George Floyd Protests Quotes

My mama told me to be careful and not get into trouble. I got in trouble, but it was good trouble. John Lewis Dedication in Anarchist, Republican... Assassin

The New York Times estimates that between fifteen and twenty-six million people demonstrated over George Floyd’s death in the United States alone, making it the largest demonstration in the history of the country. Some researchers number the protestors at twenty-four million worldwide, which would make it the largest mass protest in history, period.

In the week between the death of George Floyd and the assault on the White House, at least twelve statues and memorials were defaced by vandals, including the World War II Memorial and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall.61 Even a statue of the nonviolent revolutionary Mahatma Gandhi in front of the Indian Embassy was vandalized by BLM protesters.62

Just because you know me does not mean that I am not black. I am black. I am thankfully black. I am black just like the person you are hurling your insult at. On the way to them, it hits me. I'm Colin Kaepernick black. Protesting oppression black. Not-so-sure about the National Anthem black. Skeptical of the Pledge of Allegiance black. I'm George Floyd black. At times, leery of law enforcement black. Don't trust the system black. I'm not different. I am no exception.

Tell me where it is written that a protest has to be peaceful" -- Chris Cuomo, CNN. Said during the George Floyd riots.

BLACK LOVE LIVES IN THE MIDDLE OF ALL THIS HATE #HOPENATION

While there have been many protests over the years against police brutality, the reality is nothing really changes.

2020 saw the largest protests ever against police brutality.

At the height of the George Floyd protests, Omar Johnson, a former Apple marketing VP and chief marketing officer for Beats by Dr. Dre, took out a full-page ad in the New York Times. “Dear White corporate America,” he began,… I get it. I know you have the best intentions.… You want to do the right thing. But you just don’t know how. Is that about right? I know it is, because you’ve been calling me. For the past two weeks, several times a day. It’s been the same question: What can I do? He went on to upbraid corporate leaders for failing to nurture Black talent, for failing to include Black people in decision-making, for failing to listen, and ultimately, for failing as businesspeople: “This is a business problem, too. And you fix business problems all the time. So, you got this.” He laid out a game plan. Most notably, “You need to hire more Black people. Period.” Identify, recruit, develop, and elevate talented Black employees. Partner with Black-owned businesses. Believe in the people you hire. Mentor them. “No doubt, it’s daunting,” Johnson writes. “But lean into the discomfort.” And “before you call me again—before you ask me what you should say, or what you should change—I’ll tell you my answer right now: Absolutely everything… See you in the room.

That free time is one of the biggest barriers to activism was, in a way, proven in the summer of 2020, as the protests over George Floyd and the slew of other Black lives lost became the most attended protests in American history. Up to twenty-six million Americans participated, a number that would be unthinkable were it not for the converging COVID-19 epidemic and the unprecedented amount of free time that accompanied it.

Antifa is not an organized group. It is an ideology and a set of tactics, namely, violently confronting the right wing. Antifa is short for “anti-fascist.” The name is borrowed from World War II–era German anti-Nazi activism. Here in America, the antifa movement became an increasingly large feature of the political scene after Trump’s election. Alt-right groups like the Proud Boys also saw a surge in membership during this time. The two factions brawled in the streets at protests. They fed off each other. Trump and other Republicans spent the second half of 2020 criticizing violence and vandalism from antifa and Black Lives Matter activists during the civil rights demonstrations that erupted around the country after the police killing of George Floyd. Then January 6th took place.

I was watching the news and I heard one of the commentators say, there were the Biden supporters having their celebration and then the Trump supporters having their protest … and they are conflicting, and they have the right to be here.    Not one time when we were marching for George Floyd did those people on the mainstream news say we had the right to be there.93

I think we’ve nailed how to say what we don’t want, but we find it much harder to articulate what we do want—let alone how to achieve it. The protests and the organizing in the wake of the killing of George Floyd have shown us in no uncertain terms that a great thirst for change exists. But it’s not so much that there is too much to do, it’s more that we require a new, far more expansive, approach to understanding what we want to achieve and the steps necessary to take us there. As the scholar George Lipsitz cautions, “Good intentions and spontaneity are not adequate in the face of relentlessly oppressive and powerful well-financed military and economic political systems.”3

If Tivo marks the beginning of the shift from the Brand Age to the Product Age, the summer of 2020 saw the Brand Age’s end. The killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests briefly displaced the pandemic in the front and center of our national consciousness, making obvious the passing of the Brand Age into history. Seemingly every brand company did what they always do when America’s sins are pulled out from the back of the closet where we try to keep them hidden: they called up their agencies and posted inspiring words, arresting images, and black rectangles. Message: We care. Only this time, it didn’t resonate. Their brand magic fizzled. First on social media, then tumbling from there onto newspapers and evening news, activists and customers started using the tools of the new age to compare these companies’ carefully crafted brand messages with the reality of their operations. “This you?” became the Twitter meme that exposed the brand wizards. Companies who posted about their “support” for black empowerment were called out when their own websites revealed the music did not match the words. The NFL claimed it celebrates protest, and the internet tweeted back, “This you?” under a picture of Colin Kaepernick kneeling. L’Oréal posted that “speaking out is worth it” and got clapped back with stories about dropping a model just three years earlier for speaking out against racism. The performative wokeness across brands felt forced and hollow. Systemic racism is a serious issue, and a 30-second spot during The Masked Singer doesn’t prove you are serious about systemic racism. That’s always been true, about ads on any issue, but social media and the ease of access to data on the internet has made it much harder for companies to pretend.

Black America has watched this pattern of outrage management about Black suffering for years. We’ve seen police plant weapons on their victims, as they did in the case of Walter Scott (cover up). Media outlets tell us drugs were in someone’s system when the police murdered them, as they did with George Floyd (devalue). White people constantly try to reframe police brutality as a problem of “a few bad apples” instead of a systemic problem (reinterpret). When the grand jury refused to indict Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown, that became the end of the story for eager racism deniers, though the report also showed racial bias in the conduct of the Ferguson police department (use official channels). And there isn’t room for a full list of the times protesters of these injustices were met in the streets with flash-bang grenades and tanks (intimidate). Oppressors have perfected these tactics so well, they stop revolutions before they start, on a daily basis, without us ever noticing. Rank-and-file white people also try to stamp out Black rage wherever it emerges. They tell us Black anger is destructive and can’t be trusted. The truth is just the opposite. Black rage is trustworthy because it carries an analysis of present injustices. On a physiological level, anger is the body’s way of telling us that a boundary has been violated. It’s the natural emotional response humans have to being wronged, especially if that wrong is recurring and denied by the harmdoers. Therefore, Black rage is a healthy sign that we as a people recognize the crimes that have been, and continue to be, committed against us. Our anger is based in our personal experiences of anti-Black hostility in the white world and backed by our knowledge of our history.