Protests Continue for 3rd Straight Day

Protests in Minneapolis, USA over the killing of George Floyd continued Thursday and raged into Friday. 

Emotions had run high and there were violent clashes with police, who fired tear gas, rubber bullets and flash bang grenades. And there were also looting, ransacking and burning. 

The high point for the protesters came when they torched the MPD Third Precinct station that the police had been compelled to abandon. Cheering and fireworks accompanied the ‘celebration’. 

By then, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (right) had already activated the National Guard at the Minneapolis mayor’s request.

It seems that five hundred soldiers will be deployed to Minneapolis, St. Paul and the surrounding communities. A reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune tweeted that armored vehicles began rolling through downtown before dawn Friday.

Meanwhile, the US Attorney’s Office and the FBI in Minneapolis said they are conducting “a robust criminal investigation” into Floyd’s death. 

Donald Trump (left) also wanted to be heard and he jumped straight in. Firstly, he blamed local leadership for the unrest, secondly, he wanted to deploy National Guard troops albeit belatedly, and thirdly, he threatened violence to quell the protests. 

"I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis", the president said on Twitter – and he called the protesters "thugs", even issuing a stark warning that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts". 

Wah, he is promoting violence! What more can I say except that this buffoon is a buttinsky, a butt-in, a busybody. I wish he would just zip his mouth!

More demonstrations have spread across the nation – in cities such as Phoenix, Arizona; Oakland, California; Denver, Colorado; Louisville, Kentucky; NYC, New York; and Columbus, Ohio. 

We shouldn’t be surprised because people were really horrified and equally furious when the video of George Floyd's last moments alive went viral. 

Of course, a black American who was a father of two (left) died after a white police officer forcefully knelt on his neck for the longest time.

A knee press that says black lives don't matter’! 

Four Minneapolis police officers who had been at the scene of the murder have been fired – but his family, community leaders and protesters say they want murder charges against them. 

The truth is blacks don’t have the same rights as white Americans. 

One protester identified as 26-year-old Trieste Oatis had this to say: “Sixty years ago, MLK [i.e. Martin Luther King Jr] was fighting for the same thing – but not much has changed”. She’s damn right! 

Floyd’s case is not a rarity as Americans would like us to believe. Other black victims who have made the national headlines include Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. 

I wanted to be better informed. And so, I had zealously scoured and diligently combed the ‘local’ US news – and it is shocking to discover that news stories emerge almost daily in the country about police being called over black Americans doing nothing more than being black! 

And data collected by the Washington Post since 2015 indicated that, relative to the proportion of the population, Blacks were over-represented among all those killed by police. Meaning, Blacks made up 12% of the population – but from 2015–2019, they accounted for 26.4% of those that were killed by police under all circumstances. 

In other words, Blacks were the victims of the lethal use of force by police at nearly twice their rate in the general population. 

The fact of the matter is that George Floyd’s killing was not the first, nor will it be the last death of a black American at the hands of police violence. 

The US, a defender of human rights, my foot!