20 THE QUEENS COURIER • 2020 YEAR IN REVIEW • DECEMBER 24, 2020 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
2020 year in review
What the protests against police
BY ANGÉLICA ACEVEDO
aacevedo@schnepsmedia.com
@QNS
Even during a global pandemic already
disproportionately aff ecting Black, Brown
and low-income communities, police brutality
remained one of the reasons those
same communities feared for their lives.
As a result, people took to the streets to
call for police accountability and systemic
change.
Th e brutal police killing of George
Floyd, a 46-year-old Minneapolis man
accused of using a fake $20 bill who was,
as a result of a 911 call, asphyxiated by a
policeman kneeling on his neck for nearly
nine minutes — which millions watched
aft er a video recording by a passerby
was shared on social media — is widely
considered the impetus for the Black
Lives Matter (BLM) protests that erupted
nationally and globally.
But Floyd’s was far from the only story
of Black people having deadly police
encounters in the early months of 2020.
Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old essential
worker in Kentucky, was asleep in her
home before police executed a no-knock
warrant and killed her in March, and
Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old man, was
jogging before two white men shot him
in a suburban Georgia neighborhood in
February.
As a result of inaction from the police
and judicial system, protests calling for an
end to police brutality began to take place
in New York City at the end of May —
and with it, an aggressive police response
including mass arrests, and a short-lived
curfew instated by Mayor Bill de Blasio.
One of the fi rst protests in Queens took
place in Jackson Heights, where thousands
of people united to march for police
accountability. Th e demonstration culminated
in front of the 115th Precinct, where
community members and some elected
offi cials also called for accountability from
all government structures.
In another early protest, a captain took a
knee with demonstrators in Jamaica. Th e
moment was captured by Esther Lauren,
a Queens nurse on the front lines of
COVID, who off ered to help fellow protesters,
should they need it.
“I think people should be fi nding their
role and knowing how to play it very well.
I knew that I am a nurse, and my role is to
be a nurse at all times,” Lauren told QNS.
For the rest of the summer, barely a day
went by without a demonstration.
Demonstrations and vigils, most of
them non-violent, occurred in many
neighborhoods across Queens, from the
Rockaways to Astoria. Many of these
demonstrations were organized by mutual
aid groups and individual community
members who came together as a result of
the unrest, such as the Queens Liberation
Project.
In June, hundreds joined a paddle out in
Rockaway Beach, organized by the Black
Surfi ng Association in memory of Floyd
and Taylor.
In another instance at Rockaway
Beach, the Urban Youth Collaborative,
a grassroots coalition of students fi ghting
for transformative education reform,
arranged a banner that read “Police Free
Schools!” to fl y over the beach.
In Ridgewood, two mothers organized
the “Kids Peace Movement,” a day of
socially distant talks and a march that
gave kids space to express their own
thoughts about the civil unrest.
“Statistics state that one in 1,000 young
Black males have died at the hands of the
police,” said Emmanuel Gray, a 9-year-old
who gave a speech at the event. “Th is is
scary to me because I’ve always looked up
to the police as protectors and role models
in our community. But as I’m getting
older and older, it’s becoming more confusing
to me when I hear the stories of
Black males being harassed and killed …
just because our skin color appears to be
a threat.”
Hundreds marched toward the
Christopher Columbus statue on Astoria
Photo by Dean Moses
Boulevard to demand its removal,
denouncing it for being a “symbol of
genocide,” with local elected supporting
the idea.
Later in the summer, artists gathered for
a more light-hearted yet emotional event
outside of the Queens Museum to honor
the lives of Taylor and Vanessa Guillén, a
20-year-old U.S. Army specialist based in
Texas who, aft er public and national outcry,
was found dead due to an attack from
a male soldier.
“We will breathe. We will dance. We
will continue to make art,” said Manuela
Agudelo, founder of Kaleidospace and
organizer of the event. “Black and Brown
people aren’t gonna stop existing and
we’re not gonna stop being joyful in the
face of injustice and in the face of the people
who keep trying to harm us.”
Even high school students participated
in the racial reckoning. At Archbishop
Molloy High School, current and former
students called on the school admin-
Photo by Dean Moses Photo by Dean Moses
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