"Liberation" as a political horizon amidst the coronavirus pandemic in the United States (original) (raw)
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Princeton University Department of Sociology and Public Affairs, 2021
This paper addresses such scholarly questions as: Was there any interesting racial component to the BLM protests, especially given COVID disparities in health care for Black patients? Did the emotional and mental effects of quarantine have an effect on BLM protest attendance? If so, how? Were there distinct aspects of certain cities that made protests more highly attended and more common? Through directly engaging with such scholarly questions, it can be better understood how COVID-19 affects and has affected the occurrence of BLM protests and demonstrations. A comprehensive study through the administering of a 25-question hybrid survey-interview protocol to 418 individuals living in the United States with diverse demographic backgrounds who attended or would have attended BLM protests (both for and against BLM) serves as the basis of scholarly evidence for this composition. This research is intensely important as an intersection of social efficacy, activism, and dissent that serves as an informative, unstudied source of how social protest is affected in a time of epidemiological crisis.