Hundreds protested against the US-Israel attacks on Iran in Parliament Square on Saturday, fearing a wider conflagration and horrified by the targeting of young schoolchildren, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
LIKE many people I’ve followed and been inspired by the extensive news coverage of the Black Lives Matter protests in the US. But I really didn’t understand their extraordinary size until I read a recent New York Times analysis.
The women-founded movement began in 2013 with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media after George Zimmerman was acquitted when he shot and killed 17-year old African-American Trayvon Martin in Florida. Since them BLM has highlighted and opposed the brutality, injustice and unaccountability that black people experience in the US, especially from the police and legal system.
BLM activists played a leading role in the demonstrations sparked by the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and have led the protests in response to the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis on May 2020.
DENNIS BROE points out that two popular TV series promote police violence and disguise it as ‘fun’
Still the only black man to win the US Open tennis title, a statue of the legendary champion, Arthur Ashe, is now the only one remaining on Monument Avenue in his Richmond, Virginia hometown, where confederate leaders of the Civil War were also once displayed, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER



