Recently, all attention has been on the heart-wrenching murder of George Floyd under the hands of a Minneapolis ex-police officer. Videos of the officer kneeling on the neck of the unarmed black man for more than eight minutes — even after he was dead — circulated on social media, spurring outrage from all over the world. Police brutality has never had such an undeniable image. It was extremely distressing and devastating to see the same method that Colin Kaepernick used to protest police brutality in 2016 being used to kill an innocent black man in broad daylight. Floyd was murdered as he begged for breath in the same way Eric Garner did in 2014; another Black man choked to death by a police officer, who was later acquitted of all charges. The video represents so much more than just George Floyd’s murder; it is also referential to the cause of the Black Lives Matter movement in general.

Protests erupted in the following days. Tens of thousands swarmed the streets, filled with sorrow and anger. The protests, which started in Minneapolis, spread to more than 140 cities across the US. The majority of these protests did not involve heavy artillery and were not violent. However, in every single protest, law enforcement always seemed like they were getting ready for war. Police officers fully equipped with riot gear; unarmed protestors running through clouds of tear gas; blood-soaked bystanders injured by “nonlethal” rubber bullets: these all became the representative images of the protests. 

The most incredibly baffling fact that I — and millions across social media — can’t fathom is the stark difference in how the police reacted to the anti-lockdown protests that happened just a few weeks prior. In April, right-wing protestors were storming state capitols armed to the hilt, demanding the reopening of states, with the call “I want a haircut” somehow becoming their motto. The lockdown protests in the States, of which the most famous was in Michigan, started a few weeks into the state governor’s stay-at-home orders to help curb the spread of COVID-19; a few weeks into what the protestors described as “tyranny”. They stormed state capitols with an implicit message to threaten their politicians, yet law enforcement did not storm the places in riot gear. The police’s reaction to right-wing protestors sheds more light on their biases. If the police just acted as bystanders while white men tried to intimidate lawmakers with their guns and weapons, if they managed to exercise maximum tolerance as these violent people vehemently screamed at their faces, then they most certainly have no legitimate excuse to use tear gas and rubber bullets on a group of peaceful BLM protestors.

The two protests don’t just differ in the reaction they elicited from the police. In fact, their motivations cannot be more different. The anti-lockdown protestors claim that they were losing their freedom because of the seemingly “tyrannical” COVID-19 prevention laws. They were also claiming to have been economically setback a few weeks because of the restrictions. But again, African Americans too are facing the same setbacks. In fact, African Americans have been systematically and purposely setback for so many generations — since 1619 to be exact, when black people were brought to North America as slaves. And if these protests were truly about fighting against a tyrannical government or economic setbacks, they should have also joined the Black Lives Matter movement. But that will never happen, because it’s not those issues that they are particularly concerned about, but rather the personal inconvenience and encroachment on their absolute freedom.  Black Lives Matter protestors, on the other hand, are fighting to live without fear of random harassment, to be granted equal opportunities, and to be free from police brutality. They are fighting to not get lynched while jogging like Ahmaud Arbery. They are fighting not to get killed while sleeping like Breonna Taylor. The lockdown protests fight for the “freedom” of the privileged, while the Black Lives Matter protests fight for the freedom of the oppressed.