Protesting During Lockdown

At this point in time, I would expect most people to have at least heard of the movement called ‘Black Lives Matter’. This movement has recently been the subject of a major popularity spike due to the death of 46-year-old, George Floyd. 

But who really is George Floyd? He was born and raised in Houston, Texas, where two of his five children currently live. The reason behind George being arrested in the first place is that it was alleged when he visited Cup Foods grocery shop to purchase a packet of cigarettes that he attempted to complete the transaction using a $20 bill believed by the store employee to be counterfeit. The store employee soon reported this to the police, and they attended following the report made, according to police department documents the officers involved were responding to a report of forgery in progress.

You might be wondering why George Floyd was arrested in Minneapolis, Minnesota when he has spent most of his life in Houston, the reason for this was because he wanted a fresh start, and he was able to achieve that in Minneapolis. He was able to get himself jobs as a truck driver and also a bouncer, but when the pandemic struck, he ended up losing these jobs. 

Moving onto the Black Lives Matter movement and what it stands for. On their website, they say that their mission is to ‘eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centring Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.’ I believe this message and mission is shared by many even though they may not have experienced the same tragic events as the people who the mission is trying to project an improved future for, they see the disgraceful events happening and decide to help by sharing the message and in many other methods. 

There have been protests for this cause globally calling for many other aspects which, in my opinion, are already the human right but they for some reason don’t have. I think it needs to be mentioned that everyone with white skin has privilege, it’s true, we may not mean to use it or even want it, but we have to deal with the fact that we have acquired it over the many past hundreds of years; right now we should be eradicating this privilege and learning from history to create a society where equality doesn’t have to be protested for. 

Now back to one of the main points of the protests, which extended on what BLM stood for – police brutality and racism within the institution and its actions. Time for some statistics! Figures gathered by the Metropolitan police force from the 2017-2018 period display that Met officers are four times as likely to use force against black people. Black people make up 12% of London’s population, while they’re making up a third of arrests for alleged lockdown regulation breaches. Analysis completed by Dr Krisztián Pósch for The Guardian found that compared to their share of the population, people from a black ethnic minority were 2.17 times more likely to receive a fine. 

And now time for the section relevant to the title. I have attended local marches on Saturday 13th and Sunday the 7th of June in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. A key moment of these marches is the ending where everyone kneels down in remembrance of everyone who has sadly been the victim of Police brutality, doing this gives everyone the feeling of unity and proving that no one is alone, and we shall fight together to display our intolerance. At one of the marches, people shared poetry and literature which conveyed the important message of equality and raising awareness of situations where inequalities exist. This would have been a great addition to the other march. I hope you have learnt a few things from this article and will continue to educate and inform yourself on this ever persisting issue.