When I was 14, I went to my first Black Lives Matter protest. In the six years since, I’ve spent countless hours at demonstrations for many causes, yelling chants, meeting people, and photographing.
I love doing this. And two weeks ago, when I took these photos, I felt two things for the first time. One was the feeling that the issue at hand most directly threatened me, a Chinese American girl. The other was realizing that the people present came to support and defend me against the creeping shadow of violence – by the general public and by the police – against Asians who live in the United States.
These pictures, taken over the course of several protests, are some of my experience of a time that has become not only nationally historic, but personally so.
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