Early afternoon sun burned into the shoulders and shins of protesters on Monday who stood in front of the Hamilton County Courthouse to protest George Floyd’s death.
For some, this was Day Four.
The crowd’s center that ebbed at the courthouse stairs was young, in their 20s and 30s. The edges – older or much younger. Some children sported toothless smiles and handmade signs. A swath of teens lamented that they were too young to vote.
But it is protesters in their 20s and 30s – deemed millennials – who mostly populate the march from the courthouse to Cincinnati City Hall and District 1 late into the night.
Monday afternoon, Hannah Guth stood back from her peers.
It was her third day.
Her right arm bore a smudged phone number on it and her acid-wash T-shirt read “Black Lives Matter”. The phone number, an emergency call, was the remnant of Sunday. As were her clothes.
Sunday night, she was among those arrested after the city-imposed curfew.
She recalled being stuck on a Metro bus for hours, long enough for four protesters on her bus to urinate on themselves. Late into the night, those arrested were gathered outside for hours with their hands zip-tied behind them, Guth said.
“I just got out of jail this morning,” she said Monday, adding she hadn't made a trip home between her release and stepping back in to protest. “It was by far the worst thing that’s ever happened to me."
Guth is 23. Her generation is experiencing a lot that others, at the same age, have not. The pandemic had a grip on her life and work as a server and bartender. She’s been isolated at home, scrolling her social media. Events to protest Floyd’s death flooding her feeds.
She’s young. She needs people. She needs to be heard. And she is outraged.
The Metro bus where Guth sat with her hands bound was packed with protesters just like her. Cincinnati police said they arrested more than 300 people related to protests and curfew violations. The average age, judging from arrest slips, was 23 one night, 24 the other.
The oldest arrested protester Guth spoke with during her hold was 30. And maybe that is not new. Protests have mostly been peopled by the young, those on college campuses, and those who can take a day off to vent without bearing much consequence.
But there was something different Sunday night. She observed an influx of white protesters seated with her in the sea of mass arrests in Over-the-Rhine.
Guth, a white woman, was one of the 187 white protesters arrested Sunday.
Trent Sulvain noticed the crowd’s racial diversity, too. It looked far different from when, in his freshman year of college, protesters came out after the death of Sam Dubose in 2015.
“My people are always out there,” he said. “It feels nice to have allies and support from everyone. Finally, we’re not alone in this.”
Sulvain is 23. And protesting isn’t new to him or his family.
He recalled his mother protesting the 1992 riots that erupted in Los Angeles after four police officers who had beaten a man named Rodney King in 1991 were acquitted on all charges stemming from his brutal treatment.
But there’s a distinction between Sulvain and his mother’s generation: Social media’s role.
Thumbing through his Twitter feed inspired Sulvain to make a change. He wanted to make a statement. He couldn’t sit on his phone, scrolling in isolation.
And perhaps, Sulvain pondered, the protests were the push people who’d been isolated for weeks needed. They couldn’t be alone in feeling the pain of Floyd’s death.
“You have nothing to do but to go online and look at the news,” Mahagany Shaw, 24, said.
It’s the recent murders of Floyd and Louisville's Breonna Taylor by police officers that flashed across news stations and inundated social media that Shaw’s been paying attention to.
Non-stop news coverage and years of built-up frustration, she said, have intensified into what’s been the past four days of protests. The diversity of millennials out protesting, it’s an important part of their generation.
“Seeing all these people out here – every race, every color – it’s beautiful,” she said.
Nushong Goba, 23, was among those protesting with a diverse group of friends. He flew from Arizona back to his family in Cincinnati when the pandemic crept into the U.S. Seeing his friends, many of whom are not people of color, protest alongside him made him feel less alone.
He was overwhelmed by Floyd’s death. It left him unsure of how to offer his support to his community.
“To see the news that someone just like me, doing something that I do — I run, I cash checks. I used to work at a bank,” he said. “Normal everyday things I usually do, I could be the next victim.”
But his fear doesn’t hold him back, it fuels him to protest during the day.
Chris Albers became active in civil rights while a student at Northern Kentucky University. Albers said people have been calling him a white ally. But he doesn’t feel deserving of the title.
“A lot of people I’m marching with have gone through racial injustice, and I have not experienced that,” he said. “In that way, I cannot relate to them, but I can empathize with their cause.”
Albers holds another privilege, too: His age. He’s 23.
Guth, Sulvain, Shaw, Goba, and Albers are millennials. They aren’t going home to children. Guth said she wasn’t allowed back at work yet. It’s allowed her to spend time protesting. And their health allows them to march in the sun, during a pandemic, for hours on end, day after day.
“Younger people can take the risk,” Goba said.
His mother, a registered nurse, couldn’t come out to the protest. She’s an essential worker and was worried she’d potentially expose the crowd to COVID-19.
Goba says that being young, his immune system is sturdier. He’s privileged to have his health while marching with a face mask, in the wake of the pandemic.
The pandemic is an added layer that protesters face, but perhaps, the pull young people have to go out and risk their lives in packed protest crowds isn't so different from the 1960s.
Some could see it as a rite of passage from generation to generation.
Decades ago, young protesters managed to end a war, advance civil rights legislation and launch the second wave of women's rights and the gay rights movement through their marches and cries. Though their fingers weren't clicking away on keyboards, nor were they documenting minute-by-minute coverage on Twitter, they found a way to reach out, to plan, to commit.
But Guth, Sulvain, Shaw, Goba, and Albers all agree: Social media helped bring the millennial generation out to protest.
"My Twitter timeline was full of stuff and it just inspired me more, because I was at home this morning and it fired me up again," Sulvain said. "I thought, 'I've got to get off my butt, I can't just sit here and scroll on my timeline. I have to get out there and make a change.'"