June 6, 2020

Massive Crowds Protest Police Violence

Hundreds of people take part in a protest at the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington, DC, on June 4, 2020. Rod Lamkey Jr./Sipa via AP Images

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For more than a week, Americans have been in the streets to protest the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery and show no sign of slowing down. Saturday has seen massive demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism, constant conditions facing Black Americans to which these recent killings have drawn renewed attention and outrage. The size of these crowds are all the more noteworthy since, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, gatherings of this size are still discouraged.

Mother Jones has reporters covering some of the protests across the country. Follow along for updates.

5:50 p.m. ET: A stunning shot of the crowds in Philadelphia.

4:30 p.m. ET: Last week, our reporter Dan Friedman broke news when he noticed that federal officers standing watch over the protests bore no identifying insignia and, when asked, would not clearly identify which agency they work for. Today, Friedman is back out there asking the officers which agency they’re with. Again, the answers run the gamut.

3:45 p.m. ET: Doctors have been on the front lines fighting the coronavirus pandemic, and many of them have been alive to the vast racial disparities in who gets and dies from the disease. In Washington, DC, reporters Matt Cohen and Dan Friedman captured a scene that’s become familiar in cities across the country: Doctors, wearing their white coats, protesting on behalf of Black lives.

3:00 p.m. ET: There are more than 10 officially announced Black Lives Matter–affiliated protests in DC today, and many of them have been making their way toward the White House. Our reporter Will Peischel is following a crowd of thousands walking from the National Mall to the White House, and another that came down Constitution Avenue.

2:00 p.m. ET: As demonstrators in Philadelphia make their way from the Museum of Art to City Hall, our reporter Dan Spinelli has captured exchanges between those marching and the police overseeing the protests. On Monday, Philadelphia police used tear gas to break up a protest on a major highway, and those in the streets today are chiding officers for the incident—tying it back to the actions of police brutality that led them to march in the first place.

1:45 p.m. ET: As our reporter Will Peischel wrote on Friday, protesters had rapidly spun up intricate supply chains to ensure those who attended demonstrations had access to food and water throughout the day—as well as face masks and disinfecting cloths. (We’re still in a pandemic, after all!) Those hydration and sanitation stations were still going strong when our reporter Matt Cohen spotted them this afternoon.

12:45 p.m. ET: Our reporter Dan Spinelli noticed that the crowds gathered outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art didn’t have much to say about President Trump, but instead directed much of their ire toward former vice president Joe Biden, who as of last night is officially the Democratic presidential nominee. As reporter Kara Voght wrote on Friday, Biden had not done much to align himself with the Movement for Black Lives during the primary, and his work on the 1994 crime bill—which ushered in an era of mass incarceration and heavy policing—has been a source of criticism.

12:30 p.m. ET: At the newly minted Black Lives Matter Plaza—the intersection of 16th and H streets in downtown Washington, DC, and one block from the White House, where protesters have gathered over the last week—demonstrators gather to say the names of victims of police violence.

Our reporter Matt Cohen spotted Rodney Hall, a National Guard member assigned to watch over the crowds, filming the action. He said he wanted to capture the historic moment, even while he was on the job.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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