Time September 21/September 28, 2020
thinking about the ground sausage he was
about to fry for breakfast, when he stum-
bled 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 Min-
neapolis 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 who
could relate to his pain, the 24-year-old
set out to join a Black Lives Matter pro-
test in downtown Indianapolis.
By the end of the night, he was in jail,
accused of violating curfew and resist-
ing arrest by fleeing. Police say that as he
fled, Sandidge was trying to reach into his
backpack, where they found a taser and
a can of bear spray—items Sandidge says
he normally carries for self- protection. He
was not charged with the curfew viola-
tion, but Sandidge faces up to a year in
prison and a fine of up to $5,000 if con-
victed of resisting arrest. Even though it’s
a misdemeanor, the charge will show up
on background checks even if he’s acquit-
ted or the case is dismissed, an outcome
that particularly concerns Sandidge.
“I’ve never dealt with anything like
this,” says Sandidge, who didn’t have a
smudge on his driving record, much less
a criminal history, when he was arrested.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”
Demonstrations against racism and
police violence led to more than 7,800
arrests in the U.S. in May and June, accord-
ing to the Crowd Counting Consortium,
which collects data from news reports.
An Associated Press tally found more
than 10,000 protesters were arrested in
just the first 10 days after Floyd’s death
on May 25. Amid the ongoing protests,
many of those jailed, however briefly, are
coming to terms with the repercussions
of their decisions to take part in a major
moment in history. Young protesters, par-
ticularly those of color, face chilling con-
sequences on top of prosecution, includ-
ing costly fines; loss of employment; and
a stigma that legal experts say could affect
their ability to obtain housing, jobs, edu-
cation and occupational licenses.
“My confidence and my faith that I’ll
get everything back on track is shattered,”
Sandidge says.
In what experts call the largest
sustained mobilization in modern his-
tory, some 23 million people across the
U.S. have attended demonstrations since
Floyd’s death, a Civis poll from mid-June
suggests. According to a national Pew Re-
search survey of more than 600 people
who say they attended a recent protest fo-
cused on race, about 41% were younger
than 30. Of those who attended protests,
17% were Black, 22% were Hispanic, and
46% were white. A smaller survey look-
ing at protest demographics in Washing-
ton, New York City and Los Angeles found
that the median age of protesters was 29,
according to Dana Fisher, a University of
Maryland sociology professor whose team
conducted surveys in the three cities in
June. About 25% of those polled were 24
or younger, Fisher says, and white pro-
testers made up about 54% of the crowds.
But when it came to arrests, the faces
were less diverse. While there is no racial
breakdown of protest arrests nationwide,
some analyses of city and county arrest re-
cords the first weekend after Floyd’s death
show that many who were jailed were
Black. Of the 2,172 people the Chicago
police department arrested from May 29
to May 31, more than 70% were Black and
10% were white, according to an analy-
sis of department records by the Chi-
cago Reader. In Atlanta, 48 of the 82 peo-
ple processed through the Fulton County
jail that same weekend were Black, Geor-
gia Public Broadcasting found.
When Sandidge was sitting on the
sidewalk in handcuffs, he says, white by-
standers walked past him without being
stopped by police, even though they were
also out after the 9 p.m. curfew. At one
point in the night, he says, all 25 inmates
in his jail cell were Black. He often won-
ders why authorities stopped him in the
first place. Each time, he comes to the
same conclusion. “One hundred percent
it was because I was Black,” he says. The
Indianapolis metro police declined to
comment.
Coricia Campbell, a Marine veteran
who is Black, also believes race played a
significant role in her arrest. On May 30,
during a peaceful demonstration in Jack-
sonville, Fla., Campbell was sitting on
the ground beside a white friend who
was also protesting. Video shows police
officers shoving Campbell’s friend aside
while pulling Campbell into their midst
and handcuffing her. “In that entire line
of people, I was the only one who was ar-
rested,” she says. In her holding cell, one
woman out of eight was white, Campbell
adds. “It’s really hard not to think it was
racial profiling,” she says.
Orlando criminal-defense lawyer
James Smith says the racial disparity in
protest arrests is not surprising. Black
Nation
D’Angelo Sandidge
was lying in bed and
scrolling through
Instagram on June 1,
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