Black Lives Matter in the City of Lights

Documenting an anti-racism protest in Paris in June 2020

Today marks a year since George Floyd was murdered by white police officer Derek Chauvin. The murder sparked outrage around the world, including in France where I was living at the time.

A few weeks later, in June 2020, I attended a Black Lives Matter protest in the heart of Paris. The protest took place in Concorde between the Tuileries Garden and the Champs-Élysées. It was organised by the sister of Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old Frenchman of Malian extraction who died of asphyxiation while in police custody four years prior. The similar circumstances in which George Floyd and Adama Traoré died were impossible to ignore, highlighting the anti-black racism prevalent within police forces on both sides of the Atlantic.

Fast-forward a year, and the scourge of racism has scarcely faded. The end of bigotry in all its forms remains a distant possibility, and based on current world events, things only appear to be getting worse. Though it's hard to see at this point, we can only hope that the arc of history will eventually bend toward justice.