On Friday, tens of thousands of people assembled in Washington, DC, United States (US) , to stand against racism, police brutality, and to commemorate the civil rights anniversary march of 1963 where Martin Luther King Jr made his historic “I Have a Dream” speech.
In the famous address, King had highlighted the “horrors of police brutality” and spoken about his dream of living in a country where his children “will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”.
This year in the US, the civil rights march comes after a summer filled with wide-scaled protests against continuous racial injustice over police killings of African-Americans.
This year the fresh ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests emerged after killing of George Floyd, who like many other victims died from suffocation after a white police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes.
The protest on Friday named the “Commitment March: Get Your Knee Off Our Necks,” gained a new momentum recently after the police shot another Black man, Jacob Blake Jr., seven times continuously at a close range in front of his young sons in southeastern Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Amongst many other speakers, the civil rights march this year was addressed at the Lincoln Memorial by Martin Luther King III and families of an ever-growing list of black people killed by the police.
After the speeches, families of victims of police violence led the participants to march to the Martin Luther King memorial.
This year, amid coronavirus pandemic, organizers estimate around 50,000 people taking part in the march. Moreover, hundreds of thousands also took part in the march through a virtual commemoration, which had civil rights activists, politicians, entertainers and celebrities in the panel.
Overall, all speakers spoke about the importance of justice, police reform, hope, the significance of voting in the 2020 US elections being held in November and some even referred to John Lewis, the late lawmaker who spoke at the 1963 march.