Black Lives Matter Sit-Down Protest at Broadway & Sunnyside in Chicago - June 1st, 2020

With access cut off to the Loop and surrounding areas due to the weekend's rioting and looting, thousands of Black Lives Matter supporters gathered Monday evening at the Belmont Avenue CTA stop and marched north on Broadway to the freshly boarded up Target store in Uptown. Predominately young (to my eyes at least) and largely white, the demonstrators sat down in the street and blocked traffic for over an hour, listening to black activists, and protesting police brutality towards people of color. There was much strong language, and frequent evocations of George Floyd's unjustifiable killing at the hands of the Minneapolis police, but the huge crowd came and left peacefully, and without incident. The atmosphere reminded me of a teach-in from the 1960s.