Courtesy of Colin McCornack
At noon on Friday, hundreds of medical professionals from Washington University, Barnes-Jewish Hospital, and Children’s Hospital lined Kingshighway in their white coats to show their support for the Black Lives Matter movement and to protest the death of Minneapolis man George Floyd. But instead of marching, the protesters stood frozen, socially distanced and masked, fists raised in solidarity. They were quiet for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the length of time officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck. The man died in police custody.
The protest started with a group of Wash. U. medical students. After Floyd’s death, protests began to spring up across the country. The medical students wanted to lend their voices to the movement and organized a local White Coats for Black Lives demonstration. Other White Coats for Black Lives rallies were held at hospitals across the country on Friday.
Courtesy of Jason Morris
Jason Morris
The students initially organized photoshoots of doctors, nurses, and medical students in their white coats to share on social media as part of a campaign. They also planned to share educational resources and ways to donate to the cause. Still, they wanted to do more. “We were looking for ways to show solidarity with the movement, but as health care workers, we’re acutely aware that we’re still in the middle of a pandemic,” says Jason Morris, a third-year medical student at Washington University and one of the organizers. “We wanted to find a way to balance showing support with having the proper social distancing.” They organized a protest on the lawn to ensure that they could still have face masks and could space out. “It was our way of showing support while also staying safe,” says Morris.
For the organizers, the demonstration goes beyond addressing criminal justice reform. “Black Lives Matter doesn’t just talk about police brutality,” says Morris. “It talks about all the ways institutionalized racism affects black communities. I think we’ve noticed this in health care this year when we talk about maternal mortality rates, hypertension or high blood pressure, access to health care. COVID-19 has exacerbated a lot of that.”
The medical students at Wash. U. plan to continue to have a presence at larger protests. And they are holding conversations about what they can do as an institution to dismantle racism in the health care field. Morris hopes that people examine their own fields to see if they are working to dismantle racism.
“It’s not just about police brutality,” Morris says. “The institutions of racism are all across this country.”
