sundaily | "If we are denied what is rightfully due to us, then there has to be
unified action that we take that will force the justice that we seek,"
he said from a podium near the steps of the US Capitol building.
"There must come a time when we say, enough is enough. It must
change, and I am willing to do whatever it takes to bring about that
change."
His message found resonance with speakers and many protesters at the
rally, who invoked recent acts of alleged excessive use of police force,
including some that proved deadly.
"Twenty years ago, the death of Tamir Rice would have fallen on deaf
ears, left for the police to write a false report, and not broadcast for
the world to know," organiser Tamika Mallory said, referring to last
year's police shooting of a 12-year-old boy in Cleveland, Ohio.
She also recalled the now infamous deaths at police hands of Michael
Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York that inspired
the "Black Lives Matter" movement, whose slogan was omnipresent on the
Mall.
Beyond the growing media attention and accountability, though, there
are mixed signs of progress over the two decades since the original
march.
The unemployment rate for black men in the US has stubbornly hovered around eight percent since 1995, twice that of white men.
The rate at which African-Americans are arrested has declined
slightly, but they remain six times more likely than whites to be
detained and often face harsher sentences for comparable crimes,
according to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP).
Barack Obama attended the original Million Man March, prior to being
elected America's first black president, but the US leader was in
California during the latest protest.
