The global George Floyd protests should be analyzed and honored as the largest anti-racism, pro-black human lives, and anti-police brutality protests in human history back in 2020. I have in my late 30s back then, and people were outraged at the murder of George Floyd, a 46 years old unarmed African American man. The protesters wanted to promote the fight of African Americans to have civil rights, justice, police accountability, and true liberation. We know of the Watts rebellion in 1965 in Los Angeles (34 people, mostly African Americans died during that situation). We know of the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion in response to the acquittal of police officers who used excessive force against the black American Rodney King. The Black Lives Movement was created in 2013 after Trayvon Martin's killer was found not guilty in court. There was the 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, resulted in local protests and unrest while the killing of Eric Garner in New York City resulted in numerous national protests. In 2015, the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore police custody resulted in riots in the city and nationwide protests as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. Several nationally publicized incidents occurred in Minnesota, including the 2015 shooting of Jamar Clark in Minneapolis; the 2016 shooting of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights; and the 2017 shooting of Justine Damond. In 2016, Tony Timpa was killed by Dallas police officers in the same way as George Floyd. In August 2019, Elijah McClain died after Aurora police ordered paramedics to administer ketamine under dubious circumstances. In March 2020, the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor by police executing a search warrant at her Kentucky apartment was also widely publicized. After Eric Garner and George Floyd repeatedly said "I can't breathe" during their arrests, the phrase became a protest slogan against police brutality.
The first organized protests started on May 26, 2020, in Minneapolis. The vast majority of the protests nationally and internationally were peaceful. Some people used violence, and we all condemn violence against innocent people and against innocent property. Violence has nothing to do with self defense or civil disobedience. It has to do with evil rebellion against goodness being anti-social behavior. Rebellion against goodness is evil. There were protests in May 27, 2020 in Memphis and Los Angeles. By May 28, protests had sprung up in several major U.S. cities with demonstrations increasing each day. By June, protests had been held in all U.S. states. At least 200 cities had imposed curfews, and at least 27 states and Washington, D.C., activated over 62,000 National Guard personnel in response to the unrest. In Seattle, starting in early June, protesters occupied an area of several city blocks after the police vacated it, declaring it the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, where according to protesters "the police are forbidden, food is free and documentaries are screened at night." On June 11, President Trump challenged mayor Jenny Durkan and Governor Jay Inslee to "take back your city", and implying, according to Durkan, the possibility of a military response.
On June 10, thousands of academics, universities, scientific institutions, professional bodies and publishing houses around the world shut down to give researchers time to reflect and act upon anti-Black racism in academia. Organizations involved with #ShutDownSTEM day included Nature Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the American Physical Society. On June 14, an estimated 15,000 people gathered outside the Brooklyn Museum at Grand Army Plaza for the Liberation March, a silent protest in response to police brutality and violence against black transgender women. Frustrated by the lack of media coverage over the deaths of Nina Pop, who was stabbed in Sikeston, Missouri, on May 3 and Tony McDade, who was shot by police in Tallahassee, Florida, on May 27, artist and drag performer West Dakota and her mentor, drag queen Merrie Cherry, decided to organize a silent rally inspired by the 1917 NAACP Silent Parade. The march generated widespread media attention as one of the largest peaceful protests in modern New York City history. On June 19, Juneteenth, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) shut down ports on the West Coast in solidarity with protesters. An educator from the University of Washington said that the union has a history of protest and leftist politics since its founding: "[The ILWU] understood that division along the lines of race only benefited employers, because it weakened the efforts of workers to act together and to organize together. The UAW also asked members to join the protests by standing down for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time Chauvin was initially reported to have held his knee to Floyd's neck.
On June 17, in response to the protests, three different police reform plans, plans from the Republicans, the Democrats, and the White House, were unveiled aiming to curb police brutality and the use of violence by law enforcement. On June 25, NPR reported that the hopes for passage were doubtful because they were "short-circuited by a lack of bipartisan consensus on an ultimate plan [and] the issue is likely stalled, potentially until after the fall election." Protests continued over the weekend of June 19 in many cities, and observations of Juneteenth gained a new awareness. Jon Batiste, bandleader for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, took part in a Juneteenth day of protests, marches, rallies and vigils to "celebrate, show solidarity, and fight for equal rights and treatment of Black people" in Brooklyn. Batiste also appeared in concert with Matt Whitaker in a performance presented in partnership with Sing For Hope, performed on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library.
