Black Lives Matter Protest
Trevon Martin was murdered by a neighborhood vigilante named George Zimmerman in 2012. Treyvon (a 14 year old Black boy) was walking home after buying candy at a neighborhood store when Zimmerman (an adult White man armed with a gun) stalked and shot him.
The case was national news. Outrage ran high. President Obama expressed his deep anger and sadness that Treyvon was murdered stating ‘that could have been my child; that could have been me.’ The outright racism of a White man murdering a Black boy brought to life the Black Lives Matter movement and the nation forward into a much needed focus on how we value civil rights.
Even with the obvious injustice committed against Treyvon Martin, the BLM movement didn’t gain significant traction until eight years later when George Floyd ( a Black man) was murdered by White police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
This collection of photos is of one protest in November of 2020. Protesters assembled in front of the now famous City of Seattle East Precinct Police Station where they were met with organized police lines to keep order. Hours before these photos were taken a young man had been shot nearby in an unrelated incident. Tensions were high. The police were armed with plexiglass shields and long sticks. The crowd was unarmed. I felt quite safe in this situation… until I didn’t.