Joining with millions of protesters across the country, around 50 Susanville residents braved wind and rain Saturday to mount a peaceful protest in honor of George Floyd and in support of the greater Black Lives Matter movement.
“As a white woman, I feel that until the people whom this doesn’t affect (me) speak up, nothing is going to change,” explains event organizer Mary Piowaty.
Carrying signs with messages like ‘Be on the Right Side of History’, ‘Equal Justice’ and ‘Everyone Deserves Due Process’ the protesters followed a course from Roop’s Fort on Weatherlow Street down Main Street.
One particularly poignant sign read, ‘It’s a Privilege to Learn About Racism Rather Than Experiencing it Your Whole Life.’
The protest was peaceful with no reported incidents.
Black Lives Matter is an international human rights movement which campaigns against violence and systemic racism towards black people. BLM regularly holds protests speaking out against police brutality and police killings of black people, and broader issues such as racial profiling and racial inequality in the United States criminal justice system.
The George Floyd protests are an ongoing series of protests and demonstrations against police brutality and racism in policing, which began in the United States in Minneapolis on May 26th, following the killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, who knelt on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes during an arrest.
