The United States edged closer to nationwide upheaval on Saturday as protests gained force from coast to coast, and authorities steeled themselves for another night of unrest over the death of George Floyd.
The killing of the 46-year-old black man in police custody has ignited furor as Americans marked the grim milestone of 100,000 lives lost to the novel coronavirus.
At the epicenter of the national anguish, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, mobilized his state’s entire National Guard for the first time. Bracing for a fifth night of violence and riots, he warned that the destruction of past nights would be “dwarfed” by Saturday night.
Governors in other states also activated their Guards. The Trump administration offered active-duty military forces to help quell the unrest, as the president escalated his rhetoric against protesters, tweeting about the “unlimited power” of the military and the prospect of “many arrests.”
The threat did not deter multigenerational and multiracial crowds from thronging cities throughout much of the day. The White House itself became a flash point, as demonstrators clashed with Secret Service officers outside the president’s residence.
The same anger that caused demonstrators to seek to breach a barrier erected on Pennsylvania Avenue seized many other metropolitan areas.
In Austin, Texas, protesters took over Interstate 35, freighted with symbolism because it cuts the city along racial and economic lines. In Denver, hundreds laid down in front of the state Capitol for nine minutes – the length of time Floyd’s neck was pinned under an officer’s knee – chanting, “I can’t breathe!” A peaceful demonstration outside city hall in Philadelphia gave way to havoc, as police vehicles were set ablaze and protesters attempted to topple a statue of former mayor Frank Rizzo.
Kelsey Broll, 26, said the chaos deepened when the crowd became too large for protesters to hear instructions from local organizers from the Black Lives Matter movement. They were drowned out, too, as police set off what appeared to be sound grenades and tear gas, she said, and as protesters threw bricks into the windows of banks.
“I’m not condoning violence, but I think we need to band together to show the people in power that we’re not just going to let them slide,” Broll said. “I’m very sick of what’s going on.”
She noted that protesters were taking an added risk because the city’s stay-at-home order, designed to curb the spread of the coronavirus, is active through Thursday.
Dueling accounts emerged of the identities and motivations of the protesters, as Attorney General William Barr echoed President Donald Trump in blaming “extremist groups using Antifa-like tactics,” while officials in Minnesota said organized white supremacists might have infiltrated the protests to sow chaos.
State officials instituted new curfews in metro areas including Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Louisville and Portland, Oregon, after nearly 20 U.S. cities woke up Saturday to destruction and arrests. Overnight, protesters repeatedly clashed with police who, in some cases, used pepper spray and rubber bullets to quell crowds. Demonstrators responded by chanting “I can’t breathe,” spray painting “Black Lives Matter” on buildings and closing off roads to demonstrate against police brutality.
In Portland, protesters smashed windows of businesses, including a Starbucks and an Apple store, and stole merchandise from a closed mall. In Atlanta, CNN headquarters was vandalized. In Cincinnati, business were ransacked, dumpsters were set ablaze and two police officers were injured in skirmishes with protesters. In Detroit, a 21-year-old was killed in a drive-by shooting where protests were taking place.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, said the protests earlier in the week were marking the community’s grief for Floyd, but the uprisings in recent days were perpetrated by people taking advantage of the discord.
“Gradually that shift was made, and we saw more and more people coming from outside of the city. We saw more and more people looking to cause violence in our communities, and I have to say, it is not acceptable,” Frey said. “This is no longer about verbal expression. This is about violence, and we need to make sure that it stops.”
In remarks at the Justice Department, Barr threatened to prosecute anyone who crossed state lines to riot.
“In many places, it appears the violence is planned, organized and driven by anarchic and left extremist groups, far left extremist groups, using Antifa-like tactics, many of whom travel from outside the state to promote the violence,” Barr said, echoing Trump’s rhetoric.
Barr did not offer evidence for his assertion, while a Justice Department spokeswoman later said it was based on “information given to us by state and local law enforcement.” Minnesota officials, meanwhile, said they were investigating whether white supremacists from out of state had infiltrated the demonstrations.
But arrest records since Friday in the county where Minneapolis is located show a vast majority of those who were taken into custody are from Minnesota. Of the nearly 57 people arrested in protest-related incidents through Saturday morning, 83 percent provided a Minnesota address to authorities, said Jeremy Zoss, a spokesman for the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office.
There was no data on 10 percent of other arrests, Zoss said. Arrest data itself does not provide conclusive evidence of the demographics of thousands of demonstrators, and it is unclear if any people provided false addresses
Trump, who spent much of Saturday tweeting about the protests, spoke briefly to reporters before leaving for Florida for the SpaceX launch. He attacked Minneapolis’s handling of the protests – adding a tangential that he’d had great political success in Minnesota by almost winning it in 2016 – urging law enforcement to “get tougher” and suggesting that “by being tougher they will be honoring [Floyd’s] memory.”
The president also denied to reporters that his earlier tweet suggesting a “MAGA night” at the White House was meant to incite racial tensions, saying it was meant as a question because he had heard that his supporters wanted to be at the protests.
“I have no idea if they are going to be here, I was just asking,” he said.
Stanislav Vysotsky, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, said laying blame on outside agitators, in the absence of more convincing evidence, served to “distract from the underlying issues, which are people’s frustrations with a number of different structural conditions that begin with police violence against people of color.”
“Add to that the economic inequality exacerbated by covid-19, and long-simmering anger becomes explosive,” he said.
In Chicago, a crowd surrounded a black SUV in front of Trump International Hotel & Tower, destroying the vehicle by hitting it with blunt objects, smashing the glass, opening the doors and rutting out everything inside. Police in riot gear pressed the crowd back with batons.
(c) 2020, The Washington Post · Isaac Stanley-Becker, Colby Itkowitz, Meryl Kornfield
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