by Siobhan Kelly
In
the wake of the killing of George Floyd there have been protests all around the
world. London was no exception. The protest at the United States embassy in
Nine Elms on Sunday was scheduled to start at 2 pm but it was already in
progress by 1:30. The crowd was diverse and outraged; all standing (and
kneeling) in unity to oppose the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, police
killings of people from minority ethnic groups and the violent reaction of
police to the mostly peaceful protests that continue across the United States.
We chanted “Black Lives Matter”, “We Can’t
Breathe”, “Teach Black History”, “No Justice, No Peace, No Racist Police”, “Say
their name” which was followed by the names of victims that were killed by
police including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. There were even a
brief chants of “Boris Johnson is a wanker” and “Fuck Trump” although the
chants of “Fuck White Privilege” quickly died out.
The crowd stood outside the US embassy for
about 90 minutes, then people started to turn around and walked back up Nine
Elms lane to Vauxhall Bridge. A man was walked through the crowd saying “walk
with me to the New Scotland Yard”. The crowd then walked over the bridge,
disrupting traffic for about a mile in its wake for nearly an hour.
The atmosphere was angry and yet peaceful.
There were very few people who were not wearing face masks, and at least where
I stood people kept about a metre distance between themselves and those not in
their group. The cautious protestors came out in droves despite the urging by
Health Secretary Matt Hancock not to attend the protests while we are still in
the midst of a pandemic. There were volunteers giving out masks, gloves and
squirting hand sanitiser.
Once the crowd left the street, apart from
a few stragglers like myself, the police walked down the street along with
“Legal Observers”. The police weren’t intimidating and didn’t even clear the
street of all the protesters. Behind the line of police walking and their vans
there was another smaller group of protesters.
It is astonishing that even with cameras
recording police brutality in America it still continues. They don’t care that
you film them attacking civilians and the press – especially civilians that are
non-violent and only exercising their constitutional right to peacefully
protest.
But is encouraging to see such support for
the victims of these racist cops, all over the UK and the world, as a result of
the killing of George Floyd and the protests in America.
