Here’s what you need to know:
- Passionate but peaceful crowds take to American streets as protests cohere into a movement.
- Protests grow in smaller towns, including some with Klan histories.
- Solemnity marks George Floyd’s memorial in North Carolina. A sheriff says police are ‘part of the problem.’
- Police departments across the country are re-examining their use-of-force policies.
- Around the world, protests against racism and police brutality multiply.
- Florida is seeing a stunning level of sustained protest.
- Two Buffalo officers are charged after shoving a protester.
Passionate but peaceful crowds take to American streets as protests cohere into a movement.
Demonstrations across the United States, which began as spontaneous eruptions of outrage after the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police less than two weeks ago, appeared to have cohered by Saturday into a nationwide movement protesting systemic racism.
Thousands marched in big cities like New York and Seattle, and in small towns like Vidor, Texas; Havre, Mont.; and Marion, Ohio, denouncing a broken law enforcement system marked by racial injustice.
One of the largest protests was in the nation’s capital, where new fences, concrete barriers and a force of unidentifiable guards have shrouded the White House, projecting a new symbolism of militarized defensiveness rather than openness and democracy.
A multiethnic, multigenerational crowd of thousands of protesters converged there, at the mouth of Lafayette Square. Demonstrators on foot and bicycle headed to the freshly painted Black Lives Matter mural on the main thoroughfare, passing cars with “BLM” and “Stop Killing Us” written on their rear windows. Later, they also passed people sipping cocktails at a few upscale restaurants open for outdoor dining.
At times, it felt as if the entire city had emptied into downtown Washington as the numbers swelled to high for the two weeks. Lines of protesters snaked their way through side streets, while others converged in nearby parks.
By early evening, 16th Street had the feel of a street fair. Ice cream trucks idled on the side of the road, parents rolled tired children in strollers, people played guitars and harmonicas. Music was playing out of the back of cars. Some people danced.
Protesters also gathered in the once predominantly black neighborhoods of U Street and Columbia Heights, north of the White House. In Meridian Hill Park, which locals call Malcolm X Park, a large crowd gathered to chant, “No justice, no peace.”
Just down the street, the intersection of 14th and U Streets was filled with protesters who had gathered to listen to D.J.s and musicians play go-go music, a type of funk music recently designated the official music of the district. The chanting crowd paused to listen to a woman sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which black Americans have embraced for more than a century as an anthem of liberation.
Although Saturday’s demonstrations were largely peaceful, President Trump continued to hammer home a familiar message.
“LAW & ORDER!” he wrote on Twitter on Saturday evening.
Here are highlights of some of the larger protests around the country.
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In Minneapolis, protesters who had massed outside Mayor Jacob Frey’s house shouted at him when he would not commit on the spot to defunding the police department. “Go home, Jacob, go home!” and “Shame! Shame!” they yelled, and he retreated under their chants through a part in the crowd.
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In New York, nearly a thousand people streamed into Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, and several thousand gathered near Central Park in Manhattan. Some danced and others played music, and chants of “Whose streets? Our streets!” rang out even as the clouds broke and a downpour soaked the crowds.
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In Seattle, a demonstration organized by health care workers drew thousands who walked from Harborview Medical Center to City Hall. Many wore scrubs and lab coats and carried signs that read, “Black Health Matters” and “Racism Is a Public Health Emergency.”
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Protesters in San Francisco briefly stopped traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge in one of two dozen demonstrations planned for the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend. “This is the awakening of America,” said one protester, Nate Payne, who was clad in a gold San Francisco 49ers jacket and holding a cutout of the team’s former quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, kneeling.
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In Philadelphia, thousands of people gathered near the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with some demanding that the city cut the Police Department budget by at least 10 percent
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In Los Angeles, just south of the University of Southern California campus and the historic core of the city’s black community, a procession of marchers decked out in Trojan cardinal and led by the U.S.C. Black Student Assembly completed a three-mile walk around the campus. Members of the Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social, a Latina and Native American activist group, led a protest walk around At California State University, Los Angeles.
Protests grow in smaller towns, including some with Klan histories.
Anti-racism demonstrations are unfolding not only in major cities across the United States, but also in smaller towns and largely rural areas.
More than 100 people gathered on Saturday for a protest against racism in Vidor, Texas, a town about 10,000 that has a history of Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist activity. The demonstrators, many holding “Black Lives Matter” signs, stood in a grassy area, chanting, “I can’t breathe!” and “No justice, no peace!”
