Jaylen Brown peered at a TV and saw the National Guard tanks rolling down the streets of Louisville. Hours before reading the grand jury indictment in the Breonna Taylor case, Louisville officials were already fitting barriers around the city and businesses were boarding up windows anticipating what several NBA players knew would happen. It was a precursor to an already reeling community that devastating news and the inevitable unrest that follows was on the horizon.
It reminded me of what I saw in Peabody, MA in June. Before anything happened, a small city’s population of 50,000 called for its police to revoke a 1st Amendment right to protest in solidarity with larger cities across the country after the murder of George Floyd.