The protests changed me in a lot of ways. One way was, I was by no means a class reductionist before. But the protests really woke me up to the real struggles of oppressed communities in the US and importantly, the revolutionary potential in those communities. I remember listening to Rev Left in my car and had to pull over for a minute to absorb it when Breht said something to the effect of "what did white socialists in America ever give us?! Bernie Sanders!? Fuck that! The real revolutionary potential is with oppressed communities."
It was a series of genuine, energetic social movements that wanted to address long-standing issues within American society (namely white supremacy and police being police), with mountains of video evidence and testimonies to make its case. In spite of all that, it was hijacked, attacked, diluted, discredited, smeared, and neutered, with nothing concrete to show for it but some empty gestures and milquetoast local-level reforms. I saw liberals, both online and real-life, go from enthusiastically supporting it to weakly defending it at best against the inevitable reactionary pushback. I saw people with "Back the blue" shirts/masks/hats in public, even after the incident after incident making it clear the true nature of what the police are. I saw the increasingly-authoritarian atmosphere of US politics happen in real time, backed by both parties differing only in degrees. And all of this for issues that have stretched backed to the Civil Rights Era with little in the way of tangible progress.
In the end, it displayed the deep, "spiritual" rot within the heart and soul of America. This, along with the concurrent pandemic and economic crash, transformed me from a "kinda" socialist to an unabashed Marxist.
I was gonna write something but then read your comment and decided to just +1 here instead.