All photos copyright Joe Gerace, 2020 (please email for usage permission)
Hundreds gathered on a sweltering June afternoon in Hackensack, NJ, to call for an end to police brutality against people of color in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others.
Organizers provided a platform for members of the crowd to step up to the microphone and share their thoughts. Many of those who spoke stressed the need for swift and definitive change to race relations in America, and the importance of community, solidarity, and voting — in local, state, and federal elections.
The peaceful rally convened from noon to 1 p.m. on Ward and State streets in Downtown Hackensack before protesters marched south toward the Bergen County Courthouse.
Uniformed Hackensack police officers blocked traffic to allow protesters to rally and march freely.
The death of Floyd sparked rallies and protests across the country and a handful of protests occurred in New Jersey over the past several days.
“What can I do to myself? Bones / and dusty skin. Heavy eyes twisted / between the adequate thighs of all / humanity (a little h), strumming my head / for a living. Bankrupt utopia sez tell me / no utopias. I will not listen. (Except the raw wind / makes the hero’s eyes close, and the tears that come out / are real.” Amiri Baraka, 1964
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one strikes up a conversation
how humid it’s become as if are
your children well as if what did
you get them for christmas as if and
then recedes into art objects intake
compression power as if exhaust
one finds the hole has been dug
too deep and in one’s dream the
trains are on time as if but the platform
is too far and the feverish ticket agent
exhibits unusual aggression shoes drywall
paint wood animal fiber surgical thread
one remembers white men first then
white women then black women then
black and brown men an asian someone
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Alton Sterling and Philando Castile
were killed by men sworn to protect
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hair threadlead steel intention as if action
“At the end of the elegy, the poet gestures / To the poem itself: ‘It has eight sections: / One for each month he lived, dying.” from 18. by Sally Keith
ONE
killing of Michael Brown
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prompting a reply of Never!
He wasn’t a perfect man, but he was radical, prescient and sage. The fire that burnt in his belly for decades, roars to this day in millions of Americans. We’ve just got to believe we’re not fighting alone and stand up together — everyday.
Please share this with your favorite radical activist.