Inside the Black Lives Matter movement
The killing of George Floyd has focused attention on allegations of police brutality and racial profiling, and sparked calls for justice and reform. The FT speaks to protest organisers, activists and lawmakers calling for change
Produced and edited by Don Newkirk. Filmed by Don Newkirk and Larry Newkirk. Photography and additional footage by Budi Hassab. Additional footage provided by Reuters and Getty.
Transcript
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We are not done! We are not done!
Anybody out here against the cause we're having and make us look bad as protesters, you need to leave right now!
Listen!
This is a non-violent demonstration.
I wanted to be a part of changing the narrative around black protesters and organisers right now, because a lot of the media is portraying us to be the ones raising violence and looting stores and burning down buildings.
It is our duty to fight for freedom!
It is our duty to fight for freedom!
It's our duty to win!
It's our duty to win!
We must love and protect each other!
We must love and protect each other!
We have nothing to lose but our chains!
We have nothing to lose but our chains!
We have nothing to lose but our chains!
We have nothing to lose but our chains!
The year is 2020, and we are witnessing protests around the world after the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed African-American.
A white Minneapolis police officer was filmed kneeling on his neck as he pleaded "I can't breathe" for nearly nine minutes. His death comes less than three months after police shot dead health worker Breonna Taylor at her home and a no-knock search warrant and only three weeks after video surfaced online of a father and son shooting dead Ahmaud Arbery, who was out jogging.
And even as protesters in every state continue to rail against systematic racism and the use of deadly force, another killing occurs. Only 18 days into the George Floyd protests, a white police officer shoots dead Rashad Brooks outside of a Wendy's restaurant in Atlanta.
On the protesters, they're outraged. And by the way, I agree with them. What happened to Mr Floyd was a disgrace. It was repugnant to America. It was repugnant to any good policing perspective or strategy or approach.
The demonstrations themselves have led to further allegations of police abuse of power, drawing comparisons to the Civil Rights protests of the 1960s.
Many feel the sense of injustice in America expressed by Martin Luther King still hasn't been addressed.
All we say to America is be true to what you said on paper.
Because somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhre I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest the right.
We live in a country where it's our constitutional right to assemble and to make our voices heard and to challenge what's happening at every stage of government.
White people, black people, marginalised communities - the reason why you are afforded the rights you have today is because of protest and riots. And I hope that it's clear now more than ever the importance of protesting and standing your ground against injustice across this world.
Looting and rioting has sometimes taken place alongside the protests.
The president wants to talk about just looting, because if he's talking about looting, he doesn't have to talk about the killing of Mr Floyd. And he doesn't want to talk about the killing of Mr Floyd, and he doesn't want to talk about reforming the justice system. He doesn't want to talk about that. So he wants to say they're all looters. They're not all looters.
The role of policing historically - this is not my opinion, it's the historical role of policing - is that they were the first slave patrols and the first border patrols.
One of America's early forms of policing where the runaway slave patrols in the south. Groups of white men would often hunt down and often kill slaves trying to escape or revolt. When the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished, slave patrols fed into the first modern police department.
Then, for around 100 years, the Jim Crow segregation laws disenfranchised the black community. It was the police's job to enforce the laws, sometimes brutally. In the 1960s, police played a key role in suppressing the Civil Rights movement.
We have to remind ourselves that when an entity's origins really come out of racism, and anti-black racism in particular, that origin actually evolves as our - that origin has evolved as our country has evolved. And so, yes, while we're not technically enslaving people to a plantation, we have created a new economy which is an economy of punishment in which police become the centre.
After three weeks of protest, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to reform police practises. The order encouraged officials to ban the use of chokeholds, except when an officer's life is at risk. But the president rejected calls for deeper change. That included redirecting police funding. There have also been demands to cut back the number of armed officers, even to scrap police forces altogether.
No justice! No peace! No justice! No peace!
Americans want law and order. They demand law and order. They may not say it. They may not be talking about it, but that's what they want. Some of them don't even know that's what they want, but that's what they want. And they understand that when you remove the police, you hurt those who have the least the most.
Opponents said the measures will not deliver meaningful change.
The frustration of having it be six years out from the last massive set of protests - I think that what you have is you have people who were young and thought Ferguson was going to change. And it's not the similarity - an exact replication of what happened previously. That's exhausting to somebody's soul. It just is.
When you compound that with the fact that we've had three months of being told to stay inside in a lot of these places and that law enforcement have enforced that in disparate ways across the country, like, you had a powder keg. And it didn't even need a match. It just needed a hot day.
I understand the concerns. But whether you stay inside or you go outside, it's still the same risk. And as black people, we don't have the luxury to just sit inside and do nothing. Whether I sit inside or go outside, I can be killed simply based off the colour of my skin.
So yes, during the middle of a global pandemic, this country has forced black people to put their lives on the line, not just dealing with COVID-19 but also racism. So we have to put our bodies on the line to fight against true viruses. Shame on this country, shame on America, and shame on Donald Trump, period.
Data from a leaked NYPD police report also show that blacks and Hispanics made up for 90 per cent of arrests during the COVID-19 lockdown.
