Black Lives Matter, grandma and me: how our world changed during lockdown

After months apart, Jade Bentil was reunited with her grandmother, in time to see the BLM protests unfold. She reflects on a history of repression

It is Saturday 13 June 2020 and the world is on fire. I’m sitting with my grandma, Esther, in her living room in south London for the first time in three months. She’s reclining in her favourite chair, occasionally sitting up to gesticulate at the TV and pepper the air with comments as we watch the 24-hour newsreel. The scene is achingly familiar; we have sat together in this way, usually with my mum, every year since my grandma was the first person to hold me in her arms in the wake of my arrival into this world, in November 1992. Yet, even while this moment is comforting in its familiarity, there is also something wholly unprecedented about the afternoon, as we watch the images flicker before our eyes.

From her living room, we’re seeing history unfold. We are bearing witness to the protests that are part of the war for black life on the streets of London, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Paris and each and every space marked by the constellations of black existence. We can’t be out on the streets ourselves because, at 84, my grandma is particularly vulnerable to Covid-19. Yet even as we’re shut away from the action, the revolution has still found its way into her home. We cheer on all those who, against the background of a global health crisis – the perils of which have extended the long shadow of death always hanging over black life – have risen up.

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