Richard Battle-Baxter, a 38-year-old black male of New Jersey, said he finally feels like white people are starting to show they care. And while he appreciates these gestures, it’s not enough. He wants them to truly flip the script and understand how they benefit from systematic racism.

“It’s not our problem to fix, because we didn’t create the system,” Baxter said. “What is my participation in it now?” “How did I benefit from the system as it is now? “And how did my ancestors benefit from it?” Understanding that from a white person’s perspective will give them more insight into why there is a disconnect in our system.”

And while Baxter is somewhat hopeful for the future, he’s doing his best at the moment to manage his stress.

“Think about the opportunity cost of the productivity loss of the entire black population because we are dealing with what’s going on now,” Baxter said. “We know that these murder have been happening. It’s been a conversation for us but we’ve had to suppress it. It’s the suppression of these feelings that has been stressful.”

Meka Seymour, a 26- year-old black woman living in Harlem, is finding her own way to navigate her feelings. She is doing what she can to volunteer, organize, and educate herself.

“I feel extremely heavy and burdened some days by what is happening right now,” Seymour said. “Peers see this education as an academic exercise. This isn’t an exercise for me. I feel stressed out and it’s scary to think you still have to argue for your humanity in society”.

Growing up as a light skin African American woman, living in a predominantly low income black neighborhood, Seymour does not recall experiencing a lot of racial transgressions. She does recall facing colorism, and feeling caught in the middle.

“I’m what people refer to as light skin. People would tell me I have good hair,” Seymour said. “It has been communicated to me since I was a little kid that I am a more acceptable brand of black. I thought that was just how society worked. And that’s a problem.”

Haroon Saleem, a 42-year -old Pakistani living in Los Angeles, said he’s not surprised at all by what is happening. Saleem faced routine discrimination as child, being called racial slurs and getting beat up on the playground for being Muslim. It led to depression issues he still battles with today.

“When you come from the amount of s–t we have, this is not as shocking as it might be for other folks,” Saleem said. “We have to fight for normalcy, have conversations and be diplomatic. What our country is going through is a much needed reckoning.”

Just a few days after the election of Donald Trump, Saleem was at a gas station when a couple nearby said, “Y’all need to get ready to go back.”

“That was a gut punch for sure,” Saleem said. “I’m an American citizen.”

Despite the racism he has endured, Saleem does his best to remain positive.

“There has been a lot more of a reaction and people acknowledging that this is an issue. And you want to remain positive because what’s the inverse?,” Saleem said. “I would much rather focus on doing everything possible to better this situation than throwing in the towel.”

And despite the protests and attention on race and police brutality, Baxter still fears for his life walking out of his front door, a fear he’s carried with him since childhood. A fear that, he said, is rooted in knowing things can start small but end up deadly.

“You turn on the TV and you see, stop killing black men. I think, wait a second, I’m a black man, stop killing me,” Baxter said. ”We’re not asking for much. We just want to be equal.”

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Demonstrators chanted, “No Justice No Peace” “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” and ‘”We are George.”

The protest was largely peaceful on Saturday afternoon in the Flatbush Area. But gradually became rowdy when some demonstrators pelted police officers with stones, bottled water and other objects.

Police responded using batons and pepper spray on the crowd.  Dozens of the protesters were also arrested during the altercation with the police.

On Bedford Avenue, protesters smashed the windshields of two NYPD vehicles. A third police car was torched on the inside, on Synder Avenue. Firefighters quickly intervened to put out the fire.

The death of another unarmed black man as a result of police brutality have sparked days of mass protests and culminated in riots in some cities across the country.

Crowd chants ‘hands up don’t shoot’. Flatbush, Brooklyn. May 30, 2020. Photo by Narkwor Kwabla

Flatbush, Brooklyn. May 30, 2020. Photo by Narkwor Kwabla

Windshield of police vehicle smashed. Flatbush, Brooklyn. May 30, 2020. Photo by Narkwor Kwabla

Police arrest man during protest on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. May 30, 2020. Photo by Narkwor Kwabla

Police officers check damaged vehicle. Flatbush, Brooklyn, May 30, 2020  Photo by Narkwor Kwabla

Flatbush, Brooklyn. May 30, 2020. Photo by Narkwor Kwabla

Protesters take photos of police officers deployed to Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. May 30, 2020. Photo by Narkwor Kwabla

Man yells, “No justice No Peace” Flatbush, Brooklyn. May 30, 2020. Photo by Narkwor Kwabla

Demonstrators confront police officers. Flatbush, Brooklyn. May 30, 2020. Photo by Narkwor Kwabla

The post Police clash with demonstrators at Floyd protest in Flatbush appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

In Harlem, demonstrators met in front of the Adam Clayton Powel Jr. State Office Building on W. 125th St. From there, the group took a short march around Central Harlem. And then the first standoffs began in front of the 28th Precinct.

From there, the demonstrators walked to the Henry Hudson Parkway. Taking the southbound on-ramp at W. 125th St., they quickly filled the road. Many drivers honked and waved in support as the demonstrators criss crossed between lanes to mitigate the disruption of traffic. The demonstrators marched off the highway at 96th street, walking to Washington Square Park to meet with other demonstrators. After a brief interlude where organizers spoke to the crowd, the demonstrators moved again, moving south to the Lower East Side before hooking back around to Union Square Park.

It was during this section of the march where tensions rose. Police in riot gear greeted passing demonstrators as they walked from Delancey Street to Union Square Park, and verbal confrontations became more frequent. Buildings and police vehicles were vandalized around Astor Place, with one police van damaged by a smoke bomb. As groups from across the city coalesced in Union Square Park, things quickly escalated. Clashes with police occurred across downtown Manhattan through the night.

