Man killed as Trump supporters and BLM protesters in clashes
● Portland again scene of protests over killing of George Floyd
With chants of “One person, one vote!” and “No justice, no peace!” a crowd of about 1,000 demonstrators gathered outside a Wisconsin courthouse to denounce police violence and share messages of change a week after an officer shot Jacob Blake in the back and left the 29-year-old black man paralysed.
The diverse group of protesters also chanted “S even bullets, seven days!” – a reference to the number of times Blake was shot last Sunday – as they marched toward the courthouse in Kenosha.
There, Blake’s father, Jacob Blake, Sr, gave an impassioned call for changing a system he described as fostering police brutality and racial inequities.
“There were seven bullets put in my son’ s back. Hell yeah, I’ m mad ,” said Blake. He said he wants to ask the police“what gave them the right to attempted murder on my child? What gave them the right to think that my son was an animal? What gave them the right to take something that was not theirs? I’m tired of this.”
Kenosha police officer Rusten Sheskey and two other officers were responding to a domestic dispute call last Sunday when Sheskey shot Blake in the back. Blake, Sr, told reporters that his son is heavily sedated, but he has regained consciousness, and called for Sheskey to be charged and for the other two officers at the scene to be dismissed.
Several of Saturday’s speakers encouraged the crowd to vote for change in November.
“Justice is a bare minimum,” Lt Gov Mandela Barnes said. “Justice should be guaranteed to everybody in this country.”
Blake asked those at the rally to raise their fists with him. “We are not going to stop going in the right direction. We’re going to the top ... we’re gonna make legislation happen because that’s the only thing that they recognise,” he said.
Blake also referred to the 25 May death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who died after a Minneapolis officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck. Said Blake: “We all have a knee on the back of our necks, every day.”
Protests sparked by the death of George Floyd have continued, and one person was shot and killed in Portland, Oregon, as a large caravan of Donald Trumps upporters and Black Lives Matter protesters clashed in the streets.
It was not clear if the shooting was linked to fights that broke out as a caravan of about 600 vehicles was confronted by counter-demonstrators in the city centre.
Police said the caravan had left the area at around 8.30pm local time on Saturday, and officers heard gunshots at about 8.46pm, according to a statement.
Officers arrived at the shooting scene “within a minute”, police said, but the man who was shot did not survive.
Portland has been the site of nightly protests for more than three months since the police killing of Floyd.
Many of them end in vandalism and violence, and hundreds of demonstrators have been arrested by local and federal law enforcement since late May.
In the two hours following the shooting, protesters gathered in the city centre and there was sporadic fighting and vandalism, police stated.
The chaotic scene came two days after President Trump invoked Portland as a liber - al city overrun with violence in a speech at the Republican National Convention as part of his “law and order” re-election campaign theme.
Pro testers have marched in Kenosha ever y night since Blake’s shooting, with some protests devolving into unrest with damage to buildings and vehicles. On Tuesday, two people were killed by an armed civilian.
The commander of the National Guard said on Friday that more than 1,000 Guard members had been deployed to help keep the peace, with more on the way.