traffic. As we crossed the bridge, people driving cars held up the black power fist in solidarity with us protests. We watched 5 NYPD helicopters fly over us, while many cars warned that they were “waiting for us” on the other side. Since we were simply exercising our First Amendment right to peacefully assemble, we continued on.
As our march across the bridge concluded and we reached Brooklyn, the protestors in front of me started screaming and running backwards. I was both confused and terrified because I couldn’t see what was going on. I heard a girl scream “they’re throwing tear gas! The police are throwing tear gas at us!” My mom and I ran and hid in the subway, along with a few other people.
The protest was peaceful, but we were still met with a product of the corrupt police system in the United States. The police met the protests against their abuse of power, with even more abuses of power.
Reflecting on the situation and the many other peaceful Black Lives Matter protests I have attended since, I attribute much of the demonization of the Black Lives Matter movement to the media and the news. When many of us turn on the news, we hear stories of looting and rioting, when in reality the looters are people who have infiltrated this movement. Television news is currently at an extreme advantage, because it is most people’s primary source of information due to fear surrounding coronavirus. With other events, people could experience these events first hand and see that in actuality they are widely peaceful. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are afraid to take that risk and heavily rely on their televisions.
In regards to the looting, I do not condone the looters or the looting, as they are not a part of the movement. However, it’s important to emphasize that the looters are not condoned, or a part of the Black Lives Matter movement. Instead, they are a method of demonizing black power. The media’s focus on looting and rioting, rather than the peaceful marches, creates a toxic cycle of misinformation. The looters themselves, although not a part of the movement, are simply a product of poverty and racism exasperated by the police system which undermines black and brown communities in the United States. So if we want to give attention to the looters we must look at the root of the cause; the disproportionate rates of poverty and racism that people of color endure in this country, and then reassess who the real culprits of the looting are.
Throughout my experiences protesting in these last few weeks, I’ve experienced immense progress on a large scale. I have experienced feelings of unity at these protests, but I have two main takeaways. Firstly, a person can’t believe everything that he or she sees on the news, because the news is a business seeking viewers and will always show what the people want to see, even if it’s destructive to the community. Secondly, that Black Lives Matter needing to be a movement is a problem in itself. It is disgusting that racism has forced the life of a group of people to become a movement. A life mattering isn’t debatable or subjective; it’s not a dinner table topic to hear different points of views. Black Lives Matter is a fact, and to say it’s up for debate is demeaning, dehumanizing, and fundamentally racist. To be against Black Lives Matter is akin to racism because that condones the senseless murder of black people with zero judicial repercussions. I urge my fellow Fieldston students to seek and initiate change in their own communities. Furthermore, I urge them to come together as young people to make a difference on a larger scale towards racial equity.
