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George Floyd’s Death Inspires Protests Against Decades Of Police Violence Against Africans In KenyaInterview Of Lilly Bekele-Piper, A Protest Organizer

In resolute outrage for the brazen public execution of George Floyd – unarmed, handcuffed and showing no resistance – by a police officer who steadily and arrogantly bore his knee into his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds while George Floyd pleaded for air and called for his dead mother, protests boomed with widespread clamor against white police brutality and racism. Protests also rallied support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Demonstrations mushroomed in major cities, not just across the United States of America, but across cities in over 60 countries spanning six continents!

While the reaction to the execution of George Floyd may have been the impetus of the protests that took place in Nairobi on June 9, 2020, the day George Floyd was buried, Kenyans, shocked, and alarmed by what they were witnessing in the U.S., felt so passionately enraged about his brutal killing that protests took place in different parts of Nairobi.

“They were reminded of the same patterns of police brutality and extrajudicial killings and injustices happening in Kenya,” said Lilly BekelePiper.

Lilly Bekele-Piper, an Ethiopian-born American resident living in Kenya in a small community of Black Americans and the Creator and Executive Producer of Up/Root (https://linktr. ee/uprootthepodcast), a podcast that narrates global stories of joy, justice and resilience, was one of the collaborators and organizers of the June 9 protests.

George Floyd may be the name that the world knows, but, in Kenya, people remember Yassin Moyo and Carlton Maina, victims of police killings.

On March 31, 2020, during COVID-19 imposed overnight curfew, Yassin Hussein Moyo, a 13-year-old schoolboy, was shot and killed by a police officer while he stood with his siblings on the balcony of his home. Carlton David Maina was a college student in England, home for the Christmas holidays in 2018, when he was killed while walking home after a soccer match.

Lily Bekele-Piper was born in Ethiopia in 1976 to parents who fled Addis Ababa for the U.S. when she was a toddler during the Ethiopian postcommunist revolution. She obtained her undergraduate degree at Wake Forest University in North Carolina and worked in South Carolina for many years before relocating to Boston in 2003, where she obtained her master’s in international education policy at Harvard University. Lilly lived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with her family from 2007 to 2011, when she moved to Kenya.

“I cannot speak for Kenyans on the depths to which Kenyans understand

racism in America but despite that, it is clear to me that Kenyans understand oppression … and what it means to have alien systems in your own country work against you.”

“The current structure and culture of law enforcement in Kenya arose from colonial laws from 60 or 70 years ago… Those laws, designed to serve an oppressive British colonial government have never changed.”

With that piece of history, Lilly sees similarities with the United States in terms of how policing emerged. “U.S. law enforcement structures and the

manner police forces function were also designed and came out of the Jim Crow Era – that’s when policing was really defined – who would be recruited, how they would be trained, and what policies would be implemented. So, we are deeply tied to one another … those crossroads help us understand how injustices perpetrated by police forces show up, both in Kenya and in the United States.”

In organizing the protests, BekelePiper conferred with Robyn Emerson, a colleague with whom she had collaborated before, particularly around causes important to the Nairobi Black American community. Ms. Emerson had attended a protest on June 2, 2020, organized by the Mathare Social Justice Center (Mathare is a slum

neighborhood in Kenya characterized by ramshackle buildings inhabited by the poor for more than the last six decades) and its Network of Mothers of Victims and Survivors of Police Violence to show solidarity with the injustice of the killing of George Floyd.

At the June 2 protest, about 25 or 30 of these protestors ‘took a knee’ in front of the U.S. Embassy for about nine minutes. They also wrote a letter to the U.S. Ambassador in Kenya to express their concerns and to demand justice for George Floyd.

“The June 2 event … gave us a narrow focus on what to do next … We all collaborated to make the events on June 9 happen … It was grassroots organizing, one person calling saying I know this person; I have this resource; I have this idea - everybody contributing together… There was a group established informally called Black Lives Matter-Kenya just as a touch point – a place where people could connect to organize.”

Bekele-Piper thanked Amnesty International-Kenya for their tremendous support and guidance on how to protest safely and wisely in Kenya.

“You cannot take protesting in Kenya very lightly. There is risk to the community in terms of police response and of course, the fact that we are in a pandemic forces certain caution.”