By the end of June 2020, more than 4,700 demonstrations had occurred in the United States—a daily average of 140—with an estimate of 15 million and 26 million total participants. Protests had occurred in over 40% of the counties in the United States. Protests in the aftermath of Floyd's murder were then considered the largest in United States history. As of July 3, protests were ongoing. On July 4, the Independence Day holiday in the United States, several protests were held, including in several cities where protests had been going on since the day after Floyd's murder. On July 20, the Strike for Black Lives, a mass walkout intended to raise awareness of systemic racism, featured thousands of workers across the United States walking off their jobs for approximately 8 minutes, in honor of Floyd. The theme for the March on Washington held in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 2020, was, "Commitment March: Get Your Knee Off Our Necks", a reference to Floyd's arrest by Chauvin. Over the Labor Day holiday weekend, which the Saturday marked 100 nights of protests since Floyd's murder, marches and rallies where held in many cities. In Miami, Florida, protesters on September 7, 2020, commemorated Floyd's murder and pressured local authorities to enact changes to policing policies, such as banning chokeholds during arrests. Protests continued in 2021 too like in Portland, New York City, etc. There were protests on June 6-7, 2020, in Senegal, Australia, France, and in other places from Santa Monica to New York state.
Protesters in London rallied outside the United States embassy on May 22, 2021. Protesters remarked that the Chauvin murder conviction was "a small amount of justice of what [George Floyd] really deserves." The protest was among of new set of peaceful protests in the United Kingdom to mark the one-year anniversary of Floyd's murder. On May 25, 2021, protesters took the streets in Germany and demonstrators took a knee in and raised their fists at rallies in Glasgow, London, and Edinburgh. Rallies were held outside U.S. Embassies in Greece and Spain. For some, the so-called "George Floyd effect" had demonstrators and activists connecting historic racism and social injustice to contemporary, local examples of police brutality. Movements spawned by Floyd's murder, which served as a catalyst, were still active in Australia, Brazil, India, Japan, New Zealand, Nigeria, United Kingdom, and elsewhere by May 2021. In Canada and France, where Floyd's murder initiated protests, activists were unsatisfied with the levels of reform made by officials at nearly a year after Floyd's murder.
In Australia, the Black Lives Matter movement sparked calls for white people to be more aware of race relations within the country. "Australia Day" is celebrated in the nation as the date the country was founded. The Black Lives Matter movement in Australia sought emphasis on acknowledging the colonial history of Australia, however, by changing "Australia Day" to "Invasion Day" in recognition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were massacred when the European settlement was established in Australia on January 26, 1788. There were protests in Japan and Naomi Osaka expressed excitement about that reality. Naomi Osaka has a Haitian father and a Japanese mother. She is in favor of respecting black human lives and opposes police brutality.
Viola Davis was born on August 11, 1965, in St. Matthews, South Carolina. Her parents are Mae Alice Davis and Dan Davis. She was born on her grandmother's farm on the Singleton Planation. Her father was a horse trainer, and her mother was a maid, factory worker, and homemaker. She is the 2nd youngest of six children, having four sisters and a brother. Soon, after she was born, her parents moved Davis and her two of her older siblings to Central Falls, Rhode Island, leaving her other siblings with her grandparents. Her mother was also an activist during the Civil Rights Movement. When she was two years old, Davis was taken to jail with her mother after she was arrested during a civil rights protest. She has described herself as having "lived in abject poverty and dysfunction" during her childhood, recalling living in "rat-infested and condemned" apartments. Davis is a second cousin of actor Mike Colter, known for portraying the Marvel Comics character Luke Cage.
