By: Michael G. Reel
Changing Our Narrative
The on-camera murder of George Floyd, a black man killed by Minneapolis police last month, resonated around the globe. Thousands demonstrated their outrage in the streets of some of the world’s leading cities and affluent communities.
For the first time in history, protests were not limited to just urban centers throughout America. Protesters marched in London, Germany, France, Mexico and Australia, denouncing racism and police brutality in the George Floyd death and within their borders.
On the West Coast, residents of Santa Monica, California staged their own peaceful protest in honor of Floyd. The protest started off peacefully but escalated into rioting and looting of high-end department stores and posh boutiques.
As news and police choppers buzzed overhead hundreds of arrests were made. Looters were apprehended while peaceful protesters in the wrong place at the wrong time were swept up as well.
Cable news outlet CNN and Facebook Live both captured the arrest of Sultan Sharrief, an African American Ph.D. student and homeless advocate working in Santa Monica and leading the peaceful protest on Sunday, May 31. Sharrief was shot with rubber bullets and tear-gassed. “It’s a hard thing to relive, to be honest,” said Sharrief. “I never thought that I would be in that situation.”
Sharrief, an MIT graduate currently working on his Ph.D. at the University of Southern California, admits as a black man he was taken aback by his arrest after working so hard with law enforcement to calm down some of the younger protesters.
“For me, I felt invisible. The (police) had their idea of who I was and why I was there—which was, in their minds, was to loot. My whole life I fought against the expectations of what I was supposed to be.”
A Sundance award-winning filmmaker, Sharrief acknowledges he has always felt challenged when it comes to simply fitting in. “I was too black for the white kids. I was too white for the black kids. And too Muslim for Christian kids and too black for the Arab Muslim kids. I never fit in anywhere.”
As the Los Angeles County and adjoining cities’ 4:00 p.m. curfew drew near, the peaceful protest morphed into violent looting and vandalism. Sharrief, who was leading a predominantly white group of protesters composed of families with small children, multiracial millennials and older white Santa Monica residents, quickly observed a tone and attitude switch in law enforcement who were monitoring the peaceful protest all day.
“I think they (police) were sending a message because there was no reason to have that level of brutality—when you got kids and even white families. Not only a message to the protesters but also to the while allies: ‘You better leave these Negroes alone—this ain’t your fight.’ That’s what it felt like they (police) were saying.”
Days following his arrest and release Sultan Sharrief sat down with Michael Reel of Reel Urban News for an exclusive in-depth interview focused on his leadership of the peaceful protest in Santa Monica, his arrest, the death of George Floyd and his hope for the future.
