In the last 72 hours, protesters in Washington, D.C., have made a subtle but distinct change in the nature of their almost daily marches.
Earlier in the week, the theme of the peaceful and multiracial march in the nation’s capital was memorializing Minnesotan George Floyd and his death while being subdued by four Minneapolis policemen.
“I can’t breathe,” Floyd’s last words, was the legend on numerous placards carried by protesters outside the White House.
By Wednesday, however, the focus of the marches was on punishing police officers nationwide and defeating Donald Trump in November.
Scores of signs carried by marchers blared messages like “F--- Trump!” and “Stop Killer Cops!” In addition, marchers waved signs proclaiming “Justice Now!” — an obvious reference to punishing former Minnesota policeman Derek Chauvin, who put his knee on Floyd’s neck, and the other three officers involved in his arrest.
“Those other three officers need to be locked up,” Patricia Jones, a marcher from Potomac, Maryland, told Newsmax.
She quickly added: “I am for Joe Biden for president.”
Jonathan Coddington of Arlington, Virginia, who works for the Smithsonian Institute, said that the longer it takes to try Chauvin and the other officers is “justice delayed.”
“And we have to stop Trump — I support Biden or whomever runs against him,” he told us. “Trump promotes violence with this subtle thing of this with a racist text.”
Coddington recalled his days as an undergraduate at Yale University marching after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
He also pointed out to us that he has participated in marches against the Vietnam War, against nuclear weapons in the 1980s, and opposing the war in Iraq in the early 2000s.
Coddington’s girlfriend, Taina Litwak, said that “justice is an elusive goal for all Americans. Things are especially stacked against the black community.”
Litwak, who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, told us she felt especially strong about reforming the police “because too many police departments are militarized and liken the community to the enemy. All of these inequities need to be overcome. … I’m certain it will happen.”
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.