'I think there's a bunch of people here that are obviously for this cause,' one protest attendee said. 'But I think ultimately, we've been locked in our apartments for so long that now we have something to unite us that is actually uplifting.'
the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that fewer than half of black workers were employed in April. As Georgetown Law professor Lawrence Gostin, an expert in public health law, told NBC News, the pandemic"has exacerbated protests against racial injustice nationwide.
" "George Floyd's death was the spark, but the COVID-19 epidemic is at the foundation of today's grievances," Gostin said."COVID-19 has shined a spotlight on racial injustice in America in the most profound ways. The COVID-19 epidemic has caused tens of thousands of preventable deaths in the African American community. Racial inequalities in health have been with us for decades, but COVID-19 has amplified the inequities." Emergency Medical Technicians bring a patient into Wyckoff Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y. on April 6, 2020.Elwood Watson, a professor of history and African American studies at East Tennessee State University, said the pandemic has"tremendously" affected the demonstrations, pointing to its outsized impact on communities of color. As states remain at an early or mid stage of their reopening processes, much attention has been paid to the demonstrations, with videos of law enforcement crackdowns as well as images and pushback to rioting going viral.released this week asked respondents if they think"racial and ethnic discrimination in the U.S. is a problem or not a problem?" In January 2015, when the polling outlet first asked the question as the Black Lives Matter movement gained traction, 51 percent said that was a"big problem." This week, that number spiked to 76 percent after the nation was exposed to the Floyd video and the all-encompassing attention given to the subsequent demonstrations.On the other hand, officials have worried about whether the protests will lead to a resurgence in the virus after spending months to keep it curtailed. Fears over the further spread of the novel coronavirus have been drowned out in the protests, as Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., expressed concern over to NBC News. Holmes Norton said the confluence of the coronavirus and the economic collapse has fueled a"new energy" from young people in protesting longstanding issues between police and the communities they serve, and the Floyd video has proven too severe for many to ignore. People run out of stores on Broadway with merchandise during a night of protests and vandalism over the death of George Floyd on June 1, 2020 in New York.Of looting and vandalism, Holmes Norton said that while"we almost always see some looting in such situations like this," it's exacerbated now by young people being out of work. "So there's some inherent vandalism in a situation of this kind," she said."But I think it's driven even more by the fact that people have not only been at home, they've been at home out of work." At Tuesday's protest in the nation's capitol, Ashley Waite, a 22-year-old hairstylist from Miami, told NBC News that she returned home to be with her family when her hair salon shut down. She's"feeling the energy" of the demonstrations, which she said would not be going on in this way had people not been stuck at home for months. "I follow a lot of my customers and coworkers and stuff on Instagram," she said,"and I see them all out doing stuff, too, and I'm not sure that would've been the case if we all didn't have this time on our hands."Allan Smith is a political reporter for NBC News.
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