The June 9 protest was a one-day event. However, as Lilly noted, the day was full of activity and the protest covered several locations in Nairobi:

Yassin Hussein Moyo’s family home; the Parliament Building; the U.S. Embassy; the George Floyd Mural in Kibera (one of the largest informal settlements in Nairobi housing millions of people); and the Sarit Shopping Center roundabout (a popular shopping mall that attracts a lot of attention). “Throughout the day different pockets of Nairobi showed up, from young people to U.N. officials, and everyday citizens who just came to show their support.”

On March 27, in response to the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic, the Kenyan government imposed a curfew, initially 7 p.m.- to 5 a.m., but subsequently changed to 9 p.m. to 4 a.m.

“We had been tracking police brutality here … Since the lockdown happened, we are aware that over a dozen people had been killed; I think now it is over 15 by the police.”

“Besides the killings, since curfew was imposed, there have been a number of reported cases of extreme measures by police mishandling and beating people outside of curfew, even those scrambling to get to their homes just minutes away.”

One ironic logistic of the protest of June 9, according to Bekele-Piper, speaks volumes about the colonial traces of policing in Kenya and its white supremacist underpinnings. “It was clear that my privilege as an American living in Kenya afforded me a great deal of protection from the police and as organizers, we agreed that White American citizens would be included at every protest location to protect Kenyan Africans from the police.”

“People often pay me the compliment of thinking that I’m a Kenyan African, and so when we got to the U.S. Embassy, the officers obviously assumed I was Kenyan and engaged me in Kiswahili instructing me to leave immediately. I said, ‘I am an American citizen, and I have a right to be here’; and there were some other folks there who were actually employees of the Embassy who then engaged with those police and surprise, surprise, they listened to them, and they left us alone.”

“I don’t know if all of our goals were achieved; however, one change we noticed was the very swift action, following our protests, by the judicial system to charge the officer who shot Yassin Moyo.”

“The public attention on this case has certainly been heightened and people will be watching to see what the courts do particularly how witnesses are treated.”

“We also hope that the late Carlton Maina … may finally get justice.”

“I think in the U.S. we are already seeing similarly greater action and response to injustice, and I believe the national/international public outcry is largely responsible for that.”

Recognition of the extent of police violence against African males in Kenya and its wrongness has, according to Bekele-Piper, provided the jumping off point for change.

“That acknowledgement makes churches want to do better and do more; It makes parents want to teach their children differently. People now are wanting to really get caught up on what Black Lives Matter’s political ideology is – this is what our call to action is.”

“So, the target audience (for our protests) was the whole of the country. It was law makers, educators, families, parents and residents. I think that for me …, it was a call to action for everybody else who finds themselves fortunate enough to live in this country to ask themselves as to what role they would play to eliminate wanton police brutality.”

As for who will be the driving force for making changes in oppressive systems in Kenya, Bekele-Piper quoted Angela Y. Davis: “‘We must always attempt to lift as we climb.’ It might be the activists who started it, but I think what we saw in Nairobi, other organizations like Amnesty International-Kenya supported and ‘lifted’ with smaller groups like social justice centers, a yoga group, a home school parenting group, and religious organizations such as my church. It was extending the invitations to groups previously unengaged.”

“At the end of the day, my cynicism might say nothing will change until people’s pockets hurt; until people see us divesting our money from companies and organizations that were not just in their policies; divesting our vote from organizations and politicians that don’t serve our communities well. Economic and political divestment is a powerful weapon to activate change. Change will have to be widespread; it will have to be collective; it will have to be collaborative; it will have to be, I think, humble, and it will have to take time.”

“A protest may be a one-day event, but the path for change is long and hard. But there is hope at the end, and that is what I think we have to keep reminding ourselves.”

“Real change will also have to be collaborative … that is what has made these protests and this movement, across the world so different. People and organizations showed up in new and different ways.”

Lilly Bekele-Piper finds her passion at the intersection of creative communication and advocacy work in human rights. “At the intersection of the arts and human rights there is the potential to change the world.” She not only exemplifies this through her podcasts but has demonstrated this through her poignant, eloquent, and insightful expose of her role in organizing protests against injustice and police brutality in the United States and Kenya.

Beverle Michaele Lax, a contributor to El Ravenswood was born and raised in the City of San Mateo. After several decades teaching college and living in Kenya, she moved back and settled in East Palo Alto. She is currently in Kenya for a visit.