Racial justice leaders are reeling from the ‘hypocrisy’ in the police response to the US Capitol riots
After police forced her away from the White House with flash bangs and pepper spray, Allison Lane and dozens of people who were peacefully protesting George Floyd’s killing last summer ran into a stranger’s home to escape the clouds of tear gas.
“I was pepper sprayed for being Black and protesting,” the 34-year-old bartender and podcaster recalled.
Lane’s chaotic night in the nation’s capital last June has since been replicated numerous times from coast to coast. It was a wave of interactions, racial justice activists say, that underscored a form of systemic racism that’s deeply tied to one of the country’s most powerful institutions: police forces.