Massive demonstrations against racism and police brutality filled some of the nation’s most famous cityscapes Saturday, with tens of thousands of people marching peacefully in scenes that were more often festive than tense.
Wearing masks and urging fundamental change, protesters gathered in dozens of places from coast to coast while mourners in North Carolina waited for hours to glimpse the golden coffin carrying the body of native son George Floyd, a black man whose death at the hands of Minneapolis police has galvanized the expanding movement.
Collectively, it was perhaps the largest one-day mobilization since Floyd died 12 days ago and came as many cities began lifting curfews that authorities imposed following initial spasms of arson, assaults, and smash-and-grab raids on businesses. Authorities have softened restrictions as the number of arrests plummeted.
The largest U.S. demonstration appeared to be in Washington, where streams of protesters flooded streets closed to traffic. On a hot, humid day, they gathered at the Capitol, on the National Mall and in neighborhoods. Some turned intersections into dance floors. Tents offered snacks and water.
Pamela Reynolds said she came seeking greater police accountability.
“The laws are protecting them,” said the 37-year-old African American teacher. The changes she wants include a federal ban on police chokeholds and a requirement that officers wear body cameras.
At the White House, which was fortified with new fencing and extra security measures, chants and cheers could be heard in waves. President Donald Trump, who has urged authorities to crack down on unrest, downplayed the demonstration, tweeting: “Much smaller crowd in D.C. than anticipated.”
The demonstrations extended to Trump’s golf resort outside Miami, where about 100 protesters gathered.
Elsewhere, the backdrops included some of the nation’s most famous landmarks. Peaceful marchers filed across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. They walked the boulevards of Hollywood and a Nashville, Tennessee, a street famous for country music-themed bars and restaurants.
They also gathered in places as far-flung as a St. Louis suburb and cities in the Deep South.
Many wore masks — a reminder of the danger that the protests could exacerbate the spread of the coronavirus.
Roderick Sweeney, who is black, said he was overwhelmed to see the large turnout of white protesters waving signs that said “Black Lives Matter” as hundreds gathered in San Francisco.
In Philadelphia and Chicago, marchers chanted, carried signs, and occasionally knelt in silence. At a massive showing near the Philadelphia Museum of Art and its famous “Rocky” steps, protesters chanted “No justice, no peace!” before heading for City Hall.
A large crowd of medical workers, many in lab coats and scrubs, marched to Seattle’s City Hall. Signs they held read, “Police violence and racism are a public health emergency” and “Nurses kneel with you, not on you” — a reference to how a white officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for several minutes.
Atop a parking garage in downtown Atlanta, a group of black college band alumni serenaded protesters with a tuba-heavy mix of tunes. Standing within earshot, business owner Leah Aforkor Quaye said it was her first time hitting the streets.
“This makes people so uncomfortable, but the only way things are happening is if we make people uncomfortable,” said Quaye, who is black.
In Raeford, North Carolina, a town near Floyd’s birthplace, people lined up outside a Free Will Baptist Church, waiting to enter in small groups. At a private memorial service, mourners sang along with a choir. At the front of the chapel was a large photo of Floyd and a portrait of him adorned with an angel’s wings and halo.
“It could have been me. It could have been my brother, my father, any of my friends who are black,” said Erik Carlos of nearby Fayetteville. “It made me feel very vulnerable at first.”
Floyd’s body will go to Houston, where he lived before Minneapolis, for another memorial in the coming days.
Protesters and their supporters in the public officials say they’re determined to turn the outpouring into change, notably overhauling policing policies. Many marchers urged officials to “defund the police,” which some painted in enormous yellow letters on the street leading to the White House near a “Black Lives Matter” mural that the mayor had added a day earlier.
Theresa Bland, 68, a retired teacher and real estate agent protesting at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, envisioned a broader agenda.
“I’m looking at affordable housing, political justice, prison reform,” she said.
Minneapolis officials have agreed to ban chokeholds and neck restraints and require that officers stop colleagues who are using improper force. California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered the state’s police-training program to stop teaching officers a neck hold that blocks blood flow to the brain.
The police chief in Bellevue, a wealthy city near Seattle, largely banned officers from using neck restraints, while police in Reno, Nevada, updated their use-of-force policy.
Congressional Democrats are preparing a sweeping package of police reforms, which is expected to include changes to immunity provisions and creating a database of use-of-force incidents. Revamped training requirements are planned, too, among them a ban on chokeholds.
The prospects of reforms clearing a divided Congress are unclear.
Two officers in Buffalo, New York, were charged Saturday with second-degree assault after a video earlier this week showed them shoving a 75-year-old protester, who smashed his head on the pavement. Both pleaded not guilty.
Thousands of demonstrators endured cold rain to gather in London’s Parliament Square. Clashes between protesters and police broke out near the offices of Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
In France, hundreds of Parisians gathered in defiance of a ban on large protests. In the southern city of Marseille, authorities fired tear gas and pepper spray in skirmishes with protesters who hurled bottles and rocks.