Davis attended Central Falls High School, the alma mater to which she partially credits her love of stage acting with her involvement in the arts. When she was a teenager, she was involved in the federal TRIO Upward Bound and TRIO Student Support Services program. She was enrolled at the Young People's School for Performing Arts in West Warwick, Rhode Island. Davis's talent was recognized by a director at the program, Bernard Masterson. After she graduated from high school, Davis studied at Rhode Island College, majoring in theater and participating in the National Student Exchange before graduating in 1988. Then, she attended the Julliard School of Performing Arts in New York City for four years. Davis was part of the school's Drama Division Group 22 from 1989 to 1993. In a 2025 interview, Viola Davis said they gave her a whitewash interpretation of acting instead of being a better actor. She explained that formal technical training she received helped her play classic roles from Shakespeare, Chekov, O'Neill, and Strindberg, but added "what it denies is the human being behind all that, and as a black actress I'm always asked to show range by doing white work." She noted that "I can do the best that I can with Tennessee Williams but he writes for fragile white women. Beautiful work, but it's not me." She opined that black playwrights such as August Wilson and Lorraine Hansberry aren't studied in the same way as the others she had learned from. Therefore, Viola Davis would later take on more revolutionary roles.
Viola Davis started her early work in the professional stage in theater. Back in 1992, Davis starred in the off Broadway production of William Shakespeare's comedy As You Like It as Denis alongside Elizabeth McGovern at the Delacorte Theater. In 1996, Viola Davis made her Broadway debut in the original Broadway production of August Wilson's Seven Guitars as Vera (alongside Keith David). The play opened on Broadway on March 6, 1996 at the Walter Kerr Theater. She earned critical praise of her performance. She earned her Screen Actors Guild card in 1996 for doing one day of work, playing a nurse who passes a vial of blood to Timothy Hutton in the film The Substance of Fire in 1996. She was paid $518. Davis continued to act in off Broadway in various production. She was on television shows like episodes of NYPD Blue in 1996 and New York Undercover in 1996. She was in the HBO television military comedy film, The Pentagon Wars (1996) starring Kelsey Grammer, and Cary Elwes. In 1998, she played a small role in Steven Soderbergh's crime comedy film Out of Sight (1999).
As time goes on in life, you have to grow. No one is the same person identically now than years or decades ago. The reason is that we have diverse experiences, we met tons of different people, we read a wide spectrum of literature over time, and we receive advice from numerous quarters. Back in the 1990s, Bill Clinton was President. I researched many issues, and America back then during the 1990s had some political polarization with Newt Gingrich, the radio host Rush Limbaugh, and other people. Yet, even in the 1990s, America was nowhere near as polarized as today. When the Clinton impeachment hearings came about in 1999, I was in high school. Most of the country supported Clinton. Back then, my political views were more Democratic back in the 1990s. By 1990's, I knew about the Atlantis stories, Freemasonry, and other religious views. I believed in God. During the 2000s, Bush Jr. was President. I embraced a lot of conspiracy related information by the early 2000s about the CFR, the Bohemian Grove, the Bilderberg Group, and other information. I read information from Robert Howard's HardTruth website, Cutting Edge Ministries information, and other sites that exposed Freemasonry during the 2000s. When 9/11 happened, I started to research more information, created by blog in 2005, and had many conservative views on religion. The 9/11 Truth Movement grew during that time. My view as I have gotten older is that I agree with many parts of the 9/11 Truth movement and disagree with other aspects of it today. Still, I was more progressive on the war on terror, civil liberties, and other issues. The Iraq War started in 2003, and I opposed the Iraq War by June 2003. By this time, I had views which were progressive, conservative, and libertarian. I saw the election of President Barack Obama in 2008. There was euphoria among our people in the street. My view is that I disagreed with Obama on some issues, but I admired the love that Barack Obama has for his wife, First Lady Michelle Obama. Barack Obama would have a mixed legacy of President executing great policies for America (in fighting for equal pay, going about to invest in HBCUs, and other actions) along with making errors (especially on a neoliberal foreign policy). With the Great Recession by 2007 and 2008, my economic views did change. Seeing more poor people in the streets and massive economic upheaval, I had to re-evaluate much of my views (in rejecting Austrian economics) to be completely economically progressive by 2010. By 2010 and to 2015, my views became more refined to support justice and the intersectional aspects of the human race. By 2015, I researched more about progressive ideals and became more in favor of human liberation. By the 2020s and in 2025, I view are clear. I have my core convictions. I wrote down many words exposing the real doctrines of Freemasonry, the Boule, the Skulls and Bones, the O.T.O. the Eastern Star, and other occult secret societies in opposition to them because they have bizarre, offensive oaths, some praise false Greco-Roman gods (like numerous fraternities and sororities), and many have the agenda to control the mass of the people while getting power for themselves. Still, I disagree with these secret orders and likeminded organizations. That hasn't changed. After almost a half of century of me living on this Earth, I am man enough to admit my mistakes, reject falsehoods, and be a better human being as time has gone onward. Me being almost 50 years old is very surreal, and I appreciative of life in a genuinely sincere way. Now, I still express my dissent with these secret orders and organization because truth is superior to falsehoods. I believe in spirituality, I believe in social justice, I believe in equality for all, I endorse care and improvement of the environment, and I have grown to follow the principle that economic justice is a necessity. In terms of the Trump movement, everyone knows that I am opposed to it. I have seen a lot in the world, and I will continue to be inspire to show the truth to the people without apology.
