Teens have been gassed and hit with rubber bullets at protests. They keep coming back.

[dalton99a]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2020/06/05/teens-protests-george-floyd-tear-gas/

Teens have been gassed and hit with rubber bullets at protests. They keep coming back.
By Samantha Schmidt
June 6 at 7:30 AM



...

Choked by gas, hit by rubber bullets, knocked down by officers’ shields, they have continued to come back, in many cases taking leading roles in the protests. On Saturday, they will be there again for what is expected to be the largest gathering yet.

The images of teenagers being roughed up by police officers evokes memories of the Children’s Crusade in 1963, when more than a thousand black students skipped class for a civil rights march in Birmingham, Ala. Police aimed fire hoses at them, launching them onto the street. Some of the children joined hands, forming a human chain to fight the blasts.

In 1963, involving children in the protests was a strategy by the movement’s leaders. But more than a half-century later, teenagers at the George Floyd protests are stepping up on their own, risking exposure to the coronavirus and projectiles from police, defying curfews and, in many cases, the wishes of their parents.

Naomi Spates, 17, didn’t tell her mother she was going to the protests Tuesday with a friend. Naomi, a rising senior at Bladensburg High School in Prince George’s County, Md., was in middle school when she joined hundreds of thousands of people at the Women’s March on the Mall the day after President Trump’s inauguration. In the years since, she has condemned gun violence at the March for Our Lives, and denounced white supremacists at a counter-demonstration. But the George Floyd protests, she said, have felt different.

[SammyWinstonJack]

1. K&R.