Several thousand people have marched peacefully through Manchester as part of the rapidly spreading Black Lives Matter movement.
Though mostly young and black, the crowd encompassed all colours and ages. Some arrived in wheelchairs, others in buggies, with afros, dreadlocks, baseball caps and hijabs.
Prepared for the usual Manchester weather, one woman had decorated her yellow raincoat with a Martin Luther King quote. She didn’t need it in the end: the sun came out as the crowd gathered calmly in Alexandra Park in Moss Side, which was at the centre of the city’s gun crime epidemic 10 years ago.
Arm in arm they marched through Hulme, stopping buses and attracting beeps of approval from passing motorists as they headed along Oxford Road towards Albert Square. Some sang the Kendrick Lamar song Alright. Others opted for “Don’t worry, be happy”, between chants of “Hands up/Don’t shoot” and “No justice/No Peace”.
At its peak, as many as 3,000 people appeared to have joined the lightly policed demonstration, which was followed by teenagers on skateboards, rollerskates and bikes.
Twenty-year-old Khaine, following the march by doing wheelies on his mountain bike, couldn’t believe the crowd. “I didn’t expect this kind of turnout. People say that we don’t come together enough in this community. Obviously they were wrong,” he said. It wasn’t his first protest, he said: “The riots was my first one.”
Though intended primarily to show solidarity with the black victims of police violence in the US, for many attendees it was also about expressing frustration and pain felt much closer to home.
Keith Holland, a 51-year-old call centre worker, was holding a cardboard sign saying: “50 Years: He had a dream. My Nightmare continues.”
Pushing his bike, he could barely contain his anger. “Martin Luther King made his speech in 1963. Someone who was 20 then would now have had children and grandchildren and maybe even great grandchildren, all of whom could still ask now where that dream is people talk about. Is it some sort of fairyland?”
He went on: “For 41 years the police have been looking at me like I’m a criminal. When am I going to be decriminalised? Maybe this is the start of a new movement,” he mused.
Others insisted things were calming down. Prepared for the worst after a day of relentless rain, Sandra Forrester, 37, was wearing a floor-length sou’wester on which she had written the King quote: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter most.”
She insisted Manchester had improved a lot since she was a girl. “There’s a better sense of community now,” she said. “The children all get along.”
In Alexandra Park, Sheakha Omar was one of a number of speakers to talk about losing a family member to Manchester’s resurgent gang violence.
Her nephew, 20-year-old Ahmed “Mudz” Mohammed, was stabbed to death in Moss Side in March. She said black children still suffered racism in the city, particularly in recent weeks. She told the crowd her son had suffered had suffered racial abuse at school after the Brexit vote. “I took this up with the school, I emailed my local councillor and they have not responded and the school did nothing,” she added.
Kim Barnwell, 47, who lives in the diverse district of Gorton, where the Channel 4 TV show Shameless was set, said she could sense a shift in attitudes following the referendum: “We’ve seen more British flags go up, more dirty looks, even from people we’ve lived among for years.” But she took heart from the turn-out at the demonstration. “It feels amazing to be here, and quite emotional too, to know so many people feel the same.”
