Ahmaud Arbery killing remembered one year on: ‘Keep his name alive’

Tributes have poured in across the US to mark one year since Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black jogger, was shot and killed by three white vigilantes as he ran along a community street in Brunswick, Georgia.

“A Black man should be able to go for a jog without fearing for his life,” Joe Biden tweeted in honor of Arbery on Tuesday, adding that “today, we remember [his] life and dedicate ourselves to making this country safer for people of color”.

Protests erupted nationwide after video of Arbery’s final moments went viral online in May. Demonstrations intensified in the weeks following, after separate footage emerged of a white, Minneapolis police officer killing 46-year-old George Floyd, who was Black, garnered immediate online outrage.

The incidents sparked mass anti-racism protests across the US as activists demanded justice for Floyd and Arbery, as well as others including Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman shot and killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky, in a botched raid.

The momentum kicked off a global movement for racial justice with sister demonstrations across the world that continue to this day.

One year after Arbery’s killing, organizations and leaders in the US reaffirmed calls for social and racial justice reforms.

“You should be here,” activist Bernice King tweeted on Tuesday.

The daughter of the civil rights pioneer the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr added she was “praying for [Arbery’s] family and committed to working toward a nation and world where Black men aren’t hunted and gunned down for being Black”.

A memorial procession led by Arbery’s family has been planned for Tuesday evening near where he was killed.

“It is important to remind people of the origins, when it all started,” Jason Vaughn, an organizer and Arbery’s high school football coach told the Associated Press. “You want to make sure you keep Ahmaud’s name alive.”

But Vaughn noted that planning the events had been taxing for Arbery’s family and community, telling the AP “it’s like reading an obituary over and over again,” or “reliving the past”.

“You’ve got to stay strong,” Vaughn added. Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery’s mother, told NBC’s Blayne Alexander that although she had tried, she “can’t move on”.

“When I laid Ahmaud to rest last February, a part of me left also,” she said.

The family have asked supporters to participate in a 2.23-miles (3.59km) run to honor the distance Arbery had been running at the time he was killed. But due to the coronavirus pandemic, joggers are being asked to do so at home.

Three men – Gregory and Travis McMichael, and William “Roddy” Bryan – were charged with Arbery’s murder, and have pleaded not guilty. Attorneys for the attackers claim the shooting was justified because the men had been investigating recent robberies in the area.

State lawmakers have launched investigations into the response by law enforcement officials assigned to Arbery’s case. Police initially interviewed the men but let them walk free.

A prosecutor had also initially declined to charge the men, claiming the McMichaels and Bryan had been attempting a citizen’s arrest. Jackie Johnson was later forced to recused herself after reporters uncovered she had worked as an investigator alongside Gregory McMichael. She has denied any impropriety.

Since the 1860s, it has been legal for a private citizen in Georgia to make an arrest if a crime is committed in that person’s presence or “within their immediate knowledge”. Lawmakers, including Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, are now lobbying to strike down the law, which has been long been tied to brutal racist practices.

Local activists were instrumental in forcing Johnson’s recusal, and have also launched a lobbying campaign to create a citizen’s review panel assigned to the Glynn county police department.

“Previously, we elected people into office and just trusted that they would do the right thing,” said John Perry, who served as the area’s NAACP president at the time of Arbery’s killing.

Now running for mayor, Perry told the Associated Press that “the failure to carry out justice in the Ahmaud situation said we needed to do more as citizens”.

Cooper-Jones told NBC News she’s hopeful about the Biden administration’s commitment to combating institutional racism, both through legislation and recent executive orders. She said she prays for the president’s success in healing the country’s racial divide “because [she has] another son, and grandsons”.