Scenes From Peaceful Protests Across America This Past Weekend

If you don’t live in a major American city, you might’ve convinced yourself that the country had gone back to “normal” since protests calling for an end to police violence against Black Americans erupted across every state after the May 26 killing of George Floyd. It hasn’t. Also, we’d like to argue there is nothing “normal” about a country where police are regularly accused of using force that reaches far beyond the scope of their duties.

To the former point: People are still out protesting and they’ve made it clear they’re not going home until serious progress is made. Dismantling/ defunding massive police departments was never a short-term project and, as we enter the third week of protests, it’s worth remembering that this type of nationwide movement takes time. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 381 days, the Greensboro Sit-Ins five months, and the Selma marches stretched out over 18 days.

Protests in Atlanta were punctuated by the death on Friday morning of Rayshard Brooks, 27, who was shot in the back twice by a police officer after an attempted arrest. CNN reports that within 48 hours of protestors flooding the streets calling for justice for Rayshard, the officer who shot him has been terminated and the police chief has stepped down. In Palmdale California, protestors took to the streets over the weekend calling for a renewed investigation into the death of Robert Fuller, a black man whose body was found hanging from a tree outside of City Hall just days after another black man was found hanging from a tree outside of a Victorville library, 45 miles away. According to The Cut, both deaths were initially believed to be suicides by local authorities.

The protests from this past weekend, even in Atlanta and Palmdale, were been largely peaceful (though the Wendy’s in the parking lot where Brooks was arrested was burned down) as people showed up in the thousands at peaceful protests in Hollywood, Brooklyn (where protestors wore white in support of the Brooklyn Liberation), Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Boston. In conjunction with pride month, this past weekend’s Black Lives Matters marches had a special emphasis on black trans lives. According to the Human Rights Campaign, 91% of the reported murders of trans and gender non-conforming people in 2019 were black women.

Here are some of the scenes from this weekend’s protests across the country.

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