A sunny Sunday in May, thousands of protesters broke political silence and the quarantine by marching through the streets of downtown Miami to demand justice for the police murder of George Floyd. Black Lives Matter Miami and Dream Defenders partnered to organize a protest to defund the police, close jails and shelter our most vulnerable low income citizens who are disproportiantely targeted by police violence. Publicly mourning the police lynchings of black and brown US citizens such as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Darren Rainey and countless others; thousands of protesters gathered at the Miami Heat arena in downtown Miami near the Freedom Tower- to march past the detention center, courthouse and towards Bayfront Park , then ending at the Columbus statue to a peaceful rally.
Choppers pulsed overhead as the crowd concentrated at the Miami Heat Arena. The iconic Freedom Tower served as a political diorama of Miami’s conflicting values amplified by community organizers who spoke out against police violence and called for an end to institutionalized racism.
The crowd began the march through blazing concrete (black butterflies darting through tropical median planters)- towards the courthouse where protesters chanted the names of dozens of victims lynched by police both locally and nationally. Two strangers- one black, one white- carried either side of the Cunt Quilt (Crown) through the streets as the red sheets flapped in windy gusts. Onlookers faces changed from confusion to laughter and back to anger as they made sense of the image made from worn out women’s underwear. A middle aged Haitian man marching behind asked the significance of the quilt, and as I coaxed him into sharing his perspective- he began to describe the image of a pregnant woman surrounded by “colorful people”. He was interrupted by cars honking while blocked at traffic intersections. Many onlookers were shaking and tightening fists while another car with a “Cubanos for Trump” bumper sticker revved his engine in park, continuously honking and shouting expletives.
Turning the corner towards an ominous, brutalist building amidst an otherwise glazed condo skyline; the crowd laid down in “die in position” for one minute. What seemed like an eternity of silence for one minute, made the 8 minutes and 45 seconds of strangulation by a police officer kneeling on a man’s neck- unimaginable. Turning the corner with lower murmers, the crowd began screaming: “We See You!”. Throngs of protesters shouted as we paused and knelt at the base of the Miami jail. Hundreds of inmates flashed mirrors of morse code light in solidarity; each in their own cell sharing their solar soliloquy from the darkness of our criminal justice trap. After several minutes hearing protesters scream “Mama”, I broke down in tears. It was as though our country had learned how to destroy so precisely, that I learned the opposite feeling of giving birth. It was not death, or the thought of killing someone that was so vile; it was the feeling that thousands of years of putrid injustice had crowned through a screen. Perhaps the video of George Floyd’s last cry was the first moment of technological singularity? Instead of a silicon valley sci-fi fantasy, it was a morbid, mechanized death. Absent, individual power. Our spirits were no longer human.
A shirtless protester held up traffic barricades to allow protesters to stream in front of City Hall and the courthouse at the base of the detention center. Trayvon Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton gave a moving speech as she addressed the audience in front of the shuttered city hall steps. I imagined her a mayor or some other more powerful figure as she addressed the massive crowd with reporters and cameras afoot. Instead she simply mourned another man brutally murdered in the same tone her own son was killed: without justice, without peace.
Sharper shadows stretched towards Biscayne Boulevard, leading protesters towards the Torch of Friendship in the park stretching along Biscayne Bay. A mostly black and brown crowd began to pool at the base of the arcing wall that surrounded Columbus’ slippery metal statue. The same man who held open traffic barricades quickly mounted the coral stone base of the statue and began posing in Black Power fist solute. The crowd cheered as other protest banners shook up and down. The chants subsided to give way to the megaphone speeches barely audible through above the wind gusts sweeping in from the harbor.
The man standing on Columbus’ feet squatted to ask me about the Cunt Quilt. I told him how the underwear traveled through the US postal service to be configured by feminists into an image representing the birthing justice crisis. A small crowd gathered and I raised my voice to describe our city’s complicated racial injustice crisis where: “Mothers are losing their children in these streets, and losing their own lives in hospitals”. “Doctors are doing to pregnant people what police are doing to our African American community”. The man took the corner of the bedsheet and began draping it at the base of the statue. Cunt Quilt (Crown) appeared to be ankle-biting the Columbus in Bayfront Park.
After close to an hour of speakers, police began to close in. Dispersing the crowd with a shot, ensuing arrests, tear gas and (later on brutal attacks), diminished into the distance as we ran across six lanes of traffic. The sun began to fade below the skyline, and a fellow protester (identifying herself as a planned parenthood volunteer who grew up in Little Haiti) offered to take video of our last moments leaving the protest. Passing me the phone, she said: “Something bad is about to go down. I have to call my people. Do you need a ride?”. I shook my head and we picked up the pace towards the graffiti walls where parked cars began flashing headlights onto twilight moths.
Lambastic 