DeKALB – The crowd for the Black Lives Matter rally and march has grown to hundreds so far in Memorial Park at the corner of First Street and Lincoln Highway in DeKalb Saturday.
Daily Chronicle reporters are on the scene and will provide live coverage.
In DeKalb, peaceful protestors held signs that said, “#ICan’tBreathe” and “Merchandise can be replaced, lives cannot.” Participants joined in on an 8-minute moment of silence, and marched around town.
They gathered back at Memorial Park after the march and could be heard chanting, “No justice, no peace,” and “Black lives matter” as cars honked as they drove by.
Participants seemed to be attempting to social distance, as per organizers’ request, and wore masks.
The march Saturday is part of nationwide demonstrations happening in cities as a response to the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, as well as the killing of Ahmaud Arbery.
Derek Chauvin, a white ex-Minneapolis police officer was arrested and charged with murder Friday, five days after video showed him kneeling on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes while Floyd, a black man, could be heard pleading multiple times that he could not breathe.
Protests in major cities across the country have erupted this week following the death of Floyd, compounded by other recent deaths involving black Americans at the hands of white police officers and people.
On March 13, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman who worked as an emergency medical technician, was shot eight times to death by Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove, police officers in the Louisville Metro Police Department in Louisville, Kentucky. The officers entered her apartment while Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker were sleeping, supposedly serving a “no-knock” warrant, and did not announce themselves as law enforcement officers before opening fire in the home.
On Feb. 23, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, was shot and killed while jogging in a neighborhood near Brunswick in Georgia after being pursued and confronted by two white men, Travis and Gregory McMichael, who were armed with guns. A third white man, William Bryan, was following Arbery in a second car and recorded the fatal shooting on video, a video which did not go public until May 5. After the video went viral, the McMichaels were arrested and charged with murder.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source: The Daily Chronicle
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