Queen Mother Moore was one of the greatest black activists in human history who lived from July 27, 1898, to May 2, 1997. She was a civil rights leader and a black nationalist who promoted Pan-African unity. She was friends with many people of the black freedom movement. She worked with many civil rights leaders and black activists like Marcus Garvey, Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela, Rosa Parks, and Jesee Jackson. She was born in the South in New Iberia, Louisiana to Ella and St. Cry Moore. Her father, St. Cyr Moore, served as deputy sheriff of Iberia Parish. Cry Moore would be married three times and fathered eight children. During his marriage to Ella Moore, Queen Mother Moore was the eldest of three, Lorita and Eloise. As children, Moore and her sisters went to Saint Catherine’s Catholic school. Moore's mother died when she was six years old, and she and her sisters were placed in the care of their maternal grandmother. Her grandmother, Nora Henry, had been born into slavery, and when Moore’s mother Ella was a child, her grandfather was lynched, leaving Ella and her siblings in the care of their mother. Moore and her siblings would later return to the care of their father in New Orleans, but he would pass away when she was in the fourth grade and she would drop out shortly after. The inheritance intended for Moore and her sisters was claimed by a half-brother that put them out of their home. To support herself and her sisters, Moore took her father's mules to auction and used the money to rent a home. She would later lie about her age in order to become a hairdresser, a position that would support them for some time.
Queen Mother Moore started her activism during her teenage years. Moore and her sisters mobilized their neighbors during World War I to provide aid to black recruits upon learning that the Red Cross was only providing sustenance for white soldiers. Her sister Eloise established what could be called the first United Service Organizations in Anniston, Alabama; she found space in an unused building where black soldiers could go to relax, a privilege previously only afforded to white soldiers. In 1919, Moore learned of Marcus Garvey and went to hear him speak in New Orleans in 1920. By this time, Moore had married, and she and her three sisters gained a "new consciousness" of their African heritage after Garvey's speech. After attending a speech by Marcus Garvey, Moore had begun preparing herself to move to Africa with her husband. However, after facing family issues she remained in the United States, moving first to California then to Chicago, before settling in Harlem, New York, with her husband and sisters in 1922. Moore moved through activist groups often; before joining the Communist Party USA around 1933, Moore joined the International Labor Defense. In the Communist Party, she found a new consciousness of "the society under which we live, an analysis of the system under which we live". Moore worked with the party for some time, but she resigned in 1950, believing the party was no longer working in the best interest of Black people.
After meeting Mary McLeod Bethune in Washington, Moore became a life member of the Council of Negro Women. It was with Bethune that Moore would make the first of many speeches to crowds of those interested in the fight for civil rights. Moore later became a leader and life member of the UNIA, founded in 1914 by Marcus Garvey. She participated in Garvey's first international convention in New York City and was a stock owner in the Black Star Line. Along with becoming a leading figure in the Civil Rights Movement, Moore worked for a variety of causes for over 60 years. Her last public appearance was at the Million Man March alongside Jesse Jackson during October 1995. Moore was the founder and president of the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women, as well as the founder of the Committee for Reparations for Descendants of U.S. Slaves. She was a founding member of the Republic of New Afrika to fight for self-determination, land, and reparations. In 1964, Moore founded the Eloise Moore College of African Studies, Mt. Addis Ababa, in Parksville, New York. The college was destroyed by fire in the late 1970s. For most of the 1950s and 1960s, Moore was the best-known advocate of African-American reparations. Operating out of Harlem and her organization, the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women, Moore actively promoted reparations from 1950 until her death.
