Were they worth it?: Key protest movements over the decades

The protests that left much of the world in a haze of tear gas last year were slowed by a pandemic – until the death of George Floyd sparked a global uprising against police brutality and racial inequality. From Hong Kong to Khartoum, Baghdad to Beirut, Gaza to Paris and Caracas to Santiago, people took to the streets in 2019 for the pursuits of freedom, sovereignty or simply a life less shackled by hardship while few prospered. Now, after the death of Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis who died in police custody when a white officer pressed his knee into Floyd's neck for several minutes, protests rage around the globe.