The city of 125,000, about 40 miles from Los Angeles, is home to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Donald Trump carried the area in 2016, just like Mitt Romney did in 2012 and John McCain in 2008. And it was here, in 1992, that a jury acquitted the police officers charged with beating Rodney King.
But on June 6, several thousand people gathered in Simi Valley to protest the police killings of George Floyd and other Black Americans. The protests were diverse, with people of “every race, every ethnicity, every age group,†including white people, Mikiiya Foster, an organizer of the protests, told Vox.
One older white woman, she said, came with a sign reading, “now you’ve pissed off Granny.â€
Indeed, images from the protest tell what may be, for some, a surprising story: one of a majority-white, police-friendly city rising up against racist violence like never before.
Versions of that same story have been playing out time and again this summer, as people in small towns and in traditionally Republican strongholds turn out to protest in unprecedented numbers. And more so than in previous periods of uprising against racism and police violence, many of those protesting have been white, reflecting a larger shift in white public opinion toward skepticism of police and support for Black Lives Matter.
It’s not clear how enduring this support will be or how much policy change it will drive. As the months go by, some white people who have been supportive of the movement may “feel like they’ve done their part,†Ashley Jardina, a political science professor at Duke University and the author of the book White Identity Politics, told Vox. “Because racism doesn’t affect their day-to-day lives, it becomes salient and less important for them.â€
www.vox.com/21310027/black-lives-matter-protest-2020-california-simi
