After the protests, lingering trauma: the scars of ‘non-lethal’ weapons

Six days after George Floyd was killed by a white policeman, thousands of protesters in Minneapolis took over an on-ramp leading to the University of Minnesota. Among them was Soren Stevenson.

It was a warm evening, a few hours before the 8pm curfew set in. The crowd advanced toward a bridge leading to the university where Stevenson, 25, had recently graduated from with a Masters of international development. He linked arms with two other protesters and together, they made their way to the front.

Stevenson had attended several other protests throughout the week where police presence had been minimal. This was different. As he approached the bridge, Stevenson saw demonstrators retreating from the front line, their faces covered with milk to alleviate teargas burn. Once on the bridge, he counted 20 police vehicles and in front of them, officers in riot gear. The crowd began to chant, “Hands up Don’t Shoot.”

Without warning, a stun grenade launched over Stevenson’s left shoulder. He watched it explode over the crowd and then heard a pop – his head jerked backwards. He reached instinctively for his face. His eyebrow, his nose, his cheekbone had become soft and compressed, like a hard-boiled egg cracked with a teaspoon.

Blinded, Stevenson stumbled to the back of the protest and sat down on a curb, blood dribbling from his eye socket. He was sweating, terrified. He kept touching his face, which was covered in a jelly-like substance. “I’ve lost my eye,” he thought to himself. “This is my worst nightmare.”

Stevenson recounted this story to me on the phone weeks after the incident, his voice steady as he listed the extent of his injuries: a fractured nose, a fractured forehead, many tiny