22 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY june 8-14, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com Dirrick Williams’ anti-racism course centers students’ emotional responses to racism as a way to build co-conspirators for a more equitable world. By Tajha Chappellet-Lanier Race Relations Think back to the summer of 2020. Months into an international pandemic lockdown, with the promise of vaccines still off on the horizon, we lived stratified, isolated lives. So-called “essential workers” shouldered the brunt of the risk while others were lucky enough to continue working from home. On May 28, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control announced that the U.S. Covid-19 death toll had surpassed 100,000 people. That same week, on May 25, 2020, a Black man named George Floyd was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It wasn’t the first example of systemic police brutality against a person of color, nor, unfortunately, would it be the last. But the tragedy sparked a global protest movement that raged that summer— by some counts becoming the largest such movement in U.S. history. In addition to in-person protests, race relations and racism dominated conversations, headlines and social media posts that summer. There was urgency—understandable urgency—around unraveling an issue that has defined this nation since 1619, the year the first 20-30 enslaved African people arrived in Virginia. There were books to read, documentaries to watch and more equitable interpretations of history to be internalized. For many white allies or would-be allies, there was a sense of needing to do more, which sometimes wound its way into diluted ends. On June 2, 2020, a social media action originated by two Black women in the music industry—as a way to hold the industry accountable for profiting off the work of Black people—became a prime example of this, when multitudes of Instagram users posted Above: Following the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, thousands of protesters flooded the streets across the country and around the world to demand justice and call for an end to racism. Locally, on May 30, 2020, hundreds gathered on Broadway Avenue in Seaside. Parker Seibold
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