Black Lives Matter Protests durning the Pandemic

     The Black Lives Matter Protests that occurred in late May and early June continuing on now caused a lot of concern within the pandemic and had a lot of people calling hypocrisy on others. I personally attended one of these peaceful protests in Lexington, Ky and can explain from experience what was going through the heads of the many others that attended these protests. 

Photo taken by me from the protest I attended in Lexington

    Many people that were not in favor of these protests called hypocrisy on the protesters of the BLM movement because previously some of the people associated with the BLM movement shook their heads at protesters against lockdown and mask wearing rules gathering in large crowds which are often associated with those that are against the Black Lives Matter Movement. In my experience at this protest that I have pictured, I saw almost no one without a mask on and people were passing out more hand sanitizer than I have ever seen. Not to say that there wasn’t still risk, but the majority of the people involved in the black lives matter protests, including me, were not blatantly ignoring the fact that a pandemic was going on. Now, I was still cautious after I attended and even had some anxiety while I was at the protest, but I will get to why others and I still decided to attend the protests. First, here is a visual of the mask wearing and non-mask wearing at the different protests that I have found on Google images. 

Black Lives Matter protest

Protest against coronavirus lockdowns 

    I am sure that people at the Black Lives Matter Protests contracted Covid-19 from attending, thankfully I was not one of them, but there was much higher risk and actual higher case increases from the protests full of people who chose not to wear masks. 

    The general consensus of the people who attended the BLM protests amidst this pandemic agree that fighting for justice within this historically and currently oppressed community is worth being infected with the virus. I believed this as well because I was so angry about the recent events of police brutality and racism against the people of my community. I say this, and I still want to acknowledge that the protesters of the lockdowns are completely allowed to protest however they would like, but there were key differences (mask wearing and hand sanitizing) in how the protests were run that made the majority of the BLM protests more safe in regards to the pandemic in comparison to the others.