BY ZACHARY GEWELB, JACOB KAYE & DEAN MOSES
Students and alumni from Archbishop Molloy High School hosted a “Not for School But for Black Lives” protest outside of the Briarwood school on Saturday.
The protest comes after the Briarwood school faced backlash from alumni and current students due to their lack of an initial response after Floyd’s death and the several protests that have followed.
The movement generated a response from the school, which on June 2 posted a statement on their Instagram page that was widely panned as they flooded the comment section with criticisms and personal stories where they’ve experienced racism and bigotry by their own teachers and peers that was overlooked by the administration, as first reported by Queens Patch.
The protest was named “Not for School But for Black Lives,” a play on school’s motto: “Non scholae sed vitae” — not for school, but for life.
About 200 protesters gathered at the school around 1 p.m., on Saturday.
The group marched towards the Queens Criminal Courthouse – about a 10 minute walk from the Catholic school – where they took a knee for eight minutes, the amount of time Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin dug his knee into George Floyd’s neck as he died.
#Demonstrators sing #HappyBirthday for #BreonnaTaylor on the steps of #QueensCriminalCourt pic.twitter.com/RD9HjDywzO
— Dean_Moses (@Dean_Moses) June 6, 2020