Michael Cooper, the president of the N.A.A.C.P. chapter in nearby Beaumont, addressed the gathering and emphasized that the protest was peaceful. “Just like Waco, Texas is now known for something else, Vidor, Texas, will now be known for love!” he declared to cheers, according to video from KFDM.
Vidor, which is near the Louisiana border, has been the site of Klan rallies as well as a major fight over integration in the early 1990s, when two black men trying to desegregate a housing project moved out because of harassment and intimidation.
On Saturday, video posted on Twitter by a local reporter showed a number of white men with guns standing near the demonstration. The said they were there to protect a nearby veterans memorial, according to the reporter, Jordan James of 12NewsNow.
Other small towns where protests were held on Saturday included Marion, Ohio; Simi Valley, Calif.; Richmond, Ky.; Washington, Pa.; Athens, Ga.; and Ephrata, Pa. Protesters also took to the streets of Huntsville, Texas, just blocks from the state’s execution chamber.
In recent days, Havre, Mont.; Garden City, Kan.; and Harvard, Neb., have all had protests.
On Saturday morning, crowds converged in Alpine, Texas, to support the Black Lives Matter movement.
The scene in Alpine, which has a population of about 6,000 and is in the Big Bend region of Texas near the border with Mexico, surprised some local observers.
Hundreds of protesters walked through the streets, hoisting Black Lives Matter placards and the flags of the United States, Mexico and Texas, before arriving at the Brewster County courthouse.
“Pretty sure this is the largest turnout for a protest I’ve ever seen in the Big Bend region, equal to or bigger than the anti-pipeline protests from a few years ago,” Travis Bubenik, a journalist based in West Texas, said on Twitter.
Scrutiny of the police in Alpine has been growing in recent days amid an uproar over racist tweets attributed to Devon Portillo, a candidate for Brewster County sheriff. Mr. Portillo contended that his Twitter account had been infiltrated and that he was not to blame for the tweets, according to local media reports. His account has since been deactivated.
“My generation, we did a lot of good, but we stagnated,” Andy Ramos, 72, the mayor of Alpine, told protesters. “We need a push in the butt and you guys are the ones who have to do it. You have to bring social change to this world.”
Starkville, a town of 26,000 in Mississippi, also had its own protest on Saturday. Participants said that turnout numbered well into the hundreds.
Ariana Sirgew, a student at Mississippi State University, said it was the first time she saw a protest in Starkville, the town where the university is based. She said she was moved by a discussion at the protest of the 8 minutes and 46 seconds during which George Floyd died at the hands of the police in Minneapolis.
“Everyone felt it in their soul,” said Ms. Sirgew, a kinesiology major.
Solemnity marks George Floyd’s memorial in North Carolina. A sheriff says police are ‘part of the problem.’
The body of George Floyd lay in a plush blue coffin, dressed in a tan suit and brown tie. His face bore a serene and peaceful look.
Inside a Free Will Baptist church in tiny Raeford, N.C., Mr. Floyd’s body had been returned to the state of his birth for a public viewing on Saturday. His coffin was surrounded by floral arrangements, left by mourners despite a request from his family for no flowers.
One by one, peeling off from two lines of hundreds of people, each lined up in the searing morning sun, mourners filed past the coffin in silence. Some murmured prayers. Others whispered softly, “God bless,” or simply, “Peace, brother.”
Church officials in black suits and white shirts handed out bottles of water, gently urging people to move quickly so that others in the growing lines outside would have an opportunity to pay their respects. One minister filtered slowly through the crowd, telling mourners, “I know it’s hot, but bless you for coming out.”
The crowd filed past a phalanx of State Highway Patrol vehicles and police officers at the church parking lot entrance. The mood was serene, with only short, occasional chants: “Say his name — George Floyd!” “No justice, no peace!”
It was church officials and ushers, not police officers, who shut down the chants. The family had requested that there be no demonstrations or protests, said Sheriff Hubert A. Peterkin of Hoke County, who helped the family organize the viewing.
At a private memorial service later in the day, Sheriff Peterkin earned a standing ovation when he said that the nation’s police officers “are part of the problem” and, looking directly at Mr. Floyd’s family, that ingrained racism had led to Mr. Floyd’s death.
“If there were four brothers that threw a police officer on the ground and one of them put his knee on that officer’s neck and killed him on a video,” there would be a “national manhunt,” said the sheriff, who is black.