Back in North Carolina, the Rev. Christopher Stackhouse recounted the circumstances of Floyd’s death for the congregation.
“It took 8 minutes and 46 seconds for him to die,” Stackhouse said at the memorial service. “But it took 401 years to put the system in place so nothing would happen.”
Three concurrent crises scarring the United States -- a deadly health pandemic, economic despair and widespread social unrest -- have reframed this year's presidential contest and prompted national reflection over racial inequality in America.
Is the country on the cusp of a transformation, or will systemic inequalities exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis persist, allowing alienation and marginalization to fester?
In weeks, the unprecedented strain has become the focal point of the ferocious White House campaign between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, two politicians approaching the disasters with very different strategies.
It has been several generations since the country has experienced such a sharp and rapid confluence of major emergencies, a national low point that philosopher Cornell West has branded "America's moment of reckoning."
Nearly 110,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, and tens of millions are jobless due to pandemic-prompted lockdowns.
At the same time, unrest has gripped dozens of US cities where protesters demand justice over the killing by Minneapolis police of unarmed black man George Floyd.
"It's a pretty bad moment," said Daniel Gillion, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of "The Loud Minority."
The crises, he told AFP, have been "horrific" for African Americans, who traditionally have poorer health care outcomes, have just a fraction of the household wealth of whites, and are more likely to face police brutality.
"I can't think of a (modern-day) period where blacks have experienced such strife, such pain, such hardship," Gillion said.
Among COVID-19 victims, a disproportionate number are people of color.
While Trump on Friday touted a surprise drop in the overall jobless rate from 14.7 percent in April to 13.3 percent in May, black unemployment actually rose, to 16.8 percent.
The injustice that erupted into an ugly view when a white police officer pressed his knee onto Floyd's neck for almost nine minutes is the latest manifestation of systemic racism that has persisted for generations.
"There's been a knee on the neck of black America since slavery was abolished," 30-year-old Minneapolis protester Kayla Peterson said from behind a pandemic face mask. "We've never really been free."
- Law and order -
Trump could have delivered an Oval Office address to the nation this week to smooth tensions. Instead, he has exploited discord and launched a "law and order" crusade.
Trump has walled off the White House from protesters and launched fiery accusations that do little to calm the storm.
"The problem," he tweeted Thursday about recent controversial tactics deployed in Washington, "is the arsonists, looters, criminals, and anarchists, wanting to destroy it (and our Country)!"
Trump's provocative walk from the White House to a nearby church for a photo opportunity minutes after the area was forcibly cleared of protesters contained clear signals to conservative and evangelical voters in his base: security and faith remain paramount.
While Trump has trafficked in division, his November election rival has blasted him as "dangerously unfit" to lead.
Biden, 77, was largely absent for two months, hunkered down in his Delaware home as the pandemic played out and Trump used his bully pulpit to push to re-open the country.
But the veteran Democrat is eyeing an opening by embracing a message of conciliation and reform -- something that could unite the moderate and liberal factions of the Democratic Party and draw independents appalled by Trump's strongman style.
"It is long past time we made the promise of this nation real for all of our people," Biden tweeted Friday.
- 'Teflon man'? -
Experts say that despite the recent chaos, Trump does have a path to victory.
"If the president is able to talk about race in a meaningful way, and if he's able to ride the recovery in health and in the economic crisis, he's going to look like the Teflon man," Gillion said. "Nothing will stick to him."
Trump however has seen his poll numbers erode, particularly among two groups vital to his re-election: elderly voters and evangelical Christians.
And his failure to tackle the pandemic early and his threat to unleash the military on protesters is repelling female voters.
White women "are upset with Trump's handling of the pandemic" and his lack of leadership, said Nadia Brown, associate professor of political science and African-American studies at Purdue University.
"Women are also watching the protests and they are having empathy" with demonstrators.
The persistent inequalities, snapshots of a shattered economy, and how leaders respond "will definitely be on the mind of voters in five months," Brown added.
It doesn't mean Biden romps to victory, either.
"A cat has nine lives," Brown said, "but Trump has 12."
Tens of thousands of people gathered Saturday in cities far from the United States to express anger over the death of George Floyd, a sign that the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality is resonating with wider calls to address racism from Australia to Europe.
In Berlin, where police said 15,000 people rallied on the German capital’s Alexander Square, protesters chanted Floyd’s name and held up placards with slogans such as “Stop police brutality” and “I can’t breath.”
Floyd, a black man, died after a Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee on his neck even after he pleaded for air while handcuffed and stopped moving.
“The killing and these violent physical things that have happened is only just the top of it,” said Lloyd Lawson, 54, who took part in the Berlin protest. “That’s why you’ve got to start right from the bottom, just like an iceberg.”
