2020 and the George Floyd and Black Lives Matters Movement In Review by James Reade Venable

Public Project

2020 and the George Floyd and Black Lives Matters Movement In Review

Copyright James Reade Venable 2024

Updated Aug 2022

Location New York City, Richmond

Topics Activism, Arrests and Prosecutions, Black Lives Matter, BLM, Civil Rights, Civil War Monuments, Civil Wars, Community, Discrimination, Documentary, Dying/Death, Editorial, George Floyd, Graffiti, Historical, Minority, New York City, Photography, Photojournalism, Protests, Racism, Reporting, Richmond

Summary

This is a visual documentation of protests and moments pertaining to the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests which happened during 2020 in New York City and Richmond, Virginia. A tale of two cities.

2020 and the George Floyd and Black Lives Matters Movement In Review, visually documents the moments of 2020 in New York and Richmond. I captured the first half of these photos during my attendance at a couple of the protests I attended in NYC. Only one photo I captured showed Police physically handling a protestor in Times Square. The other photos captured a successful protest and march in Astoria, Queens. It started out at the 114th Precinct then made it's way down Astoria BLVD then back and forth along Steinway street. The protesters were loud and boisterous but not destructive or threatening to the cops. The NYPD was very well prepared for this protest blocking off the necessary routes, making the march go smoothly. The march ended with all the protestors sitting in silence for eight minutes plus, to magnify the amount of time George Floyd was being suffocated. This was very resonating. As I sat there quiet, I realised that the silence amongst the crowd was louder then any screaming, rioting, or destruction that could occur. Eight minutes is a very long time. even when you can breathe.
Then we head down to Richmond where the heat gets turned up a little. A few months pass and with tensions growing heat coming on and the Coronavirus still going strong I found myself in Richmond. Being the capital of the confederate south this was a complete juxtaposition to New York City which argues possibly to be the most liberal city in the US. The photos taking here span a few months. From early stages when the main protest point was the Robert E. Lee memorial to the illegal removal of a lot of the monuments in Richmond, specifically Monument Avenue to sanctioned removal of the Stonewall Jackson Monument.

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