On Oct. 10, students marched from Georgetown’s front gates to those of the White House in opposition to excessive police force used against black men and women in the U.S. The theme of march was“Black Bodies are Beings.”
The approximately 35 undergraduate and graduate student marchers were given a police escort through the streets as they held signs and chanted to protest the shootings of unarmed black men and women by police officers in America. Raquel King (MSFS), organized the march in response to what she saw as a lack of graduate student engagement in this activism at Georgetown.
“I noticed that the undergrads were doing things, but us as graduates we were doing nothing,” said King. “I did it to just show that us as young professionals, we care. Because they always tell us we’re ‘the young generation,’ ‘we don’t care about anything,’ ‘our head are in the clouds’–no, we care. Especially with this election coming up.”
King was politically active at Spelman College, where she completed her undergraduate, but this was the first march she had organized herself. Before the march began, she emotionally addressed students circled around her, taking pauses to collect herself before continuing her call for justice reform.
“It’s not right that people who have already been through so much, my people who have been through so much, [are] still continuing to [struggle],” said King. “You know, the justice system is supposed to be changing, it’s supposed to be evolving with time, and it seems like we’re back in [the fight for] civil rights. This [march] isn’t for one specific person, this is for everybody.”
The march drew a diverse crowd of students from different years, programs, and races. The event, publicized on Facebook, gained the interest of approximately 300 people online, although the turnout was much lower. King said she wished more marchers had shown up, but acknowledged the difficulty of taking time off from work for students and young professionals.
Austin Riddick (COL ‘20), one of the marchers, noted that in the two months he has been on campus, he has already experienced the effect of Georgetown’s isolation from the rest of the city.
“I feel like, going to Georgetown, it’s a huge bubble,” said Riddick. “We’re in the capital and we have such stark inequality. I’m fortunate enough to go here, but I have a responsibility to show that I care about people who don’t have the same opportunities that I do.”
Hanna Chan (COL ‘19) described her motivations as an ally in the march as wanting to further expand the discussion around race relations in America.
“I’m marching because, as an Asian-American, anti-blackness is a conversation that we rarely have,” said Chan. “It’s not just white people realizing the struggles of people of color, it’s also other people of color standing with black Americans.”
The marchers’ chants included ““What do we want? Change! When do we want it? Now!”, “I am the future, my life matters”, and “Silence is violence.” The protest was peaceful, but did not go without some comments from the sidelines. One heckler shouted at the students, but when interviewed, refused to give his name. He commented that the Black Lives Matter movement had incentivized people to target and kill police officers more frequently.
“It’s not like blacks get shot more than other people do, it’s just whenever a black person gets into one of these judicial shootings, that’s when the media shows it,” said the heckler. “[The protesters] are all a bunch of kids who have no perspective. They want to be involved in civil rights. I appreciate that, but this is a joke movement.”
The comments did not slow down the marchers as they reached the White House within an hour. Students paused to chant in the road in front of the president’s house, then disbanded to return to Georgetown. King hopes that the march will bring attention to the activism of both graduates and undergraduates on campus.
“I would like to create a discussion, and have people voice their opinions. It’s not just the campus issues we’ve been having [with the slaves and their descendants], it’s about the nation as a whole,” said King. “I was just doing this today out of frustration and out of love for my people. Because if you just don’t do anything at all, how are you going to expect any type of change?”
Cassidy Jensen contributed reporting.
