13 Articles to Help You Make Sense of the Protests, And Why They Matter

At InsideHook, we’re traditionally in the business of soliciting your attention. As a media company, your attention is our purview. Right now, however, we’re of the firm belief that your attention is better spent elsewhere — now is a time for listening, learning and reflecting, for edifying ourselves about the toxic and deep-rooted oppression that exists in America today and gaining a deeper understanding of it so that we may collectively work toward ending it.

As such, we’re providing the below list of recent coverage from outlets we respect in the hopes that you may utilize these pieces as a resource to help make sense of recent events and the underlying issues that caused them. We encourage you to read, reflect and share — this list is by no means exhaustive, so please consider it a jumping-off point and nothing more. 

If there are pieces not included here that you feel are worthy of attention/inclusion, please reach out to us and we’ll do our best to respond and address.

• FiveThirtyEight’s Maggie Koerth amd Jamiles Lartey on the historical and statistical precedents for the police not to escalate force with protestors

• South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley explains why “Black People Are Tired” for The Players’ Tribune

• The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner interviews Princeton political professor Omar Wasow on how violent vs nonviolent protests can affect change in politics

• For Harper’s Bazaar, Rachel Elizabeth Cargle explains “Why You Need to Stop Saying ‘All Lives Matter’” 

• Faith Briggs, former Yale trackstar, conservationist and documentarian, writes for Runner’s World on running as a powerful tool to demand justice and safety in communities

• Imani Bashir for Lifehacker on “The Difference Between Being ‘Not Racist’ and ‘Anti Racist’”

• Victor Luckerson, for The Ringer, outlines the 1921 racially motivated destruction of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District, a thriving community known as “Black Wall Street”

• For The Washington Post, Professor Peniel Joseph, author of The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. on the misunderstanding of MLK during times like these

• For Politico, Former Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, who served from 2002 to 2014, on the militarization of the police, his failings on reform, and how the community and police can move forward

• “What you’re seeing is people pushed to the edge” — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar reflects on George Floyd protests in an L.A. Times op-ed

• Sportswriter Reagan Griffin Jr. pens “A Letter to My White Friends” for The Undefeated

• Rolling Stone senior writer Jamil Smith on racism as a “cultural pandemic” killing not only Black people, but our nation itself

• For Fast Company, Albert Fox Cahn and Zachary Silver on the “Long, Ugly History of Police Tracking Protestors” and its current incarnation in the digital age

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