Although raised Catholic, Moore disaffiliated during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, during which she felt Pope Pius XII took improper actions in supporting the Italian army. Moore went between religions, from being a missionary in the Baptist Church, a member of the Apostolic Orthodox Church of Judah, and was later baptized into the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. She was also a founding member of the Commission to Eliminate Racism of the Council of Churches of Greater New York. In organizing this commission, she staged a 24-hour sit-in for three weeks. Moore was also a co-founder of the African American Cultural Foundation, Inc., which led the fight against usage of the slave term "Negro." In 1957, Moore presented a petition to the United Nations and in 1959 a second petition, arguing for self-determination, against genocide, for land and reparations, making her an international advocate. Interviewed by E. Menelik Pinto, Moore explained the petition, in which she asked for 200 billion dollars to monetarily compensate for 400 years of enslavement. The petition also called for compensations to be given to African Americans who wished to return to Africa and those who wished to remain in America. Moore was the first signatory of the New African agreement.
Moore travelled to Africa numerous times between 1972 and 1977. On her first trip to Africa in 1972, she travelled to Guinea for Dr. Kwame Nkrumah's funeral, before being called to Ghana by a chief. In Ghana, she was bestowed with the honorific title "Queen Mother" by the Ashanti in a ceremony. She later returned to Africa for the All-African Women's Conference in Tanzania. She also travelled to Guinea Bissau as the guest of Amilcar Cabral, to Nigeria for the World Festival of Black Arts and Culture and returned to Tanzania for the Sixth Pan-African Congress in Dar es Salaam and went to Uganda. In 1990, Blakely took her to meet Nelson Mandela after he left prison in South Africa. This was done at the residence of President Kenneth Kaunda in Lusaka, Zambia.
Moore officially integrated a stance on reparations into her activism work in the 1960s, when forming the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women (UAEW). Moore founded the UAEW in Louisiana in response to working on cases of rape and other sexual violence against Black women. Through her work with the UAEW, Moore advocated for policy such as welfare benefits as a form of reparations for the sexual violence inflicted on Black women by white men. The UAEW also created an extensive mutual aid network, collecting food and other resources for Black women who lost access to welfare benefits due to being falsely deemed unfit mothers under Suitable Home Law, a set of policies that targeted women who did not conform to ideals of white motherhood and domesticity.
In 1962, Moore moved to Philadelphia and joined the National Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Observance Committee (NEPCOC), around the same time that the group was overhauling its mission, transitioning from a commemorative organization to one that was active in the fight for civil rights. In April 1962, the group held All-Africans Freedom Day Celebrations, where the NEPCOC announced its national mission to fight for reparations. While it appears that this action may not have materialized, the NEPCOC did organize a series of lectures on the topic of reparations, some of which include Moore as a keynote speaker.
She advocated for a stance that recognized that the violence inflicted on African people during the time periods of the Middle Passage, Jim Crow Laws, and Slavery were a form of cultural destruction, and that extensive grassroots work and economic restitution was needed to restore communities. Her particular stance is credited as playing a large role in imagining the role that Black women play in reparations work within the context of creating diasporic African communities and calling for economic reparations. She was part of the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) promoted a developed a consciousness toward civil rights that appeals to international institutions.
One particularly formative moment for Moore was in 1951, when chairman of the CRC William Patterson submitted a petition to the United Nations titled "We Charge Genocide." This petition revealed many of the abuses suffered by Black Americans and demanded action from the international community. Moore worked with Patterson, and through this work began to integrate strategies such as appealing to international networks and institutions as a mechanism of reparations action, situating her work within an internationalist framework.
In 1996, Blakely assisted Moore in enstooling Winnie Mandela in the presence of the Ausar Auset Society International at the Lowes Victoria Theater (New York City) at 125th Street, Harlem. The first African-American Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel, NYC Mayor David Dinkins and U.S. presidential candidate Jesse Jackson honored, supported, acknowledged, respected and insured the well-being of Moore as a royal elder in the Harlem community. Sonia Sanchez, voice of the liberation struggle of a people, was a God-daughter adored by Moore. On May 2, 1997, Moore died in a Brooklyn nursing home from natural causes, at the age of 98
By Timothy
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