Ten years later: How the death of Jamar Clark sparked a new level of activism
Description
This Saturday marks ten years since the fatal shooting of Jamar Clark.
On Nov. 15, 2015, the unarmed 24-year-old was shot during a confrontation with two Minneapolis police officers. He died the next day.
In the weeks that followed, hundreds of people protested outside the Minneapolis 4th Precinct in Minneapolis — demanding the names of the officers and the release of any video. Protesters marched to the government center and shut down Interstate 94.
It was a level of activism that Minnesota hadn’t seen before, building on the long despair and anger in Black communities following shootings of other unarmed Black men, here and elsewhere. And it set the stage for protests that followed the police killings of Philando Castile in 2016 and of George Floyd in 2020.
MPR News guest host Brandt Williams talks about how protests following Jamar Clark’s death took shape and how they changed the public response to police shootings and policing.
Guests:
- Nekima Levy Armstrong is a civil rights lawyer and past president of the Minneapolis NAACP. She was among the leaders who helped organize protests following Jamar Clark’s fatal shooting and was an advisor to Black Lives Matter Minneapolis.
- Raeisha Williams was an activist and communications director for the Minneapolis NAACP in the months following Jamar Clark’s death. She now runs a nonprofit organization called Guns Down Love Up.
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