COLUMBIA (NYTIMES) - In an on-camera address after a week of destructive protests, former Vice-President Joe Biden pleaded with his audience to imagine life for black people in America. Imagine, he said, "if every time your husband or son, wife or daughter left the house, you feared for their safety." Imagine the police called on you for sitting in Starbucks.

"The anger and frustration and the exhaustion, it's undeniable," he said.

Exhaustion. For many black Americans across the country, what a year this has been. The coronavirus pandemic has continued to disproportionately kill black people, and a spate of high profile killings in recent months in Georgia, Kentucky and Minnesota, the latter two at the hands of the police, led to widespread demonstrations nationwide.

Protests shook more than three dozen cities on Saturday (May 30) as crowds expressed outrage over the death of George Floyd, a black security guard who was killed in police custody in Minneapolis. Demonstrators shut down freeways, set fires and battled police batons and tear gas, the pain and frustration of the moment spilling out into the streets.

In Columbia, the city where Biden delivered his victory speech after the South Carolina primary just over three months ago, demonstrators Saturday said they were demanding more than what it seemed like an election in November would deliver. Not only justice for the death of Floyd but also change in political and economic power that would prevent the death of another black person in police custody, another brutal video going viral.

"I'm tired of coming out here," said Devean Moon, a 21-year-old Columbia resident, one of hundreds who participated in the peaceful protests in the city. "I'm tired of feeling forced to do all this."

It dawned on Sierra Moore, 24, who attended the protests carrying a homemade sign that read "No Justice, No Peace", that she and her grandmother have been protesting the same issues over the course of a century.

She looked at the racially diverse group of thousands, which gathered for a short program on the State House steps before leading a march to the local police station.

Next to her was another sign: "Respect my existence or expect my resistance." "I just don't think that's how change happens," Moore said of voting. "They've been telling us to do that for so long - and we've done it - and look at everything that's still going on."

Her words - expressing a sentiment shared by her peers - serve notice to politicians, civil rights groups and Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee who has urged unity amid the frustration.

"If you want change in America, go and register to vote," said Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta, but interviews with activists and leading Democratic figures including Stacey Abrams of Georgia; Jesse Jackson, the longtime civil rights leader and former presidential candidate; and Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts flipped that typical framework: If Democrats want people to vote, party leaders need to listen to why people are angry.

Abrams described the events of the past week as what happens when people are desperate for "their pain to be validated." "You cannot motivate someone to a behaviour that they don't believe will actually bring change," she said. "We have to start by saying what you feel and what you fear is real."

As he seeks to win the White House for the Democrats, the party that is the political home of most black Americans, Biden has attempted to strike this balance. He made clear that he has spoken to Floyd's family.

"We are a nation enraged, but we cannot allow our rage to consume us," he said in a statement released early Sunday morning. "We are a nation exhausted, but we will not allow our exhaustion to defeat us." "The very soul of America is at stake," he said, tying the tension between the police and black communities to removing President Donald Trump from the White House.

The moment may still test Biden's priorities, as a weary black electorate desires far greater change than the promise of a return to normalcy that has fueled his campaign. Energising those voters, activists and elected leaders say, means addressing their demands for change and the realities of racism. But the former vice president, one of the Senate architects of the modern criminal justice system, cannot confront racism without addressing systemic inequalities, and he cannot address systemic inequalities by simply returning to a pre-Trump America.

"Our needs aren't moderate," Jackson said in a recent interview. "The absence of Trump is not enough."

Biden's win in South Carolina was a turning point for his once-flailing campaign. His support came from across all demographics, but his particular strength was older black voters - people who said the community's familiarity with and trust of Biden, combined with his perceived ability to beat Trump, earned their backing.

To win in November, and to deliver on his promise of unity, Biden is likely to need more than the coalition that brought him his primary victory. And to engage younger voters, he'll need to offer more than the promise of ousting Trump as an answer to current despair.

On the policy front, a task force with criminal justice experts that supported Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has already been convened. Biden recently released a "Plan for Black America" covering economic inequality and voting rights. Jackson, who supported Sanders in the primary, said Biden is "a consensus builder" and, if surrounded by the right people, the quality should serve him well.

But Biden also must minimise mistakes, said Mayor Stephen Benjamin of Columbia, alluding to the recent controversy in which Biden apologised after saying "you ain't black" to black people uncertain whether to support him or Trump.

"The greatest asset that every candidate has, for better or for worse, is authenticity," Benjamin said.

He views authenticity as a prerequisite to levelling with people who are used to being disappointed.

"I do believe," he said, "that if the vice-president is authentically Joe, a legitimately good man who cares, I think people will gravitate to that authenticity."

Progressive black leaders are extremely critical of Trump, as are many black voters. But they also believe that Democrats have sometimes been their greatest obstacle in addressing police brutality and racial inequality.

"Part of the reason these are systemic inequalities is that they transcend not only party but time," said Abrams, who is among those being vetted by Biden as a potential running mate. She also noted that: "We have to be very intentional about saying this is not about one moment or one murder - but the entire infrastructure of justice."

Pressley, one of the House members who introduced a resolution to condemn police brutality, racial profiling and the excessive use of force in Congress this past week, pointed to the confluence of issues facing black communities: a public health crisis, an economic crisis and, with the threat of police violence, "just trying to stay alive."

Economic experts have predicted that even as the country faces a nationwide downturn, black communities may be hit particularly hard. Access to capital will dry up more quickly, especially for black business owners, and a coming "avalanche of evictions" could displace black renters across the country.

Pressley, an insurgent progressive in 2018 who beat a Democratic incumbent partly with a strategy to engage nontypical voters, said if elected officials want to speak to people's pain, they have to understand the "deficit of trust" they're operating under.

"People don't participate, not because they're ignorant and they don't know enough," she said. "It's because they know too much. They live it every day."