More than 300 mourners attended the private service in Raeford, about 25 miles west of Fayetteville, N.C., where Mr. Floyd was born. A number of family members, many dressed in white, rose to clap and to sing hymns. But it was Sheriff Peterkin’s remarks that drew the loudest response in a service that featured soaring gospel music and fiery sermons.
Sheriff Peterkin said he had dreamed of being a police officer since he was 10 years old. But because of Mr. Floyd’s death and the killings of other black men in police custody, “that dream is now turning into a nightmare,” he said.
“If I deny all the wrong that law enforcement is doing today, I am denying the color of my skin,” Sheriff Peterkin said. “I am a black man first, and then law enforcement.”
The Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Stackhouse said the video of Mr. Floyd’s death lasted eight minutes and 46 seconds, but that “it was 401 years in the making” — a reference to the history of slavery in America.
“They killed him in broad daylight,” the minister said. “George Floyd’s family had to watch him die.”
Police departments across the country are re-examining their use-of-force policies.
Police departments across the United States are re-examining their use-of-force policies as protesters continue to express outrage over such tactics in the wake of George Floyd’s death as Democrats in Congress plan expansive legislation to address police brutality and racial bias.
In Minneapolis, where the police use force against blacks far more often than against whites, the authorities said on Friday that they were immediately banning the use of chokeholds and strangleholds. Such tactics were previously reserved for life-or-death situations for officers.
City officials also said officers would be required to intervene and report any use of unauthorized force, a move that comes after nearly two weeks of protests over the death of Mr. Floyd, a black man whom a white Minneapolis police officer pinned under his knee for nearly nine minutes.
On the West coast, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California called on Friday for the removal of neck restraints from the state’s police training programs. And Seattle’s police chief, Carmen Best, said she was banning the use of tear gas on protesters for at least 30 days and calling for a review of the department’s crowd control tactics.
In New Mexico, the Las Cruces Police Department said it was prohibiting the neck restraint technique. The authorities in the city also said on Friday that an officer involved in the killing of a man who fled from a traffic stop in late February would be fired and charged with involuntary manslaughter. Officers tased the man, Antonio Valenzuela, 40, twice as he ran away after being pulled over. Officer Christopher Smelser then used a chokehold technique on him.
And in Colorado, where legislation to ban the use of chokeholds by law enforcement was introduced this week, a federal judge in Denver issued a temporary restraining order on Friday to limit officers’ ability to fire rubber bullets or use tear gas on protesters.
Around the world, protests against racism and police brutality multiply.
Protests over the death of George Floyd were held in cities around world on Saturday, magnifying the voices of those speaking out against racism and police brutality.
Thousands gathered for anti-racism protests in Britain, France and Germany, following marches earlier in the day that drew thousands in cities like Tokyo and Sydney. And while many of the global protests were inspired by the unrest in the United States, they have also pointed to issues of racism and police brutality at home.
Thousands of people gathered at Parliament Square in central London, filling up the square and the streets around it despite the cold weather and spitting rain.
Though most people were wearing face masks, their collective chants could be heard loud and clear: “George Floyd,” “Black Lives Matter” and “No justice, no peace.”
Silence fell in the square for about a minute when everyone knelt on the wet ground and most raised their fists in the air. All around, hundreds of messages could be read on cardboard posters getting damp from the rain.
Rahma Mohammad, a 37-year-old history teacher, said things needed to change systemically.
“It’s been discussed historically, but it’s never been resolved,” she said.
Standing next to her was Victoria Weakerly, 42, who was holding a placard that read: “I’m social distancing from my white privilege.” She said that being at the protest and supporting the Black Lives Matter movement was more important than the coronavirus.
“I feel safe here among these people,” she said.
In Paris, the authorities barred people from gathering in front of the U.S. Embassy, but thousands gathered elsewhere around the country, echoing a protest on Wednesday that drew nearly 20,000 people to remember Adama Traoré, a Frenchman who died in police custody in 2016.
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel called the killing of Mr. Floyd “terrible” and “racist.” “We know ourselves that we know something of racism here, and have a lot to do regarding that — I would like to say that clearly,” she said in an interview with the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. “But I trust in the power of democracy in the United States, that they will be able to come through this difficult situation.”
And in cities and towns across Australia on Saturday, tens of thousands rallied in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, despite a warning from Prime Minister Scott Morrison that large gatherings could harm efforts to control the pandemic.
