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Lord,” I said, “you should be out front,” and I said, “Before we start I want each of you to come up and speak and tell the people here why we are here and why we shouldn’t be here.” They did a good, lovely job. BRANDON KILBOURNE, 37 BERLIN, GERMANY The immediate weekend after George Floyd was murdered, there was a protest by the Brandenburg Gate. It was a pretty large crowd. If I had to guess… several hundred. Given that this story blew up in the previous week, this was kind of short notice for a protest. And I mean, you saw Black people, white people—clearly some expats, U.S. foreigners, Black Germans, all there. There were a few central speakers who spoke about other victims of police brutality in Germany, basically taking what some people try to pass off as a U.S. story and say that this is also happening in Germany. [The next weekend] about fifteen thousand people converged in Alexanderplatz. LYDIA BODINE, 21 KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE I went into the protest thinking that it was going to be basically like a war. I think a lot of videos that are shared on the news—like Fox News and everything—make it seem like every protest is really hateful and really dangerous and scary and a lot of rioting and everything. And Maryville, where the march was happening, is a pretty racist city. When I told my friends we were going, they got worried because there’s a lot of KKK people still out there. I think that’s what scared my sister and me the most, but that’s also why we felt like we had to show up. So I went in expecting the worst. I was expecting to be beat up. We were expecting to be sprayed and everything. And we went in and there was no conflict, really. We marched all the way down to the courthouse, which was about two miles one way. There were even some police officers that were marching with us, which was really cool. I did not expect that. Usually there was a Black person saying the chants, and then everyone around them would repeat it. Once we got to the courthouse they had a little event. They had 38

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