More demonstrations are expected across the city  today.

Protester watching from atop the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Memorial in Harlem. Photo by Daniel Girma

Police form a line in front of the 28th Precinct in Harlem. Photo by Daniel Girma

Demonstrators sit and chant on W. 125th St. May 30, 2020. Photo by Daniel Girma

Demonstrators march to the Henry Hudson Parkway. May 30, 2020. Photo by Daniel Girma

Demonstrators close the Henry Hudson Parkway near W. 125th Street. May 30, 2020. Photo By Daniel Girma

Two demonstrators are arrested on the Henry Hudson Parkway in the Upper West Side. Photo by Daniel Girma

Demonstrators gather in Washington Square Park after the long walk from Harlem. May 30, 2020. Photo by Daniel Girma

A police officer and demonstrator argue in the Lower East Side. May 30, 2020. Photo by Daniel Girma

A demonstrator vandalizes a window near Union Square Park. May 30, 2020. Photo by Daniel Girma

A police officer ushers demonstrators away from a vandalized police van. May 30, 2020. Photo by Daniel Girma

A police van vandalized by demonstrators. May 30, 2020. Photo by Daniel Girma

The post From Harlem to the Lower East Side, protestors march, scream and battle for racial justice appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

A demonstrator confronts an NYPD bicyclist officer, May 29, 2020. Photo by Thomas Hengge

In New York, protests began at Union Square on Thursday but were quickly broken up by police, which led to upwards of 50 arrests. On Friday, a larger gathering began at FoleySquare, where demonstrators organized in a peaceful protest, remembering lives lost to police brutality.

Demonstrators gather at Foley Square, May 29, 2020. Photo By Thomas Hengge

From there, they marched through the streets of Manhattan, their route becoming informal, dictated by trying to avoid NYPD bicycle officers how were continuously trying to cut them off and break up the crowd. Tensions rose and heated back and forth led to arrests for a handful of marchers.

Demonstrators march through the Bowery, May 29 2020. Photo by Thomas Hengge

The NYPD was successful in disorganizing the march, but demonstrators were able to regroup at Foley Square, where they then proceeded over the Brooklyn Bridge to Downtown Brooklyn to meet another gathering at the Barclays Center.

A demonstrator gets milk poured on them after being pepper-sprayed. May 29, 2020. Photo by Thomas Hengge

Friction between police and protestors mounted throughout the day, and hours of peaceful gathering quickly erupted into chaos at the Barclays Center, police pepper-spraying the crowd and striking some with batons after water bottles and other debris were thrown. People scattered in all directions, but many returned to collect others blinded by the pepper-spray and push back at police, who began to barricade the area.

Barclays Center, May 29, 2020. Photo by Thomas Hengge

At that point, the NYPD tried to disperse the crowd more aggressively with formations of police officers moving in but were unsuccessful.

After hours of heated confrontation, demonstrators left the Barclay Center and spilled out into the streets of Brooklyn, continuing to clash with police throughout the night.

Demonstrations will continue throughout the weekend and into next week.

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 In the early morning hours of May 29, CNN reporter Omar Jiménez was arrested by Minnesota state police on live television. Jiménez was calm and asked the officers what they wanted him and his crew to do, but they did not respond and instead handcuffed and arrested him.  

 “What am I under arrest for?” Jiménez asked as he was being turned away from the camera’s view and being escorted by police to what the viewer assumed would be jail.  The cameraman, Leonel Mendez,  continued to film Jimenez as he was perp walked until he fell out of view.

A black reporter being arrested on live TV while covering the protests in reaction to police killing yet another black man—during a pandemic that is disproportionately affecting black Americans—has filled me and millions of fellow Americans with an overwhelming sense of despair and pain. I feel broken. 

I woke up to all of this after a restless night. The president of the United States’ responded to a police officer kneeling on the neck of an unarmed black man, until he stopped breathing, by threatening people who were angered and grieving another senseless death.

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” he wrote on Twitter. The tweet was flagged and deleted by Twitter.

It’s a decades-old law-and-order phrase that has been given new life by Trump.

But make no mistake, this is bigger than one man. It’s bigger than one year. Bigger than one election. This problem has been 400 years in the making, festering throughout American society even as “black faces in high places”—as the Princeton Philosopher Cornel West eloquently put it—seemed to signal a new beginning for this country. 

It was all a facade. Some of us knew that then, but more are suddenly coming to grips with this uncomfortable reality. 

My only option, though, like many generations of black Americans before me, is to somehow, someway find a morsel of hope to continue. This is a sad maxim of being black in this country, but it’s also a survival mechanism. 

If we lose this sense of hope, no matter how fleeting it may feel at times, then what else is there for me to continue for? I’ve promised to keep myself from thinking about the answer to this question for too long. 

Instead, I’m trying, though sometimes failing, to find things that bring me hope for a better future. And don’t get it twisted, this is not a naiveté or blind hope. It is a feeling that is sowed by the diversity and youth of the protesters across the country. 

From Dallas to Brooklyn, Minneapolis to Atlanta, Los Angeles to Washington D.C., an overwhelming number of those protesting are millennials or younger. These protesters are black, brown, white, Latinx, Asian and the like. They are straight, gay, trans, non-conforming and non-binary. Simply put, these protesters come from all walks of life—informed by intrinsically different lived experiences. 

The one thing that unites these people, however, is a shared sense of outrage over a society that has been broken for far too long. Quite literally pushing up their bodies against a system and society that was never built for them. The levels of empathy exhibited by those protesters among my generation is inspiring, and it provides me with the hope to continue. 

And it is precisely this hope that will prevent this wicked society from breaking me, no matter how broken I currently feel.

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