![]() ![]() He described a childhood marked by witnessing local police target and harass young men of color in a city where 38 percent of the Black population lives below the poverty line. ![]() “Some might call it a little racist town,” said Melquan Barnett, 28, who was born and raised in Erie’s segregated and impoverished east side. In 2016, Donald Trump won Erie County by 2 points. Like the struggling Rust Belt town of Erie, Pennsylvania, a former industrial hub that’s lost nearly two-thirds of its manufacturing jobs and a quarter of its population over the last half-century. It wasn’t just Minneapolis and large coastal cities like Los Angeles and New York that rose up in anger, but also smaller, whiter towns, some of them deep inside Trump country. In the midst of a pandemic that had already claimed a disproportionate number of Black lives, people across the country flooded the streets to protest the national epidemic of police violence against Black communities. It was Saturday, May 30, just five days after Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin squeezed the final breath out of George Floyd, digging his knee into the back of Floyd’s neck for more than 9 minutes as he cried out in anguish for help. ![]() This story is published in partnership with Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. ![]()
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