Masked protesters, angry in part over the government’s treatment of Aboriginal people, shouted, “I can’t breathe,” and held signs saying “How many more?” and “Australia is not innocent.” The intensity, scale and scope of the demonstrations seemed to dwarf anything the country had seen on the issue of race in years.
Florida is seeing a stunning level of sustained protest.
There have been protests all week in Tampa, Orlando and Tallahassee. And in South Florida, better known as a sunny playland than as hotbed of political activism, protests filled the entire day on Saturday.
For starters, a large group of protesters marched downtown under palm trees and blooming royal poincianas to the Miami-Dade County Courthouse to pray. In the early afternoon, several dozen gathered across the street from Trump National Doral, the president’s resort, blaring salsa. “Trump you’re a racist,” one sign read.
Protesters marched in the rain in Tampa, huddled in a West Palm Beach park and chanted to take down Confederate statues in Jacksonville.
In the evening, hundreds marched along Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami. The crowd was nearly equal parts black, white and Hispanic, young and old, with more than a few families.
“We’re not here to break nothing,” Jonni Gartrelle said, yelling through a bullhorn as people gathered at the Torch of Friendship monument, a 1960 beacon for Caribbean and Latin American immigrants.
“It’s not just the racist institutions that we’re fighting,” he continued. “It’s the apathy of the people,” he said. “People think racism is like a rock in a boat that you can throw overboard and fix it, but it’s really a hole in the boat that has to be fixed.”
As she walked up the boulevard, Martha Julme recalled that when her family lived in a mostly white suburb of Fort Lauderdale, the police would stop her father on his way home and ask whether he lived in the neighborhood. She also remembered back to when a boy on her school bus called her a racial epithet.
“And I hit him,” she said. “I got suspended for 10 days and nothing happened to him.” The principal, Ms. Julme said, had said it was OK for the boy to use the slur.
“I’m scared when I see a cop and I’m scared when I see a white person,” she said. “I just don’t want to fear when I see a cop or a white person.”
Two Buffalo officers are charged after shoving a protester.
Two Buffalo police officers were arraigned Saturday morning on charges of assault in the second degree for pushing a 75-year-old man who was protesting outside City Hall on Thursday night, according to the Erie County District Attorney.
“We had two of our police officers who crossed the line,” District Attorney John J. Flynn told reporters after the arraignment in Buffalo City Court. “My job is to prosecute those who have violated the law, plain and simple. And I believe, and I’m alleging, that these two officers violated the law.”
Prosecutors identified the officers as Aaron Torglaski, 39, and Robert McCabe, 32. They were arraigned before Judge Craig D. Hannah, who released the men on their personal recognizance.
The felony charges were filed after a widely viewed video showed two police officers appearing to shove Martin Gugino, who has been identified as an activist and a member of the Western New York Peace Center. Mr. Gugino approached the officers in Niagara Square and was shoved. He staggered backward and landed hard on the ground. Blood immediately began leaking out of his ear.
Mr. Flynn said that if Mr. Gugino was violating curfew and refused to move, officers should have moved to arrest him.
“You don’t take a baton and shove him,” he said, noting the other officer shoved Mr. Gugino with his right hand, knocking him down. “That’s what you don’t do. You properly arrest him if he was committing a crime.”
Mr. Flynn said Mr. Gugino is still hospitalized and remained in serious condition.
Mr. Gugino’s age makes the assault charges a felony, rather than a misdemeanor. If convicted, the officers face up to seven years in prison.
Outside the courthouse, at least 100 people, most of them white men, stood together, some holding the American flag. Many were armed and appeared to be in police uniform. Others wore T-shirts that said “BPD Strong.”
At one point, one of them hoisted up an umbrella in an apparent attempt to block a television camera from filming them.
A handful of counterprotesters showed up with megaphones, chanting “Support good cops, not bad cops.”
One counterprotester chanted, “don’t push old men.” The crowd of police supporters stared back at them but remained peaceful.
When the officers left, the crowd erupted in applause and cheers.
Coronavirus cases are emerging among some who have attended protests.
As Americans gather by the thousands to protest the death of George Floyd, scientists have warned that the crowded events could contribute to the spread of the coronavirus. Already, there are signs that those fears were well-placed.
