Poll: Many in US say protest impact will be positive

Ahead of the Juneteenth holiday weekend’s demonstrations against systemic racism and police brutality, more than 4 in 10 Americans say they expect recent protests around the country will bring positive change. A majority say they approve of the protests.

Despite headline-making standoffs between law enforcement and protesters in cities nationwide, the poll from The Associated PressNORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds a majority of Americans think law enforcement officers have generally responded to the protests appropriately. Somewhat fewer say officers used excessive force.

The findings follow weeks of peaceful protests and unrest in response to the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died pleading for air on May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer held his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes. A dramatic change in public opinion on race and policing has followed, with more Americans today than five years ago calling police violence a very serious problem that unequally targets Black Americans.

Bill Ardren, a 75-year-old retired resident of Maple Grove, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis, said he supports the protests. He blames protesters and law enforcement equally for why some demonstrations turned into ugly clashes scarred by looting and arson.

“People finally got fed up because of this last incident,” said Ardren, referring to Floyd’s death, “and it spread all over the country.”

The new poll finds 54% of Americans say they approve of the protests, while 32% disapprove. Another 14% say they hold neither opinion.

More think the protests will mostly change the country for the better than bring about negative change, 44% to 21%. A third say they won’t make much difference.

An Associated Press tally of known arrests through June 4 found more than 10,000 people were arrested at demonstrations in the U.S., many of which defied citywide curfews and some daytime orders to disperse. The count grew by the hundreds each day, as protesters were met with overwhelming shows of force by local officers, state police and National Guard members. Los Angeles had more than a quarter of the nation’s arrests, according to the AP’s tally, followed by New York, Dallas and Philadelphia.

One of the nation’s largest demonstrations took place in Philadelphia on June 6, when tens of thousands of people met near the Philadelphia Museum of Art and peacefully marched through Center City. Kipp Gilmore-Clough, a resident of the city and associate pastor at Chestnut Hill United Church, joined that day’s protest and said that kind of response to police abuse was “long overdue.”