In a single week, the world’s attention has shifted from the coronavirus pandemic—which has killed nearly 400,000 people so far—to a wave of anti-racist protests that emerged in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Demonstrations have been held in more than 580 U.S. towns or cities, stretching from New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles to rural communities like Havre, Montana (pop. 9,700). They have since spread around the world, to Brazil, Greece, Kenya, Germany, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.
“When I saw that video [of George Floyd’s death], it felt like I was watching my dad, my uncle, and my brother get hurt. It’s not just happening in America but I’ve heard that it’s also happened here.”
In each country, protesters are not only expressing solidarity with the American movement but calling out structural racism at home as well—In France, for example, 24,000 people marched to demand justice for Adama Traoré, a twenty-four-year-old of Malian origin who died in police custody in 2016.
As I live in London, I went to the protest in Hyde Park on Wednesday, June 3, where I saw thousands of people from different ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds gather to support the black community. Some held banners that read “Being black is not a crime” and “I may not understand but I support you,” while others held their cell phones up, in an attempt to document the protest in real time.
Around two p.m., I hovered around the demonstrators as they continued to crowd the streets, bringing traffic to a halt. I soon realized two things: that the United Kingdom’s strict guidelines on social distancing—imposed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson—had been thrown out the window, and that the thousands of people who had shown up, young and old, had decided that the need to stand for racial justice outweighed the risk of infection.
It was both beautiful—and nerve-wracking—to witness.
“I know there’s a pandemic,” said one protester, a black eighteen-year-old woman wearing a face mask, who chose to remain anonymous. “But the truth is if the virus doesn’t get us, racism or police brutality will. So we need to fight, we need to make our voices heard.”
With tears fogging her glasses, she added: “When I saw that video [of George Floyd’s death], it felt like I was watching my dad, my uncle, and my brother get hurt. It’s not just happening in America but I’ve heard that it’s also happened here.”
She may have had in mind the case of Sheku Bayoh, who cried out “I can’t breathe” as he was being restrained by police in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, in May 2015 (Bayoh, like Floyd, died of asphyxiation). Or Sarah Reed, who died while detained in a London prison in 2012. Or even Sean Riggs, who had schizophrenia and died while in custody in 2008.
These are just a few of the many black men and women who have died at the hands of the U.K. police in recent years.
Anger over Floyd’s death has led the British black community to further reflect and voice their own anger over the brutality and systematic racism they face or have faced here in the country but how much impact do these protests make and what do those living in America think of the support shown?
Speaking via Zoom, Isaiah Jackson, a twenty-one-year-old black man from the U.S. state of Georgia said as a child he grew up in “constant fear” of the police and the racism that went on in his state. "The truth is we can’t sit in our cars, we can’t drive around, we can't do anything without being worried that someone somewhere will somehow feel threatened and call the police on us,” Jackson says.
“I’ve seen all the protests happening in your country,” he added. “ I appreciate it, but whether it’s going to make a difference to what’s happening here, I don’t know.”
Protests in Britain have not seen the violence of protests in the United States, and this extends to police attacks on reporters as well. Following the arrest, in New York City’s Union Square, of British photographer Adam Gray, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called on U.S. President Donald Trump to allow journalists covering the protests to do their job “without fear of arrest,” while covering the “alarming” violence.
In a Downing street press conference on June 4, Johnson was asked what his message was on behalf of those protesting in London and he said: “We mourn George Floyd and I was appalled to see what happened to him. My message to President Trump, to everybody in the United States, from the U.K. is that I don’t think that racism—and it’s an opinion I’m sure shared by the overwhelming majority of people around the world—racism and racist violence has no place in our society.”