Support justice-driven, accurate and transparent news — make a quick donation to Truthout today!
Dozens of youth protesters descended on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s home Louisville Friday morning armed with bullhorns and banners to disrupt the Kentucky Republican’s sleep in order to call for justice for Breonna Taylor and for new leadership.
“I don’t think, especially with our generation, that we’ve ever had this chance to take over our future,” 23-year-old Bowling Green for Peace organizer Derik Overstreet told the Courier Journal. “And it’s really important that this doesn’t turn into a summer trend. It’s really important that this doesn’t fade away.”
BREAKING: It’s 6am and we are live at Mitch McConnell’s house on #Juneteenth demanding justice for #BreonnaTaylor and for all of us.
Every single problem in our country, Mitch McConnell stands in the way of solving.
Wake up, or get ready to get voted out. #WakeUpMitch pic.twitter.com/vyS0YOUS6O
— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) June 19, 2020
Demonstrators arrived at McConnell’s home in the upscale Cherokee Road area of the Highlands district in Louisville just before 6am.
No justice, no sleep Mitch.
You let our economy tumble into free-fall, our people be gunned down in the streets by killer cops, & our planet be ravaged by your oil CEO friends.
This #Juneteenth , we’re wide awake.
In November when we vote you out, maybe you’ll wake up, too. pic.twitter.com/M6sRiNbFDu
— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) June 19, 2020
Carrying signs calling for the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor in the city during a no-knock raid in March to be arrested, the protesters made commotion and delivered speeches outside of the majority leader’s home.
Local Sunrise Movement organizer Maxwell Farrar, 29, said that the demonstration was aimed not only at calling attention to the problems but also the solutions faced by the public in an age of police brutality and racism, the coronavirus pandemic, and economic and climate crisis.
“We’re not here to just complain on the internet,” said Farrar. “We’re here to get the solutions we need. We know, from the hood to the holler, Kentuckians know we need change right now.”
It was unclear at press time whether McConnell was at home at the time of the demonstration.
Sunrise Movement on Twitter called on Kentuckians to support progressive state legislator Charles Booker in the state’s primary on June 23 to defeat McConnell in the general election set for November.
“We’ve got four days to make him the Democratic nominee,” the group tweeted.
A terrifying moment. We appeal for your support.
In the last weeks, we have witnessed an authoritarian assault on communities in Minnesota and across the nation.
The need for truthful, grassroots reporting is urgent at this cataclysmic historical moment. Yet, Trump-aligned billionaires and other allies have taken over many legacy media outlets — the culmination of a decades-long campaign to place control of the narrative into the hands of the political right.
We refuse to let Trump’s blatant propaganda machine go unchecked. Untethered to corporate ownership or advertisers, Truthout remains fearless in our reporting and our determination to use journalism as a tool for justice.
But we need your help just to fund our basic expenses. Over 80 percent of Truthout’s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors.
Truthout’s fundraiser ended last night, and we fell just short of our goal. But your support still matters immensely. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger one-time gift, Truthout only works with your help.