Abstract
These photos were taken at the Black Lives Matter fourth night of protests in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, on Tuesday, 1 June 2020. An estimated twenty thousand protesters came out for the demonstration and march while Boston was still largely in shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Boston was one of many cities across the United States where protests were held following the latest in a string of police killings of innocent black people. On 25 May 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, George Floyd, an unarmed black man who was arrested and handcuffed by police was held down by three police officers who had a knee on Floyd’s torso, back, and neck. Floyd told them fifteen times within five minutes that he could not breathe. The officer who had his knee on Floyd’s neck, Derek Chauvin, ignored Floyd and even taunted him, saying that he should get up and get in the police car, even as he keeps his knee on Floyd’s neck and the other officers continued to keep their knees in place. A fourth officer stood watch and kept bystanders at bay. The bystanders repeatedly told the officers that Floyd was saying that he could not breathe and then that he wasn’t moving and that they should get off of his neck and check his pulse. After nearly nine minutes, an emergency medical vehicle arrived and Floyd was taken to a hospital. Floyd went into cardiac arrest in the vehicle and was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Following Floyd’s death, protests erupted in Minneapolis and across the United States and even in some cities internationally. The Boston protest shown in these three photos took place seven days after Floyd died at the hands of these police officers. The protests across the country are all speaking out that this was not an unusual event and that black people are regularly killed by police in manners similar to what happened to George Floyd. The names of victims of such killings can be seen in one photo here.
Photo Credit: Charlie Rosenberg/www.tecnet.org
Photo Credit: Charlie Rosenberg/http://www.tecnet.org
Photo Credit: Charlie Rosenberg/http://www.tecnet.org
Photo Credit: Charlie Rosenberg/http://www.tecnet.org
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Author Biography
A native of Louisville, Kentucky,