George Floyd protests: fired officer to appear in court as calls to defund police sweep US
Floyd’s body has been flown to his hometown of Houston, Texas, where mourners will be able to view his casket today
Minneapolis lawmakers vow to disband police departmentPolice arrested over 10,000 protesters, many non-violentWhat does ‘defund the police’ mean?Who was Edward Colston and why was his Bristol statue toppled?
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Protestors march in New York. Photograph: Jason Szenes/EPAMon 8 Jun 2020 13.01 BSTFirst published on Mon 8 Jun 2020 11.21 BST
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34m agoPolice officer accused of killing George Floyd to appear in court on Monday
Police officer accused of killing George Floyd to appear in court on Monday
Derek Chauvin, the fired Minneapolis Police Department officer who pressed his knee on the neck of George Floyd for nearly nine minutes, will make his first appearance in court later today, US media is reporting.
Chauvin, 44, is scheduled to appear at the Hennepin County District Court in Minneapolis at 12.45pm Central time (roughly six hours from now). He faces charges of third-degree murder, second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.FacebookTwitter
I’ve been contacted by a reader who said they grew up near the city of Vidor, in east Texas. He wanted to alert me to a Black Lives Matter protest there on Saturday that consisted of just around 150 people. But it is significant, the reader said, because of Vidor’s reputation.
Here’s an excerpt from the Texas Monthly magazine, which covered the protest:
Vidor has been known for many things—among them the activities of the local Ku Klux Klan; its status as a “sundown town,” in which blacks were not allowed in city limits after dark; and an ugly fight in the early nineties over a federal effort to desegregate public housing in the city, which caused Texas Monthly, in a cover story that year, to describe Vidor as Texas’s “most hate-filled town.” The census estimates it to be 91 percent white.
So when word started to circulate that a Black Lives Matter rally was being planned in Vidor, many people on social media thought it was a trap—and expressed skepticism the event’s supposed planner, 23-year-old Maddy Malone, even existed. (She does.) To black folks with knowledge of the region, who had been told never to stop in Vidor, the idea seemed insane. “A civil rights rally in Vidor” is the punchline to a joke, not a thing that could happen in this world. C’mon.
The demonstration “may not seem like much”, wrote the reader in an email, “but when they gather in Vidor, Texas, that’s a big deal.”FacebookTwitterAdvertisementhttps://tpc.googlesyndication.com/saf...
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Big news from the weekend is certainly that the Minneapolis city council pledged to disband the police department. The embattled agency responsible for George Floyd’s death could now be replaced by an alternative model of community-led safety.
The nine councilmembers who announced their support represent a supermajority on the twelve-person council, meaning Mayor Jacob Frey, who opposes the move, could not override it.
Frey was heckled by a crowd of protesters on Saturday when he ruled out defunding the police department.
Here’s a video of Frey walking through the crowds as they shout: “Go home!”-news
Play Video0:43 ‘Shame!’: Minneapolis mayor heckled by protesters – video
Note: this post was amended to make clear a vote had not yet taken place.
Updated at 1.01pm BSTFacebookTwitter
George Floyd’s body has been flown to his hometown of Houston, Texas, where mourners will be able to view his casket on Monday.
A six-hour viewing will be held at The Fountain of Praise church in southwest Houston, the final stop of a series of memorials across the country. Visitors in Houston will be required to wear a mask and gloves, as per coronavirus restrictions.
Floyd’s funeral will be held on Tuesday, where he will be buried next to his mother, Larcenia Floyd.
Previous memorials have taken place in Raeford, North Carolina, near where Floyd was born, and Minneapolis, where he lived at the end of his life and was killed. Mourners there observed 8 minutes 46 seconds of silence – the period that Floyd was filmed pinned under a police officer’s knee.FacebookTwitterAdvertisement
Three Guardian writers have just published features that take a deeper look at the protest movement:
Lois Beckett, who covers gun violence and the far right in the US, has been interviewing family members of black Americans who were killed by police or white vigilantes for whom the past week has been painfully familiar.
But they also see signs of change, she writes:
“I think people have had enough,” said Sybrina Fulton, whose unarmed 17-year-old son Trayvon [Martin] was shot to death in 2012 by a neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, who was later acquitted of all charges.
Families of Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant on protests: ‘White supremacy is on its way out’
Read more
Adam Gabbatt, who writes for us from New York, has also been looking at the potential impact of the movement, particularly around whether it could energize young voters in presidential, state and local elections.
There is precedent for real change inspired by protests, he writes.
In recent years the youth-led protests against gun violence following the Parkland school shooting, led to stronger gun laws, while young climate activists succeeded in drawing attention to the Green New Deal environment legislation, which many Democratic politicians have since endorsed.
‘Apathy is no longer a choice’: will the George Floyd protests energize young voters?
Read more
Finally, Michael Sainato, a contributor who covers civil rights issues, has written about the large numbers of protesters, more than 10,000, who have been arrested around the US.
Many were non-violent:
Ruby Anderson was arrested while non-violently protesting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 31 May. The police refused to provide a reason for her detention until they were placed in a police van, where they were told the charge was loitering. They were given a wristband that stated “unlawful assembly” and ultimately charged with disorderly conduct.
“While I was arrested, I was standing next to two white people who were doing the same thing as me, standing between a group of officers and a group of black teenagers. I was the only one arrested in my group of three, I was the only black person,” Anderson said.
Read Sainato’s full story here:
‘They set us up’: US police arrested over 10,000 protesters, many non-violent
Hello…
…and welcome to a fresh US politics live blog as we enter a new day on Monday across the US. The sun has risen in New York while it is still the early hours of the morning along the West Coast.
I’m Oliver Holmes, and I’ll be with you for the next couple of hours. You can reach me via Twitter and also on email: oliver.holmes [@] theguardian.com
Please do send anything you think is worth including on our blog.
For those who have been sleeping or offline, here is an update with the main developments:
The Minneapolis city council pledged to abolish the city’s police department and replace it with a new system of public safety. The historic move has been hailed as the first concrete victory in the mounting nationwide movement in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd.New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, pledged to cut police department funding. The money will be given to Youth and Social Services. The mayor also lifted a contentious citywide curfew.A protester was shot in Seattle, Washington. A man drove a car into a demonstration and shot a demonstrator.Police said officers have a man in custody.The US soccer federation is considering repealing its ban on players kneeling during the national anthem, ESPN has reported.
Source: The Guardian
