The Enormous Scale of This Movement

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 teargassed and fired upon with rubber bullets to make way for President Donald Trump’s photo op outside St. John’s Church.

Instead of police in riot gear lining 16th Street, a fleet of ice-cream trucks played jangly tunes. Volunteers pulled wagons carrying ice-cold bottled water, Welch’s Fruit Snacks, and Chipotle quesadillas wrapped in foil. Seemingly unending rows of sweaty people held up homemade signs reading SAY THEIR NAMES, I CAN’T BREATHE, and CHARGE THE COPS. Others danced the Macarena in a circle outside the St. Regis hotel, their feet pounding over the electric-yellow letters spelling out BLACK LIVES MATTER that Mayor Muriel Bowser had had painted along 16th Street the day before. (She also renamed the street Black Lives Matter Plaza.) When a few minutes of cool rain interrupted the 90-degree heat in the early afternoon, it felt as though the sky and the city were letting out a long, deep sigh.

“With the coronavirus and all the changes that have happened in 2020, it’s forced our world to change,” Marilyn Neale, a 28-year-old from nearby Prince George’s County, Maryland, told me, while she passed out water and Bomb Pops that she and a few friends had bought that morning at Costco. “Change for equality, for black people in America. Everyone has been woken up by 2020.”

Others I met felt less hopeful. James Gilmore, a recent graduate of Georgetown Law School, told me he was 20 years old the first time he had an encounter with police. After receiving a report of a stolen vehicle, officers in Kansas City, Missouri, pulled Gilmore over and forced him out of his brand-new car, holding a gun to his head, he told me. Because of his race, Gilmore explained, police assumed that the vehicle, with its temporary tags, was the stolen one. “It seems like more and more white people are using their influence and privilege to fight against these issues,” which means the country is making progress, Gilmore said. But this “doesn’t feel like a turning point; it just seems like a continuum to me.”