The price of protest

D’Angelo Sandidge was lying in bed and scrolling through Instagram on June 1, thinking about the ground sausage he was about to fry for breakfast, when he stumbled upon a video that he’d heard about but not yet seen. His anger intensified as he watched the footage of George Floyd begging for his life while a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck. By the time the video ended, after he’d watched Floyd, who was Black, call out for his mother and eventually fall silent, Sandidge had lost his appetite. “I felt sick to my stomach,” he says.

Until that moment, Sandidge, who is also Black, had not been one to hit the streets in protest. But this was different. At 6 ft. 4 in. and 280 lb., he is about the same height and substantially heavier than Floyd, and that video was a reminder of how quick people are to judge those who look like him. So the next day, Sandidge bought a poster board and some markers and made a sign wider and taller than his torso that read, NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE, NO CALMNESS IN THE STREET. Sparked by a sense of urgency to take a stand as a Black man in America and by a desire to find camaraderie among people