When I woke up on the morning of May 31, something felt very different in my neighborhood. I’d only been back from my exodus in Utah for two weeks and the COVID-19 pandemic was still raging, but even so, things felt extra strange as I walked around the block! For starters, the local Starbucks was boarded up, surrounded by shattered glass with the cash drawer unceremoniously dumped in the flower beds! What the heck had I slept through?

I walked along Melrose Avenue and saw that more places had been boarded up. Practically every business window between Highland and La Brea had been smashed then covered with boards! Police cars were everywhere, even the National Guard! This was a scene out of some kind of horror movie, but there was something strange on most of the boards, messages like “We <3 You. Stay Strong" and "#BLACKLIVESMATTER EVERYTHINGS GONE! GO IN PEACE.” Where there was glass left to look through, I could see that these places had been ransacked!

Five days ago in Minneapolis, police arrested a fellow named George Floyd under suspicion of using a counterfeit $20 bill, and one of the officers kneeled on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, suffocating him. He was dead for two minutes before the officer released him! Mr. Floyd had a rough past for sure, in and out of prison from 1997 to 2007, but he’d come to Minneapolis in 2014 to turn his life around through rehab and religiously based community service. As a well known member of his community, his death, caught on video and broadcast around the world, ignited a firestorm of outrage!

Here in Los Angeles, home of the infamous Watts Rebellion of 1965 and the Rodney King riots of 1992, folks were having none of it! With cries of “I can’t breathe,” “No justice, no peace,” and “Defund the police,” traditional protestors rallied in parks, while audacious protestors blocked off the entire 110 Freeway, while some took their anger up another level, pillaging shops and setting police cars on fire! Since yesterday, Los Angeles County has been under a state of emergency!

Even if George Floyd was killed over a thousand miles away, he was far from the only Black person (the capital B is becoming standard) to be killed unjustly by police. In the days following the protests, a window display went up with a list of 100 Black folks murdered by officers in the last 8 years, from 17-year old Trayvon Martin in 2012, who inspired the Black Lives Matter movement, to Sandra Bland, found hanged to death in a jail cell after a traffic stop, to Philando Castile, who was shot seven times in his car during a traffic stop! Nationally, data suggests that Black folks are between 2.5 times and 3.23 times more likely than white folks to be killed by police! That anger has been there a while, but after more than two months of pandemic shutdowns, the video of Mr. Floyd gasping “I can’t breathe” was the spark to blow the powder keg!

In the two weeks after the Melrose looting, protests against police brutality have popped up across the globe, on every continent except Antarctica! The conversation has ranged from holding cities accountable for over-policing (Los Angeles has earmarked 41% of its entire budget to the LAPD) to citing the $1-2 billion in property damage as a reason to give the police more money! In short, it’s been the same two sides that have been battling over wearing masks during the pandemic: Black Lives Matter vs. Blue Lives Matter turning the whole country black-and-blue. In my neighborhood, at least, more colors have been popping up. Windows are expensive, and with COVID closures, shop owners are strapped for cash, meaning the boards are going to be up a while. But what could have been an apocalyptic eyesore has turned into a street art gallery, part of the #artforlasboards initiative!

In the face of unrest and disease, the art now lining both sides of Melrose has been a breath of fresh air! The works have overwhelmingly been messages of encouragement, unity, and validation, showing a desire to move forward toward a better world!

One of the highlights was a collaborative mural installed on the boards over the looted Golden Apple Comics shop! Featuring work by artists, Tayen Kim, Cassey Kuo, Jonathan Hsu, and Six, this mural showcased Black superheroes from Miles Morales and the Black Panther to Storm and Moon Girl!

But there were also quotes and aphorisms, reminders that we’re not living in the age of sunshine and flowers. One of them stood out to me because June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month, commemorating the Stonewall Rebellion against police brutality in 1969. That quote was:

“You can’t support [the] movement and be homophobic. Black Lives Matter is not exclusive to cis and straight black people.”

This illustrates something called intersectionality, which was coined by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989. It’s a study of how systems of oppression and discrimination can impact folks similarly across intersecting social identities, like race, gender, and financial status. Here in LA, apart from the Watts and Rodney King, the LAPD also harassed folks on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, which led to the Cooper Do-Nuts riot in 1959 and the Black Cat Tavern protest in 1967. So naturally, it would make sense for the LGBTQ+ community to back the Black Lives Matter. After all, since 2018, the traditional rainbow Pride flag has added black, brown, white, and pink to be more inclusive across intersections!

And it had a promising start. With LA’s 50th Pride parade canceled for COVID, the organizers at Christopher Street West decided to mark the occasion with a solidarity march instead, more in the style of the original events on June 28, 1970. There were some problems though: the mostly white organizers used “Black Lives Matter” in their promotions but didn’t actually consult with any Black-led organizations. Plus, the event permit emphasized their “strong and unified partnership with law enforcement,” which was pretty tone-deaf!

Fortunately, the backlash led to LA Pride leaders sitting down with Black members of the LGBTQ+ community for a big rethinking of this year’s event. Those leaders included Compton Pride founder, Princess Murray, Pastor Sammie Haynes, and Brandon Anthony, a business leader in Black LGBTQ+ nightlife! They agreed to center this intersectional march on remembering Tony McDade, a Black trans man who’d just been shot to death by a police officer in Tallahassee on May 27th. With the understanding that Black and LGBTQ+ folks would be united against police brutality, this would specifically be called the All Black Lives Matter march. Christopher Street West would step back from organizing, the march would not involve the LAPD in any way, and the usual corporate sponsors would be replaced by local, Black-owned businesses!

The march kicked off on Sunday morning, June 14th, at Hollywood and Highland, where a block-long, rainbow-colored “All Black Lives Matter” mural covered the street! The route would curve down La Brea onto Santa Monica Boulevard and conclude in West Hollywood at the intersection with San Vicente, almost four miles away! Face masks were encouraged, and widely worn as anywhere between 20,000 and 50,000 participants showed up to march! And this was just a drop in the national bucket! According to the Pew Research Center, between 15 to 26 million people took part in these protests nationwide, making it the largest social movement in U.S. history! These have also been diverse protests, with 54% of supporters being white and 26% coming from other races and ethnicities to back the #BlackLivesMatter rallying cry!

But will all of this make a difference? It all comes down to location. Cities like Los Angeles, Austin, and New York cut their police budgets, while others like Sacramento, Houston, and Atlanta raised theirs. 30 states have made other changes to law enforcement rules, from use of force (e.g. chokeholds and rubber bullets), to making officers responsible for stopping misconduct among their peers, to centralizing misconduct reporting so bad cops don’t just change departments! How much of a difference any of this will ultimately make for Black folks in America remains to be seen, but each step counts, and with them come the reminders that, with no justice, there can be no peace!