Writing

by Juliette Rihl and Mark Kramer

Millions of people across the U.S. have participated in anti-racism demonstrations over the death of George Floyd. The New York Times tracked the scale of the movement and concluded that it may be one of the biggest in U.S. history.

PublicSource staff and freelance partners have covered a lot of racial justice marches in the city of Pittsburgh over the course of two months.

But to capture a more comprehensive picture of the scale, we asked local reporter Mark Kramer to explore the extent of the Black Lives Matter movement in our region’s small towns. It’s not a secret that our region is among the most fragmented, with more than 100 police departments in Allegheny County alone, and even more municipalities. Mark went to a handful of protests in these towns and covered them in his story.

To show the scale of the movement in our region, we’ve mapped dozens of towns that held anti-racism rallies. If you know of a southwestern Pennsylvania town that had a Black Lives Matter protest but we haven’t included it here, please send us a note with a location to info@publicsource.org and a link to an event on social media or an article covering the protest.

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Juliette Rihl is a reporter for PublicSource. She can be reached at juliette@publicsource.org.

Mark Kramer is a freelance writer and creative writing teacher based in Pittsburgh. He can be reached at mark@mnkramer.com.