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The Enormous Scale of This Movement

The nationwide demonstrations could carry on for days or weeks—maybe even through November.

Elaine Godfrey
10:54 AM ET

A child sat on her father’s shoulders, squinted through layers of new fencing separating the White House from protesters, and asked, “Where’s Trump?” Demonstrators chanted “GEORGE FLOYD!” in the tunnel under K St. so loudly that the name echoed through the length of the underpass. Streams of sign-carriers seemed to arrive at the White House from every direction, all day, and kept coming, coming, coming.

The demonstrations that have seized America’s cities, towns, and villages, including the nation’s capital, have no national leader. There are only people, hundreds of thousands of them, spilling into streets, clogging bridges, and filling parks. Nor does the movement have a single objective. The demonstrations are in the service of a constellation of hyperlocal and national goals, from small, material targets like tearing down statues of racist men that literally loom large over communities, to a wholescale reimagining of how law enforcement is conducted in this country, including divesting from police departments and eliminating special legal protections for officers. “The demands all come together to stop the war on black people,” said Yahne Ndgo, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Philadelphia. “The ultimate demand is the end to violence, to end the war against black life.”

These reforms would require the work of thousands of political actors at the local level; aggressive maneuvering from lawmakers on Capitol Hill; and, very likely, a president willing to offer support. Not all of them will come to pass. But the scale of this movement is enormous. The nationwide demonstrations could carry on for days or weeks—maybe even through November, organizers told me. And yesterday’s protest in Washington may have just been a dress rehearsal for a massive March on Washington in August.

Thousands converged on D.C. yesterday, their ranks filling the hot concrete expanse before the Capitol building, and surrounding the reflecting pool near the Lincoln Memorial. In front of Lafayette Square, as close as protesters could get to the highly fortified White House, the atmosphere wasn’t nearly as tense as it had been earlier in the week, when peaceful demonstrators were tear-gassed and fired upon with rubber bullets to make way for President Donald Trump’s photo op outside St. John’s Church.

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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/protest-dc-george-floyd-police-reform/612748/