Sunday marked the five-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. In downtown Chicago, around 200 protesters commemorated the occasion by gathering in Federal Plaza to protest the Trump administration’s rollback of police reform initiatives. According to WEBZ Chicago, the protest was organized by the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.
“We’re protesting in honor of the five years since George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin and the Minneapolis Police Department,” said organizer Faayani Aboma. “The main reason Chauvin is behind bars is because of the people power that put him there, and it’s people power that’s going to keep him there.”
The organization pointed specifically to President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14288, which, among other things, allows for more military resources to be shared with police departments and enhances legal protections for local and state police. Aboma said the order would result in “high impact policing on our communities.”
Under Trump, the U.S. Department of Justice also recently decided to end Biden-era police-accountability agreements with Minneapolis and Louisville, Ky., that came as a result of extensive investigations following the police killings of Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
While the protest was focused on Floyd and the Trump administration’s pro-police policies, there was also a focus on the ongoing Palestinian conflict. Some opponents of the protest criticized the demonstration for shifting from one issue to the next, but some of the people who were actually there Sunday would argue the “free Palestine” movement and the fight against systemic racism in policing in America are inherently linked.
From WEBZ:
A banner hung between two trees in the plaza listing the names of victims of police violence.
Demonstrators held signs reading “Stop police crimes. Free them all” and “From Chicago to Palestine. Occupation is a crime.”
Rania Salem, 28, from Orland Park, and Nazek Sankari, 33, from West Elston, are members of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network.
They came out to protest because they believe it’s important to “mobilize our communities” and demand change in policing, Salem said.
She said the solidarity between the Palestinian people and Black Americans goes back to the 1960s.
“Our liberation struggles are connected. We cannot win our liberation … without Black liberation, immigrant rights, and fighting against deportation,” Sankari said.
Southside Chicago resident Kevin Jackson, 43, said during the protest that he had previously spent “23 years and four months” in jail for a crime he did not commit. He said his false conviction, which was overturned in October, inspired his activism.
“Every morning I wake up, I’m grateful for being home. Though I have not received justice to [the extent] I feel like I deserve, I’m free. Anytime I’m free, I want to be a part of these groups, to be a part of these protesters,” he said.
Jackson said he plans to continue organizing and that he will work with anyone who he “can possibly organize with to defeat the Trump agenda.”
“We’ll work with Black Lives Matter. We’ll work with the antiwar movement. We’ll work with the LGBTQ community. We’ll work with the teachers’ union,” he said. “The differences that we have between each other is not as great as the difference we have with Trump.”
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Source: NewsOne