Get Out! GAY Magazine – Issue 469

BY IAN-MICHAEL BERGERON
@ianmichaelinwonderland
Simple Summer
A collection of essays from quarantine
May 25th was the day that George Floyd was
murdered.
The video, captured by 17-year-old Darnella
Frazier, quickly went viral, and the world
watched. Police pinned him to the ground
while arresting him for an alleged fake $20
bill: you can hear him say “I can’t breathe”
repeatedly, and then he didn’t say anything
ever again. The next day, the protests
began.
We all watched Minneapolis protest that
night. I called a friend of mine who had
recently lost her job at the Guthrie Theater
due to Covid-19, applying to work at Target
to make ends meet. After a Target was
broken into and destroyed, her location
temporarily shut down and she was without
work again.
“I’m going to Iowa to stay with my family
for a while,” she told me. “The National
Guard is parked just down the street from
my apartment.” The National Guard had
mobilized in Minnesota on May 28, just three
days after George Floyd died.
When the protests made their way to New
York City, my roommate and boyfriend were
ready to hit the streets. I’m not proud of this,
but I have to admit that I was tentative about
going.
I’d seen the videos of protests—online, that
is. The news didn’t seem to be showing a
lot of what I was seeing online. If you have
the Internet, you’ve seen them—clips of
police pulling down a man’s mask to pepper
spray him; police pushing an elderly man
to the ground and leaving him as he bled
from the ear; a police car driving into a
group of protestors. That video actually
did make the news—I watched it on every
station, the police car driving up to a barrier
of protestors, and then....the clip stopped.
Not a single news station showed the whole
clip, not a single news station showed the
car driving into protestors. The clip of the
elderly man did end up making the news,
too—perhaps, I wondered, because it was a
white man who was the victim.
I was scared to go out. I was afraid of the
burning buildings and “looting, looting,
looting” that the news focused on. I was
afraid of experiencing police violence
firsthand. I was afraid of marching with a
large group of strangers during a pandemic.
The day came when my roommate said,
“Okay, let’s go.” I helped my boyfriend pack
a backpack with a first aid kit, sunscreen,
extra face masks, and lots of water. It wasn’t
until he was tying his shoes that I stood up
and said, “Wait, I’m coming too.”
I was still afraid of everything, but not
enough to stop me from standing up for
what I felt was right: justice for George
Floyd, holding the police accountable for
their actions, and fixing the systematic
racism that has existed forever.
How many times had something similar
happened, but no one was taping? How
many times had this happened and it was
taped, but just didn’t go viral? George Floyd
wasn’t the only name on our lips: Sandra
Bland, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain. The
list of names doesn’t end, it goes on. And
on. And on.
We walked down to Harlem, 125th Street,
where protestors gathered and stepped off
on the hour. My roommate, boyfriend and
I stayed close together and waited for the
hour to strike.