BRITAIN is taking a knee outside our doorsteps tonight in solidarity with those who suffer racial oppression and in memory of George Floyd.
Led by civil rights groups, the symbolic protest practice of taking a knee has been all over the news since American footballer Colin Kaepernick did it in 2016.
Brits are taking the knee at 6pm tonight (June 10) in solidarity with those who suffer racial oppression all over the world.
Black Lives Matter and Stand Up To Racism are urging everyone to do the same.
Stand Up To Racism is an anti-racism campaign group who are calling on Brits to protest against racism by taking the knee.
It will happen TODAY (June 10) at 6pm and asks people to get on one knee on their doorsteps for the second week running.
The group has chosen the doorstep event as “we are in the midst of the deadly coronavirus global pandemic”.
The action of “taking the knee” is inspired by American footballer Colin Kaepernick who in 2016 started a kneeling protest, which scuppered his career.
On May 25, 46-year-old black father of six, George Floyd, was handcuffed and thrown to the floor by four police thugs over what was only believed to be a fake $20 bill.
Floyd was slowly murdered by Derek Chauvin in broad daylight as he cried and screamed into the pavement that he couldn’t breathe because Chauvin was kneeling on his neck.
Chauvin and the officers who also knelt on the handcuffed man did not do anything to help Mr Floyd and continued to suffocate him for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. Three of which he was unconscious.
The 10-minute video, filmed by a 17-year-old girl who watched Floyd’s murder, and the callousness with which the killers, whose job was to “protect and serve”, went viral.
The murder is the latest in a long string of black people being killed or having their lives destroyed by systemic racist criminalisation and policing and the complete lack of police accountability.
Addressing Floyd’s murderer, Daily Show host Trevor Noah put it: “There was a black man on the ground in handcuffs and you could take his life so you did, almost knowing that there would be no ramifications.”
The latest murder was the tipping point that triggered global protests that have seen repeated and well-documented acts of further police brutality against peaceful protesters in the US.
The protests have exposed racist institutionalised attitudes and policies across the world and local governments are starting to make changes.
In the meantime, President Trump has come under fire for his racist, violent and inflammatory rhetoric from all sides, including former Chief of Staffs and four-star generals like James “Mad Dog/Chaos” Mattis.
On Monday June 1, Trump slammed the peaceful protesters standing outside the White House.
He then had them teargassed and shot at with rubber bullets so he could walk over to a church and pose with a Bible that he held upside-down and back to front.
Other than taking part in the June 10 campaign, there are plenty of other ways to help the black community longer term.
You can donate directly to Stand Up To Racism, plus many other UK based organisations including:
There are also petitions on websites like change.org that allow you to further support the cause.
Black educators have urged people to read up on topics such as white privilege and acknowledge the UK’s racism issues rather than seeing it as a US problem.
Black Lives Matter is a civil rights group that came about in response to extreme police brutality which culminated in the shooting deaths of three African-American men in 2013.
It came to light in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the deadly shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin.
It began with a simple hashtag – #BlackLivesMatter – before people began taking to the streets to protest against inequality and violence.
Black Lives Matter regularly campaigns against institutional racism and violence towards black people, and speaks out against police brutality and racial inequality.
Organisers say the movement’s mission is to “eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities”.
More than 1,000 people were killed by police in the US in 2015, nearly a third of them black.
This is despite the fact that black people represent just 13 per cent of the population.
Against this background there was the fatal shootings of Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Ahmaud Arbery in 2020.
