▶ Outrage brings protests
Outrage over death of George Floyd ignites U.S. clashes
The nation was rocked again Saturday as demonstrators clashed with police from outside the White House gates to the streets of more than three dozen besieged cities, as outrage over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis traversed a razor’s edge between protest and civic meltdown.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said on Saturday that he was activating thousands of National Guard troops — up to 13,200 — to control protesters in Minneapolis who turned out in droves for the fourth consecutive night Friday, burning buildings to the ground, firing guns near the police and overwhelming officers. But he declined the Army’s offer to deploy military police units.
Rallies, looting and unrest expanded far beyond Minneapolis, with protesters destroying police vehicles in Atlanta and New York and blocking major streets in Detroit and in San Jose, Calif. Crowds in Milwaukee chanted, “I can’t breathe”; and demonstrators in Portland, Ore., lit a fire inside the Multnomah County Justice Center.
On Saturday, demonstrators amassed outside City Hall in San Francisco, shut down highway traffic in Miami and attempted to topple a statue in Philadelphia. Curfews were imposed in some of America’s largest cities, including
Los Angeles, Atlanta and Philadelphia.
The chaos and rage on such a broad scale evoked the Black Lives Matter demonstrations of recent years; the Los Angeles riots that followed the
1992 acquittal of four police officers charged in connection with the beating of Rodney King the year before; and even the racial strife of the 1960s, when the fury and despair of inner-city African Americans over racism and poverty erupted in scores of cities, reaching a climax in 1967 and 1968, two years that saw more than 150 riots.
This moment has not produced anything close to the violence of that era. But it is playing out under dystopian circumstances, with a pandemic that has kept much of the nation at home for months, Depression-era job losses and the public bitterly divided on politics and culture.
As governors and mayors urged restraint,
President Donald Trump on Saturday urged officials in Minnesota to “get tougher” on the protesters and offered greater military support, a move that would represent a significant escalation in the government’s response to the tensions.
There was a sense of a nation on the brink. “What are you changing by tearing up a city?” Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta asked protesters there. “You’ve lost all credibility now. This is not how we change America. This is not how we change the world.”
The protests continued with new ferocity even after Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was shown on a cellphone video kneeling on Floyd’s neck as he lost consciousness, was charged with third-degree murder Friday.
Walz said that the state was bracing for more protests and that the authorities had been overwhelmed by the demonstrations, which he said had devolved into “absolute chaos.” He did not rule out accepting the help of the federal military, although he called it an extreme step.
The roots of the unrest and division are long and deep.
But the immediate trigger is a protest movement, ignited by the death of Floyd, that reflects the street uprisings of the Black Lives Matter movement that came to prominence six years ago.
The escalating violence and destruction felt like a warning that this moment could be spinning out of control both because of the limitations of a largely spontaneous, leaderless movement and because, protesters and officials warned, there were indications it was also being undermined by agitators trying to sabotage it.
Beyond the chaos in Minneapolis, there were widespread fears that a movement protesting police violence and systemic racism was instead being subverted by images of violence and chaos playing out around the country.
Mike Griffin, an organizer in Minneapolis, said these are mostly decentralized protests: “That happens without the black pastor coming in and telling us to do it. That’s organic. These are organic protests.”
The protesters come from diverse racial backgrounds with ardent cadres of young white allies quite unlike earlier eras of racial unrest. Some marches are led by national or local activist organizations. Many others are simply spontaneous, sprouting up from long-simmering frustrations in city neighborhoods.
In many communities, the protests reflected both Floyd’s death and simmering local controversies.
One hot spot was Louisville, Ky.
Gunfire broke out in the late hours of a demonstration Thursday that was protesting the shooting death of Breonna Taylor, 26, an emergency medical technician who was killed by Louisville police officers executing a search warrant.