NO JUSTICE NO PEACE

On May, 25, 2020 the Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd on the street for the alleged crime of using a counterfeit 20 dollar bill to buy cigarettes. Our country has not been the same since. Over the next week the news spread throughout the country rapidly.

When I saw the video showing what had happened online I was shocked. Floyd was on the ground repeating “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe”. I expected the officer to take his knee off of George’s neck but he never did. I had just watched the police officer kill a man.

Not even a day after I began seeing videos of protests from all over the country. They were holding up signs saying “I can’t breathe” and “Black lives matter” and more. I got chills every time I saw a new video. These protesters were so brave and inspiring.

Then I began to see police officers getting violent with the peaceful protesters. Officers were pepper spraying them in their eyes, throwing tear gas at them, and shooting pepper and rubber bullets at them. I was horrified at how violent these officers were. Although these scenes were disturbing I needed to go out and protest in my own city. I did research online and found a protest that was happening in my city, Boston. I immediately went to ask my dad if we could go together. Of course he said yes, so I ran upstairs to begin preparing. I decided that I wanted to create a sign to bring with me to the protest. I chose to write in big letters “Black lives matter”. I thought it felt right to the point. Once I finished the sign, I saw that the organizers of the protest were asking people to wear all black in solidarity of George Floyd and the many others who were murdered.

Soon enough it was protest day. My dad and I dressed in all black, I got my sign, and we left. We turned a corner to the center of the city and we were stunned to see a sea of people marching with different signs, just like in the videos. They were all repeating different chants, like “No justice no peace”, “Hey hey ho ho these racist cops have got to go” “Black lives matter”, and more! It was incredibly powerful. As we joined them, we too started chanting as we marched toward the park in the center of the city. As we were marching I held my sign up high while chanting with them. There were cars honking in support to us. People yelled out of their windows chanting with us and cheering us on. We arrived at the park which slowly started to fill with what seemed like an endless stream of protesters who continued to arrive. Although some protests had turned violent this one was completely peaceful while we were there. Everyone started marching towards the historic state house with it’s large golden dome. Protests began to fill the space in the street in front of it holding their signs high and continuing to chant. At one point, there were so many people in the street it got hard to move. That's when we decided to leave, also because it began to get dark and in other protests that is when it began to get violent.

When we arrived home the news was playing, and what had begun as a perfectly peaceful protest had turned into a violent clash with police. Police cars were on fire, stores were being looted, and officers were firing tear gas into the crowd. I was disappointed to see what had been a positive experience turned so dark and violent. It is a scene that is being repeated day after day at protests across the country. Peaceful marches during the day are hijacked by a very small number of people who are only interested in fighting the police. This small group of people do not represent the protesters but get all of the media attention. President Trump is now threatening to send the army into these cities as he says to “restore order” which scares me more than the officers themselves. I truly hope this doesn't happen and that the protesters energy remains focused on fixing the systemic problems of racism and police brutality.