This story has been updated.

For five nights and counting, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of downtown D.C. and faced off with D.C. police, Secret Service, U.S. Park Police and the National Guard.

But local protests have not been confined to the District.

From Columbia to Clarksburg to Clarendon, residents of suburban communities are mounting their own protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. Suburbanites are showing up for car rallies, marches and moments of silence to draw awareness to systemic racism and police violence locally.

Some see these suburban protests as less-risky alternatives to the demonstrations in downtown D.C., where law enforcement officers have used tear gas, rubber bullets and batons to disperse people. Groups of protesters have also broken windows and looted stores in neighborhoods across the District.

Alissa Weisman, 17, decided to help organize yesterday’s protest in downtown Bethesda after attending a protest in downtown D.C. late last week.

“A lot of students weren’t allowed to go to the D.C. protest because their families were scared, or they were scared of being in too close of contact with COVID,” says Weisman, a rising senior at Walt Whitman High School.

Some Bethesda business owners boarded up their storefronts ahead of the protest, but the event remained peaceful. The crowd was estimated at over a thousand people. The police were there, but officers did not interfere with the demonstration.

“There were a lot more people attending than we had ever hoped for,” Weisman said. “Bethesda is a majority-white population, and we felt like the community needed to hear the message the most.”

Bethesda is more than 80% white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

As suburbs become less white, though, residents say police violence and systemic racism are increasingly apparent outside of D.C.’s urban core.

“As our suburban communities in the D.C. area become more diverse, these issues are only going to become more prevalent,” says Dan Reed, a transportation planner and writer who has been collecting and tweeting out information about protests in the D.C. suburbs.

Reed decided to go to the Bethesda protest yesterday with his partner to represent the city’s non-white residents. “My black face is probably going to be a lot more helpful in Bethesda than it was downtown,” he says. “We still have this legacy of racial segregation in our community. I felt it was very important to present myself as a person of color.”

In Chevy Chase Tuesday, a largely white crowd silently took a knee for eight minutes and 46 seconds to symbolize the time Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee on George Floyd’s neck.

Reed was moved by the photos of the vigil he saw on social media. “It was heartening to see white people together decide to take that stance,” he says.

And despite some organizers’ best efforts, “suburban” does not always mean “safe” when it comes to protesting against police.

A number of local Virginia police departments used force to disperse crowds over the weekend, then switched to more conciliatory tactics in recent days.

A Saturday protest in Manassas ended with five arrests, seven injured officers and businesses with smashed windows, InsideNova reported. Authorities say protesters threw bricks and rocks at police, who then used tear gas on the crowd.

The ensuing three days of demonstrations then remained largely peaceful.

In Fredericksburg, police used tear gas to disperse crowds on Sunday night and faced off with protesters on Monday. The tone changed Tuesday, when police joined protesters in a march.

A Sunday protest in Leesburg went on without incident, as did ones in Clarendon, Clarksburg and Columbia on Tuesday.

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Upcoming Protests Outside D.C.

Activist networks, youth groups and civil rights organizations are organizing events for this week and weekend.

Sean Perryman, the president of the Fairfax County NAACP, says he’s been fielding a lot of calls from first-time suburban protesters with questions about the logistics of his organization’s car rally tonight. “Will there be a space for me?” they’re asking him. “Can I reserve a spot?”

“There might be some traffic. There might not be room for you,” he acknowledges. “But that’s not a bad thing. The worst thing that could happen is that there isn’t enough room for you. And that would ultimately be good, because so many people cared to show up.”

Here are some of the other upcoming protests events:

• Wednesday: The Fairfax County branch of the NAACP will host a car rally tonight at 6:30 p.m. at the Fairfax County Government Center. Cars will gather in the parking lot, with local police directing traffic. Students and alumni at Northwood High School in Silver Spring will also host a protest tonight at 6:30 p.m.
• Thursday: Stand Up For Racial Justice (SURJ) is organizing a car rally at 5:00 p.m. at the White Oak Recreation Center in Silver Spring. There will also be a protest starting near the Burke Walmart at 4:00 p.m.
• Friday: The youth group DC Teens Action is planning a protest on Friday at 1:00 p.m. in front of the Montgomery County Circuit Court in Rockville.
• Saturday: Damascus residents will gather for a protest at noon.

This story has been updated with additional events.