12/30/2020
Local activists on the fight for racial justice: ‘We’re not done yet’
Isaiah Figueroa, left, and Dewayne Hill, both from Woonsocket, marched in a youth-led Black Lives Matter protest in Woonsocket in June. (Breeze File photo by Lauren clem)
WOONSOCKET – While much of the focus of 2020 was on the COVID-19 pandemic, events of this past spring threw another kind of national crisis into the spotlight.
In May, the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer set off a national reckoning over race and use of force that spread to communities across the country. In Woonsocket, groups held peaceful protests along Main Street even as fears those protests could turn violent went unfulfilled.