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On Friday, thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets of the nation’s capital. The 2020 March on Washington, which echoes the famous 1963 march of the same name, is calling for the same things Martin Luther King’s well-known speech called for. And, much like the 1963 march, it will open with speeches from keynote speakers before transitioning in to a march. This march, however, will end at the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial in the capital.
The official name for the event is “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks,” a reference to the police tactic that led to the death of George Floyd. Floyd was killed by the maneuver by Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, on Memorial Day in 2020. The event comes during a particularly tense moment in the US, while protesters are calling for police to stop using excessive force when interacting with black people.
Long gone are the days when you could log on to the internet and see the spiciest arguments of the day over the best washer dryer sheets. Instead, 2020 has brought the twin crises of COVID-19 and civil unrest. Online discourse has become a firestorm of arguments over who is to blame for the state of the country during an historic pandemic and amidst huge movements calling for the defunding of police departments.
During the rally on Friday, the speakers’ messages coalesced around one critical point: how important it is to register to vote. The fall election will see incumbent Donald Trump squaring off with former vice president Joe Biden. Trump is vanishingly unpopular among young voters, black voters and female voters. As such, protest movements have been all but begging their members to register to vote and to show up on November 3.
Members of the march largely repeated the refrain of the Black Lives Matter Movement, “No Justice, No Peace”. The mantra calls to mind images of unruly protesters setting fire to buildings, clashing with police and stopping traffic on busy roads. After repeated calls for protesters to be peaceful, many have retorted by saying that there will be no peace until there is justice.
“If you don’t want these protests, stop killing unarmed black people,” reads a popular viral post on social media. The energy of the protests is that of a youth movement that is fed up with the old way of doing things. Only time will tell if that moment carries from the streets of Washington DC to the polling places of the US.
