No Justice, No Peace
All photographs by Sarah Madges unless otherwise noted It’s been two and a half weeks since police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd. In that time, hundreds of thousands of people across 140 cities in the United States, and more across the world, have taken to the streets to protest the matrices of racism that have enabled and emboldened the police to murder Black Americans with impunity.
Huge numbers of New Yorkers have protested since that first weekend, with multiple actions organized by Black community leaders—from rallies and marches to community clean-ups and vigils—occurring across the city’s five boroughs each day. An Instagram account that aggregates information and resources about the protests and their organizers, @justiceforgeorgenyc, has over 186,000 followers on Instagram as of this writing and also maintains a MailChimp listserv, centralizing information on everything from protest locations to street medic training and tips on recording police misconduct.
Such information has been critical: Nearly every protest, before the city lifted curfews and the NYPD adopted a more hands-off approach, saw police pushing, shoving, and sometimes beating peaceful demonstrators. NYPD officers struck protesters with their cars, indiscriminately sprayed tear gas into crowds, and arrested bystanders. And yet the sustained pressure of this worldwide movement, and mounting evidence of the outsized violence done against, rather than by, those protesting, has already won concrete change: Derek Chauvin’s murder charge was increased to second-degree, and the three other officers involved with were finally charged as well; Breonna Taylor’s case from March was reopened and Louisville’s mayor suspended the “no-knock” warrants that enabled her death; Confederate monuments have been taken or ordered to be taken down in numerous cities; Minnesota’s City Council voted in a veto-proof majority to disband the police; New York State Assembly banned the chokehold; and the New York State Senate repealed NY Civil Rights Law Sec. 50-A, which shielded police from accountability by deeming their personnel records “confidential.”
Over the last two weeks I have seen thousands of small acts of kindness: Organizers distribute protective masks and
