Protesters topple Albert Pike statue in D.C.
As they returned toward Meridian Hill Park, also known as Malcolm X Park, protesters marched in front of a senior care facility on 15th Street NW, where Lillie Baker, 87, danced and clapped and threw her hands in the air.
It’s a kind of Woodstock of grievance — drenching rain that no one seems bothered by, people bobbing to loud music in their soaked clothes or stretched out on muddy, wet grass, people onstage in the downpour chanting out anti-police slogans. Shortly after 4 p.m., a rain-drenched crowd of hundreds reached the Wilson Building on Pennsylvania Avenue NW to demand that D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser defund the police.
“We are underserved and overkilled by our police department,” she said. “We want this mayor to know that in this city, black lives matter.”“The rain ain’t going to stop us until we can literally sleep safe in our beds,” Jordan shouted.Beneath the clenched fists emblazoned on banners hung across the Howard Theatre, the party was just getting started Friday.
“Go-go is DC and DC is me,” the sign read. Her grandmother, Star Mixon, 42, a native of Northwest Washington, snapped a photo and laughed. Her daughter, Kenya Mixon, 16, nodded. “It’s cool seeing all this togetherness,” she said. But Kenya still viewed it as a protest. “Being here to celebrate on this day when we were supposedly freed is good, I guess,” she said. “But we’re not all that free yet.”
As the crowd bopped its way past 7th Street NW, the intersection where the effort dubbed #DontMuteDC began — a push-back against forces of gentrification — the group paused for a moment to dance in the street. “This is a magnificent event,” Odrick, 57, said. “I like history. I thought it was important to celebrate my own African American history in spite of the rain, in spite of my weight — I’m overweight — and my leg is hurting.”“It means anything that is holding me back from being myself — changing from within and changing society, whatever it is: overeating; being shy; being a female musician,” said Odrick, a D.C. resident who described herself as a poet and advocate for people with mental illness.
“Our health-care system was not built for us,” he said. “They are failing at racial equality because they are too busy succeeding at profits, not people.” In the park, the six stood by a low barrier, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, chanting, “Black lives matter!”At Malcolm X Park protest, chants of ‘Defund police’
The group planned to march to the mayor’s office to demand that she propose a budget that prioritizes black lives at a time when black people are dying at disproportionate rates, both from the pandemic and at the hands of police. “All right, y’all — let’s get this started!” she shouted. The group planned to march down 15th Street NW and then turn onto U Street.
Berheisel has been campaigning in D.C. since the impeachment hearings, when a rapper friend of his signed the glove box in gold Sharpie and he began letting others sign it, too. Lilliana Cotton, 2, raised her chubby arms in triumph standing on the hood of the car while her parents took photos.He said he’s been racially profiled while driving nine times in North Carolina. Only once was the interaction positive.
Protesters marched from the Mall to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, where protest organizer Morgan Barnhart encouraged them to take a knee for 8 minutes and 46 seconds — the amount of time George Floyd was under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer.
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