ALL PHOTOS BY KEIKO HIROMI
By the time you read this, more rallies in support of black lives and against police violence are already underway in Mass and elsewhere. Among the dozens of ongoing demonstrations since the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis cop, though, yesterday’s “United Against Racist Police Terror!” in Boston was a rather unique event.
Sunday’s speak out and March was attended by thousands, and was endorsed by a diverse group of organizations including Massachusetts Public Defenders, Pride @ Work (Eastern Mass chapter), Boston Youth Organizing Project (BYOP), Party for Socialism & Liberation, Boston Coalition, Workers World Party, and Dorchester Art Project. As the unified front wrote in advance of the action:
Rebellion has spread to all 50 states since the police lynching of our brother George Floyd. In the middle of a global pandemic and raging socio economic crisis, working class people are mobilizing to defend Black lives, remove police from schools and unions, and redirect funds from the police to social services the people need during a pandemic. Masses of people are rising in solidarity with these rebellions, not just here but all over the world from Minneapolis to Iran.
The state’s response has been only more and more repression coupled with Trump’s Czar-like hubris claiming the “shooting starts, when the looting starts” – but the shootings and murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and George Floyd all happened before the looting. We reject this racist narrative and are committed to building the people’s unity in the fight against the racist police state.
Despite the media narratives that the widespread unrest and generalized rebellion we are witnessing is due to “outside agitators.” No. The agitator is the growing and sprawling police state that kills Black people every 28 hours, deports our immigrant youth, and terrorizes our communities. The conditions that led to these rebellions are homegrown, and they will continue so long as racism, militarism, and economic inequality persist, so too will the people’s righteous indignation against racism! It is right to rebel against racism!
Following a rally by the Ruggles Orange Line station and Boston Police Department headquarters, demonstrators marched peacefully into downtown Boston.
This article was produced in collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism.
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Keiko Hiromi is a Japanese photographer based in Boston and Tokyo, Japan. Her work has appeared on NYT, People Magazine, Vanity Fair, El Pais, Der Spiegel, Boston Globe, PRI, ABC news, and other publications around the globe.
