Friday brought about the convergence of two events in Washington, DC: the “Get Off Our Necks” Commitment March organized by Reverend Al Sharpton and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s virtual March on Washington.
"I wish George was here to see this right now," Philonise Floyd, brother of George Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed Black man whose Memorial Day murder was the catalyst for a number of race-related demonstrations across the nation.
"I’m marching for George, Breonna [Taylor], Jacob [Blake], Pamela Turner, Michael Brown, Trayvon [Martin] and anybody else who lost their lives to evil.”
Four former Minneapolis Police officers - Derek Chauvin, Alexander Kueng, Tuo Thao and Thomas Lane - have been charged in relation to Floyd’s killing.
The parents of Ahmaud Arbery, who was fatally shot by a father-son duo in Glynn County, Georgia, and Jacob Blake Sr., the father of Wisconsin shooting victim Jacob Blake, also spoke at the event.
"We come today, Black and white and all races and religions and sexual orientations, to say this dream is still alive. You might have killed the dreamer, but you can’t kill the dream, because truth crushed to Earth shall rise again," Sharpton said.
Friday’s convergence of activism comes alongside a renewal of widespread demonstrations in support of police reform over the shooting of Blake, who was struck in the back by several bullets during a Sunday arrest.
"Get your knee off our neck. Enough is enough,” Sharpton said, repeating words uttered months prior at the same location.
Sharpton has recently spoken out about Congress - particularly the US Senate - and the need for it to pass important civil rights legislation, such as the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act.
“Without it ending in legislation, historians will say there was a summer of discontent after George Floyd,” Sharpton remarked in a TIME100 Talks discussion with Emmy-winning producer Mia Tramz.
Human rights activist Martin Luther King III, King’s son, also delivered remarks to the audience on Friday.
"We are courageous, but conscious of our health. We are socially distanced but spiritually united. We are masking our faces, but not our faith and freedom. We are taking our struggle to the streets and social media," he said. "The nation has never seen such a mighty, modern-day incarnation of what my father called a coalition of freedom".
“It’s all the deaths. It’s every week,” Virginia Jones-Finley, a 63 year-old Suffolk County, Virginia, resident told USA Today, speaking on why she came out to march on Friday, despite the 90-degree-Fahrenheit weather and concerns over the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic.
“The people are in there for the long fight, and it’s going to be a long fight.”