The Global Fight for Black Lives

The Global Fight for Black Lives

The Black Lives Matter protests that swept across America after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, were the largest in the country’s long history of mass movements for civil rights and racial justice. At least 15 million Americans demonstrated in 2,500 towns and cities, setting off a tidal wave of support. Hundreds of thousands of people in London, Sydney, Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, Stockholm, Tokyo, and many other communities took to the streets in solidarity. Captured on video, the raw power of Floyd’s horrifying death brought to the surface local issues of racial ...

Assa Traoré, France:

Over the past four years, 35-year-old Assa Traoré has turned her quest to achieve justice for her brother Adama’s death into a passionate high-profile campaign to end racial discrimination throughout the country and beyond. Her image has become so recognizable that French R&B artist Mallaury wrote a song titled “Assa.” “I wish I had the courage of Assa,” go the lyrics. “Head high, arms raised, you lead the fight.” Traoré is quick to say the struggle is not about her: “My brother Adama is not here, so I have to be his voice and the voice of resistance to the ...

Khady Gueye, England:

In June, as Black Lives Matter protests proliferated, Khady Gueye decided to organize a show of solidarity in Lydney, her hometown in rural southwest England. Gueye, a 25-year-old college student, together with her best friend, obtained permission from the local council. “We were planning a small, peaceful demonstration in the park,” says Gueye, who is mixed-race Senegalese-British. “I didn’t think anyone would object.” Some in the idyllic country town had other ideas. A local woman started an online petition to cancel the protest due to the coronavirus, collecting 800 signatures—almost 10 percent of Lydney’s population. “At first, people said we ...

Katimi Ai, Japan:

On a rainy afternoon in mid-June, Japanese-Nigerian DJ Katimi Ai (the name she uses professionally), 29, marched through central Tokyo with 3,500 other demonstrators to protest the killing of George Floyd. She carried a sign in English that read, “No Justice. No Peace. Enough Is Enough.” Japan’s capital is 6,000 miles away from Minneapolis, but the issues raised by the U.S. BLM rallies felt close to home. “The typical attitude in Japan is that discrimination and racial conflict are mostly American problems,” she says. “But I know firsthand that they exist here too.” Ai’s Nigerian father left Japan when she ...

Ariam Tekle, Italy:

Until recently, Ariam Tekle found it hard to talk to her white friends about race. “Whenever the subject of discrimination in Italy came up, the first reaction of my friends was to say they were not racist,” says the 32-year-old documentary filmmaker. “I had to explain that I was talking about the system, not about individuals, but they still seemed offended,” she says. Italians living in modern multicultural cities such as Milan like to see themselves as colorblind, despite the fact that Black Italians lag behind whites in areas such as job opportunities and higher education, she adds. In May, ...

Djamila Ribeiro, Brazil:

“The issue of Black identity is tricky for many Black Brazilians,” says feminist philosopher and author Djamila Ribeiro, 40, one of the country’s most powerful advocates for Black rights. “Most of us are descended from African slaves, but we have no idea which countries our ancestors came from because former white slave traders destroyed all the records.” To help keep their children connected to their roots at least partly, Ribeiro says, her parents gave them all African first names; Djamila is a North African Arabic name meaning “radiant beauty.” “Black consciousness started from birth,” she says. “My parents taught me ...

Banchi Yimer, Canada

Banchi Yimer, 32, escaped her grueling life as a domestic worker in Lebanon almost three years ago. Born in Ethiopia, she went to the Middle East in 2011 at the age of 23 with the promise of a well-paid job. Instead, she worked for seven years in conditions of modern-day slavery. “I was told I would earn at least [the equivalent of] $250 [U.S.] per month and get one day off a week,” she says. “[Instead] I was forced to work seven days a week and paid only $150 per month. I had to sleep on an outdoor balcony. I ...

Lynda-June Coe, Australia:

Growing up in an Aboriginal community in the Australian Outback, Lynda-June Coe says her teachers expected her to become one thing only: “another Black statistic.” Coe, 38, attended a mainly white school. “There was an assumption that I would be low-achieving, likely to experience early pregnancy, and would end up in trouble with the justice system,” says Coe, who is a member of the Wiradjuri tribe, one of Australia’s largest indigenous groups. The stereotypes didn’t factor in that Coe is descended from a line of powerful warrior women. “The Wiradjuri are a matriarchal society, and our women have always fought ...

Thabi Myeni, South Africa:

When she was a child, Thabi Myeni was standing in line with her grandmother at a post office in the city of Durban, South Africa, when a white woman came in and went straight to the head of the long queue. “While other Black people in the line mumbled about the unfairness of the situation, my grandmother loudly told the woman to wait her turn,” says Myeni, a writer, activist, and law student at the University of Johannesburg. “The woman quickly left. She hadn’t expected to be openly challenged.” The incident was an early lesson in standing up for your ...

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https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a34515361/black-lives-matter-international/