Though no city has yet attributed a major outbreak to the protests, individual demonstrators in several places have contracted the virus, including in Lawrence, Kan., where someone who attended a protest last weekend tested positive on Friday. That person did not wear a mask while protesting, local officials said.
“Similar to what we would ask anyone who goes out in public right now, we are asking anyone who attended the recent protest to self-monitor for Covid-19 symptoms and isolate if they become sick,” Sonia Jordan of the local health department said in a statement.
Across the country, similar tales are emerging. Although the United States has passed a peak in infections and deaths, the virus remains a persistent threat. Around 20,000 new cases are being identified across the country on most days, and about 1,000 new deaths are being announced.
In Athens, Ga., a local commissioner who attended a protest said that she had tested positive. “I am asymptomatic but infectious,” Commissioner Mariah Parker wrote on Facebook. “If you spoke on Sunday or were near me in the crowd, please get tested.”
In Columbus, Ohio, health officials said someone who protested there on May 27 had later tested positive.
And in Oklahoma, a college football player who demonstrated said that he had later tested positive for the virus. “After attending a protest in Tulsa AND being well protective of myself, I have tested positive for COVID-19,” Amen Ogbongbemiga, a linebacker at Oklahoma State University, wrote on Twitter. “Please, if you are going to protest, take care of yourself and stay safe.”
It could be several days, or even weeks, before it is known whether any major clusters emerge from the protests.
“As people gather in large crowds with varying degrees of social distancing,” Dr. Ngozi Ezike, the Illinois Department of Public Health’s director, said in a statement, “there is cause for concern about Covid-19 spread and outbreaks, especially if masks were not worn universally.”
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a radio interview on Friday that he was “very concerned” that gatherings of any kind were “a perfect setup for the spread of the virus in the sense of creating these blips that might turn into some surges.
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editor resigns after a ‘deeply offensive’ headline: ‘Buildings Matter, Too.’
Stan Wischnowski, the top editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, resigned on Saturday, days after a walkout by dozens of staff members over a headline on an architectural critic’s column about the effects of civil unrest on the city’s buildings that read “Buildings Matter, Too.”
The headline, published with the article on Tuesday, played on the slogan “Black Lives Matter,” a rallying cry for activists protesting police violence against blacks, particularly since the death of George Floyd last month.
Lisa Hughes, the publisher of The Inquirer, said in a memo to the staff on Saturday that she had accepted Mr. Wischnowski’s decision to step down after 10 years across two stints as the leader of one of the country’s largest newsrooms.
The day after the Inquirer column was published, the paper’s top editors, including Mr. Wischnowski, issued an apology that appeared on its website.
“The Philadelphia Inquirer published a headline in Tuesday’s edition that was deeply offensive,” the editors wrote. “We should not have printed it. We’re sorry, and regret that we did. We also know that an apology on its own is not sufficient.”
“The headline offensively riffed on the Black Lives Matter movement, and suggested an equivalence between the loss of buildings and the lives of black Americans,” the apology continued. “That is unacceptable.”
Staff members, working remotely because of the coronavirus pandemic, convened for a regularly scheduled videoconference that day. It turned into an hourslong discussion of newsroom diversity, pay inequity and other issues, said Diane Mastrull, a weekend editor and the president of the NewsGuild of Greater Philadelphia union.
Reporting was contributed by Davey Alba, Livia Albeck-Ripka, Emily Badger, Mike Baker, Peter Baker, Kim Barker, Ken Belson, Katie Benner, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Julie Bosman, Derrick Bryson Taylor, Julia Carmel, Damien Cave, Emily Cochrane, Nick Corasaniti, Maria Cramer, Michael Crowley, Elizabeth Dias, John Eligon, Reid J. Epstein, Tess Felder, Lisa Friedman, Thomas Fuller, Matt Furber, David Gelles, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Katie Glueck, Erica L. Green, Anemona Hartocollis, Christine Hauser, Jack Healy, Shawn Hubler, Jon Hurdle, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Thomas Kaplan, Michael Levenson, Neil MacFarquhar, Iliana Magra, Patricia Mazzei, Terence McGinley, Sarah Mervosh, Benjamin Mueller, Richard A. Oppel Jr., Elian Peltier, Richard Pérez-Peña, Adam Popescu, Neil Reisner, Campbell Robertson, Katie Rogers, Simon Romero, Eric Schmitt, Mitch Smith, Carly Stern, Derrick Taylor, Marc Tracy, Neil Vigdor and Daniel Victor.
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