Some 20,000 people rallied in Munich, while thousands more took part in protests in Frankfurt and Cologne.
In Paris, several thousand demonstrators ignored a protest ban — issued due to the coronavirus pandemic — and assembled within sight of the U.S. Embassy, kept back by imposing barriers and riot police.
Among the crowd in the French capital was Marie Djedje, 14, a Parisian born on July 14, the French national day.
“I was born French, on the day when we celebrate our country. But on a daily basis, I don’t feel that this country accepts me,” she said, holding up a sign that read “Being black is not a crime.”
The teenager said that emerging from France’s virus lockdown and seeing officers on patrol again drove home how scared she is of the police and how she has steeled herself for a life of overcoming obstacles.
“I know that because of my skin color I’m starting out with a handicap, for example, if I want to get a flat or go to a top school,” she said. “I know I’m going to have to fight twice as hard as the others. But I’m prepared.”
In central London, tens of thousands staged a rally outside Parliament Square, invoking Floyd’s memory as well as people who died during police encounters or indifference in Britain. Some protesters ignored thickening rain clouds and later headed toward the U.K. Home Office, which oversees law enforcement and immigration, and to the U.S. Embassy.
Many dropped to one knee and raised their fists in the air outside the gleaming embassy building south of the River Thames. There were chants of “Silence is violence” and “Color is not a crime.”
The majority of those marching wore masks and other face coverings and appeared to make an effort to adhere to social distancing guidelines by walking in small groups.
An estimated 15,000 people gathered in the heart of Manchester, England, while 2,000 people joined in a demonstration in the Welsh capital of Cardiff.
Andrew Francis, 37, a black man from London, said there’s “a lot of frustration due to racial discrimination, and we won't change for our children and our children’s children’s to be able to have equality within the U.K, the U.S., all around the world.” Francis, who wore a face covering, said he wasn’t worried about the coronavirus and said the fight for racial equality was “more important” to him.
Floyd’s death has sparked significant protests across the United States, but it has also struck a chord with minorities protesting discrimination elsewhere, including demonstrators in Sydney and Brisbane who highlighted indigenous Australians who died in custody.
Indigenous Australians make up 2% of the country’s adult population, but 27% of the prison population. They are also the most disadvantaged ethnic minority in Australia and have higher-than-average rates of infant mortality and poor health, as well as shorter life expectancies and lower levels of education and employment than other Australians.
In South Korea’s capital, Seoul, protesters gathered for a second straight day to denounce Floyd’s death. Wearing masks and black shirts, dozens of demonstrators marched through a commercial district amid a police escort, carrying signs such as “George Floyd Rest in Peace” and “Koreans for Black Lives Matter.”
In Senegal, people staged a protest in front of the African Renaissance Monument in the capital of Dakar, holding placards with slogans such as “Enough is enough.”
Chris Trabot, who works for Paris City Hall, said George Floyd’s death last week triggered his decision to demonstrate Saturday for the first time in his life.
Born in the French territory of Martinique, Trabot said he first experienced racism as a child when he moved with his family to mainland France and got in frequent fights with white kids who mocked his skin color. Recently, his 9-year-old daughter has told him of being a target of racism, too, with schoolmates mocking her hair.
Adele Letamba, a 39-year-old consultant protesting in Paris, put it bluntly: “The death of George Floyd was the spark that spread across the world.”
In Tel Aviv, thousands of protesters joined a Jewish-Arab rally against the Israeli government’s plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank. The protesters wore masks, but social distancing measures were not strictly maintained as some demonstrators formed small groups. Police initially sought to block the rally, but later allowed it to take place.
Protesters in Israel also demonstrated against what they see as excessive violence by Israeli police against Palestinians. One protester held a poster showing George Floyd and Eyad Halak, a Palestinian with autism who was killed last week by Israeli police officers after apparently being mistaken as an attacker.
While the demonstrations were largely peaceful, there was a brief scuffle in Sydney when police removed an apparent counter-protester carrying a sign reading, “White Lives, Black Lives, All Lives Matter.”
In London, police and protesters clashed at the end of a rally near the offices of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Objects were thrown at police wearing protective gear and video shared on social media appeared to show a horse bolting amid the clashes, unseating a police officer as he hit traffic lights.
A video from Berlin also shared on social media, showed several police with dogs arresting a black man scuffling with an officer. Anja Dierschke, a spokeswoman for Berlin police, said the incident happened sometime after the protest ended and officers had ordered a group of people, some of whom were throwing bottles at passers-by, to disperse.
The largest #BlackLivesMatter protests yet around Washington converged near the White House on the 9th day of action on the streets of the capital to protest the death of George Floyd. More @business: https://t.co/xFzMO6FWB8 pic.twitter.com/UUaLoHYJ0W— Bloomberg QuickTake (@QuickTake) June 7, 2020