Residents clean up after night of chaos

SAN DIEGO— Carrying brooms, shovels, trash bags and cans of paint, thousands of people from Los Angeles to New York swept up glass from broken store windows, covered over graffiti and organized ransacked businesses Monday after protests over police killings of Black people turned destructive once again.

Some showed up only hours after taking part in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd, a Black man pinned to the ground by a white Minneapolis police officer who pressed a knee into his neck for several minutes. Many said cleaning felt cathartic during a dark period for a nation battling the coronavirus pandemic, the job losses that followed and now the worst racial unrest in half a century.

In Los Angeles, Bill Stuehler, 66, who marched with activists on Sunday, grabbed brooms, a rake and a trash shovel and drove to nearby Long Beach to clean up the mess.

Soon, more than 2,000 people were working side by side, scrubbing, filling trash containers and repairing what they could.

“It was pretty amazing to see the number of people turn out for the community,” Stuehler said. “It restored the faith in humanity that I had lost last night.”

In Wisconsin, volunteers in Milwaukee and Madison turned up for a second day to clean up damage from the night before.

Countless businesses already had taken a hit from restrictions designed to curb the spread of the coronavirus and were starting to reopen just as the protests led to more expensive setbacks: vandalism and stolen merchandise.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said she didn’t recognize downtown when she walked through it Sunday, “but what I did recognize were the hundreds of volunteers and residents who came because they love Seattle.”