Above: People listen to speeches during the Justice or Else! rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC on October 10, 2015 (AFP Photo/Andrew Caballero-Reynolds)
Twenty years after the Million Man March, thousands came back to Washington, DC to renew the call for justice. The Washington Post reports:
Thousands of black men, women and children gathered on the Mall on Saturday to demand justice at a time of growing anger and fraying tensions in African American communities across the nation over the killings of young black men by police.
By noon Saturday, the crowds had swelled just beyond the stage at the west front of the Capitol, with onlookers watching on several jumbo screens set up on the lawn. Some people sat on lawn chairs and others on blankets to listen to the speakers, including Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, which sponsored the “Justice or Else” rally.
The event was about today’s struggles in communities of color. The Post reported:
The mothers of Sandra Bland — a black woman found dead in her jail cell in Waller County, Tex., in July after an altercation with a police officer — and Trayvon Martin — a black teenager fatally shot by a community watch volunteer in 2012 — appeared together onstage with relatives of other shooting victims. Bland’s death was ruled a suicide by local authorities, and Martin’s killer was acquitted of second-degree murder charges; however, the circumstances around both deaths have angered black leaders.
Rev. Louis Farrakhan praised the young protesters behind Black Lives Matter. Farrakhan called them the next leaders of the civil rights movement and called on older leaders to support them and asked the crowd, according to Associated Press: “What good are we if we don’t prepare young people to carry the torch of liberation to the next step?” Family members of several unarmed African-American men and women killed in encounters with police encouraged the crowd to continue to speak out against police misconduct and not forget the names of those who have been killed by police violence.
