Wayne State University issued the following announcement on June 8.
Nearly 300 physicians, health care workers and medical students kneeled for 10 minutes in Brush Mall at the Detroit Medical Center complex to demonstrate their support in the call to end systemic racism in policing across America.
The June 5 event, coordinated locally by Ijeoma Nnodim Opara, M.D., assistant professor of Internal Medicine-Pediatrics; Kenisha Evans, M.D., an Internal Medicine resident; and Claudia Jarrin Tejada, M.D., under the leadership of a coalition of African American medical residents training in Detroit academic health systems, was part of a nationwide effort by White Coats for Black Lives, a medical student-run organization.
White Coats for Black Lives was born out of the National White Coat Die-In demonstrations that took place on medical campuses across the nation Dec. 10, 2014, in reaction to the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police in Ferguson, Mo., and New York, respectively. White Coats for Black Lives seeks to safeguard the lives and well-being of patients through the elimination of racism, and to dismantle racism in medicine and promote the health, well-being and self-determination of people of color.
Practicing social distancing and wearing masks because of the COVID-19 pandemic, those gathered listened to comments from organizers and then kneeled for 10 minutes, approximately the amount of time that Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on the neck of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, while Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on the street. While Floyd’s death on May 25 was the catalyst for the event, and demonstrations throughout the United States and the world, the White Coats for Black Lives events that took part nationwide also memorialized other African Americans killed by police.
Original source can be found here.
Source: Wayne State University
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