It was evident that social distancing was not enforced in certain white areas where you went to the pier and you saw everybody just laying down and relaxing. And the police officers were going around and giving them masks.
But meanwhile, in many of our communities, the police officers were coming to arrest us. Why not give us a mask? Why not say, hey, can you separate yourself for six feet? So that just shows you that racial profiling, discriminatory bias profiling still exists.
375 million interactions, overwhelmingly positive responses - overwhelmingly positive responses. But I read in the papers all week - we all read in the papers - that in the black community, mothers are worried about their children getting home from school without being killed by a cop.
What world are we living in? That doesn't happen. It does not happen.
Studies show that in the US, police officers are almost four times more likely to use force on black people than white people. And despite being only 13 per cent of the population, black Americans are three times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans.
We need to actually move in a direction where we address why black people don't matter - not just to other people - say vigilantes - but also to government agencies, to law enforcement. Why are we able to be treated as second-class citizens? And then I say, when Black Lives do actually matter, that will be the day when all lives matter.
In America, black people are treated very much as the Vietnamese people or any other colonised people, because we're used, we're brutalised. The police and our community occupy our area and our community as a foreign troop occupies territory. And the police are there not to - in our community not to promote our welfare or for our security and our safety. But they're there to contain us, to brutalise and murder us.
And Black Lives Matter makes the point that you've had a string of killing of African-Americans, primarily men but women also, Breonna Taylor, that goes on and on and on and on. And why does the criminal justice system unfairly kill African-Americans?
Individual states have passed on more far-reaching bills. In New York, that means statewide body cameras, the right to record police, a ban on chokeholds, and greater transparency on officer disciplinary records. There are also moves against racial profiling.
We have been moved by the voice of the people. With the protesting and the activists, they were able to help us move police reform bills that were sitting for years and would not pass.
Everybody's trying to shame us - the legislators, the press. Everybody's trying to shame us into being embarrassed about our profession. But you know what? This isn't stained by someone in Minneapolis. It's still got a shine on it, and so do theirs. So do theirs.
My demands aren't to police departments. My demands and our demands is actually to our elected officials, like mayors, like county board of supervisors, like governors. They're the ones that control the budgets of law enforcement. So we need them to make different decisions on what they're funding.
If we were to eliminate some of the police officers, we certainly wouldn't want it to be black and brown police offices. If anything, we want to hire black and brown police officers, as they have a better relationship with us. So I think "defund" had a different meaning. There was disband, reallocate. But I think, overall, no city is going to completely dismantle their police department, because the whole city would be at risk of crimes.
But the president rejected calls to defund the police.
We have to find common ground. But I strongly oppose the radical and dangerous efforts to defend, dismantle, and dissolve our police departments, especially now when we've achieved the lowest recorded crime rates in recent history. Americans know the truth. Without police, there is chaos. Without law, there is anarchy. And without safety, there is catastrophe.
A report on force budgets around the country has shown that the US spends $100bn a year on policing. In New York, less than eight per cent of its almost $6bn budget is spent on community programmes.
If you go into a mostly poor area, a mostly black poor area, what you'll see is the same thing across the country - no access to jobs, no access to healthy food, very little access to health care or mental health care - all the things people need in order to thrive in their communities.
You know what you will see instead of those things? Is a deep, deep investment into law enforcement. So you'll see multiple police precincts. You'll see dozens of police cars patrolling areas. You'll see the very often mostly black men but also black women pulled out of their cars and handcuffed and waiting on the side. You'll see a significant amount of harassment. But you won't see black communities getting the resources that they need so that they can raise their children healthy, so they can be healthy themselves.
Black lives...
Matter!
Black lives...
Matter!
When I say "black lives," you say "matter." Black lives...
Matter!
Black lives...
Matter!
If these elected officials in office and people that are running for office do not agree to implement policies that will change lives around these issues and agree to help reconstruct this system that was never built to benefit us, we will vote you out of office. And if you're running for office, you will never make it into that chair.
The face of Albany and the New York state legislature have changed drastically. You have women. You have black women, Latino women. You have black men, Latino men. We have Asian. You have LGBTQ. You have a diverse set of people who come to the chamber to fight for the rights of the people that they're representing.
And so if we didn't have all of us, these bills would not - these police reform bills would not have passed.
This opportunity to call for defunding law enforcement and reallocating those dollars back into our communities is really a call to - a call for mental health, mental health care, a call for adequate public education, a call for adequate housing, a call for healthy food, and a call for us having access to being able to thrive and not just survive.
I mean, you have all of this stuff that we're constantly fighting to make sure it definitely bridges the gap, whether it's environmental issues, whether it's housing, health, economics, education, quality of life, jobs - whatever it may be. We're fighting on a broad spectrum. And so police reform on its own cannot stop.
We're not going to engage. I'm proud of each and every one of you guys for coming out. We were peaceful. We made it here safely. Give yourself a round of applause.
I want you guys to know that this march that brought thousands of people out, nonviolently, was organised by young people!
Thank you guys for coming out! Great job!
I think the end of violence is to get rid of, to annihilate the opponent. But in the nonviolent movement, the end is to convert the opponent and to bring about a society where all men will live together as brothers and every man will respect the dignity and worth of human personality.
