Chronology of events following George Floyd's death:
Protests in May 2020 following George Floyd's death
May 26
Around noon a crowd of several hundred people demonstrated outside the police station in the 3 district of Minneapolis to express their outrage about police violence. Protesters vandalize the police station and police cars are stoned. At 8 p.m., police in riot gear dispersed the crowd with tear gas.
May 27
Protests are taking place on South Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis. Police used tear gas and fire rubber bullets at the crowd. Damage took place in the early evening on the AutoZone located on East Lake Street which will eventually be set on fire. A nearby Target store is looted by a mob of around 100 people. A man is shot dead by a pawnshop who thought he was robbing his business.
May 28
Fire police station of 3 district
A state of emergency is declared in Minneapolis by Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz deploys 500 state National Guard troops to the area, the largest mobilization since World War.
In the morning, about thirty businesses in Minneapolis were damaged by rioters. In Saint Paul, a Dollar Tree store and a Target are looted and a Wendy's restaurant set on fire. The Saint-Paul police department reports that 170 businesses were damaged or looted and that dozens of fires were started.
In the evening, demonstrators set fire to nearby buildings of the police station of the 3 district. The fences surrounding the facility are demolished and the police used tear gas in an attempt to disperse the protesters without success. Around 22 o'clock the building 3 district is invaded by protesters following the leak of police under the jets of projectiles. The building is looted, tagged, ransacked and set on fire.
In the rubble of a burnt down pawn shop, a few streets from the police station, a burnt body is found on July 20.
May 29
Jacob Frey holds a press conference regarding the riots where he condemns the demonstrators' actions as "unacceptable". Frey says those involved in the riots will be “held accountable” for the damage done to the community and that Minneapolis is “strong as hell”.
In the morning, the reporter from CNN Omar Jimenez and his crew were arrested by State Patrol officers Minnesota in the live television. Jimenez identified himself as a journalist and the team, but authorities said the team did not follow orders and held them back for a few hours while CNN issued a statement claiming the arrest violated the rights of the former. Amendment by journalists. The team was released the same day after an intervention by the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz.
In Detroit, a person drove into protesters with a car and then opened fire against them, killing one protester 19 years before taking flight. A police officer was killed and another injured during a shootout, at the site of a rally in Oakland. The police suspect the far-right insurgency movement Boogaloo of having carried out the attack to accuse the black demonstrators of Black Lives Matter and thus try to start a civil war.
May 30
Demonstrations take place in at least 30 cities.
Hundreds of protesters converge on the White House in Washington DC. The Secret Service "locks" the presidential building and the security services of the White House are placed on alert and vigilance as a security measure.
Many incidents affect California. In Los Angeles, thousands of people defied the curfew imposed by the local authorities and vandalized, burned and looted many shops. Following damage to police vehicles and assaults on police, the Mayor of San Francisco London Breed declares an immediate curfew until 5 a.m. "What we are seeing tonight - the violence, vandalism and crimes committed in our city, not against property but against other people - is something we will not tolerate. “From 8:30 p.m. on the Bay Street in Emeryville, several establishments, including H&M, Best Buy, GameStop, are the target of looters. Hundreds of people manage to rob shops and take televisions, phones or clothes with them.
Two police cars race through crowds in New York where garbage cans are set on fire, a police van vandalized and at least two dozen arrests made.
May 31
Protesters in Washington to the White House, on the night of 31 May to 1st June 2020.
Hundreds of protesters clash with police outside the White House. Fires are started, cars overturned and set on fire and shops are looted and destroyed by the dozen in the city center. President Trump and his family are rushed to the bunker under the Presidential Palace by the Secret Service. Scenes of riots take place in Washington and in Square Lafayette throughout the night.
In Philadelphia, projectiles and Molotov cocktails were thrown at the police.
In Boston, clashes took place between protesters and police. Seven police officers were hospitalized and around 40 demonstrators were arrested.
In California, the looting took place in a dozen cities.
In New York City, 350 people were arrested and 30 police officers were injured in clashes with protesters in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Protests in June 2020 following George Floyd's death
1st June
President Donald Trump walks from the White House to St. John's Episcopal Church, surrounded by his team and accompanied by Attorney General Bill Barr. The President poses in front of the religious building threatened by a fire the day before with a Bible in hand, while the demonstrators are a few streets away. He then returns to the presidential palace. A few minutes earlier, during a brief speech, he had threatened to send the army in the event of further violence, then declared to have deployed "thousands of heavily armed soldiers in Washington to restore order". Protesters were kept away from the presidential palace by military police throughout the evening. 300 demonstrators were arrested in the evening of.
In New York several department stores on Fifth Avenue were looted.
June 2
The demonstrators returned to the White House, the day after the police charge in Lafayette Square ordered by Attorney General Bill Barr, who dispersed the crowd with tear gas and stun grenades in order to allow Donald Trump to go on foot with your entourage to be photographed in front of Saint-John church. The demonstrators were back in front of the security gates which have been added around the presidential residence, and which block access to the park. The atmosphere was peaceful and a little less aggressive than during the weekend. Rather young, made up of a majority of whites, the crowd waved cardboard signs with the now famous slogan in memory of George Floyd: I can't breathe (I can't breathe), also used on jerseys and protective masks. Black lives matter (black lives matter), sometimes reduced to its acronym BLM, was also present everywhere, on T-shirts and posters, drawn on the asphalt in colored chalk, or spray paint. Despite a curfew that took effect at 7 p.m., protesters spent part of the night outside the presidential palace. The Democratic Senator Elizabeth broke the curfew imposed on this occasion. In Minneapolis, Terrence Floyd, brother of George Floyd, calls for calm in the streets, affirming that the violence “is absolutely not going to bring back my brother”.
June 3
Thousands of peaceful protesters gather in front of the White House in Washington DC, despite a curfew imposed by Mayor Muriel Bowser. Some sporadic tensions erupt between riot police and Black Lives Matter protesters. The military are deployed around the presidential palace and blocked the surrounding streets, never intervene with the events. The demonstrators disperse without difficulty a little later in the night.
Three far - right activists are charged with "incitement to violence". According to American media, Far-right activists, sometimes heavily armed, have infiltrated numerous demonstrations in order to unleash violence.
June 6
Half a million people gather in 550 places. At least 50,000 people in Philadelphia, 20,000 in Union Park in Chicago, and 10,000 on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
June 7
In Washington, Republican Senator from Utah and former 2008 US presidential candidate Mitt Romney decides to participate in a demonstration of 1,000 to 1,500 evangelists protesting President Trump's threat to deploy the Army against the demonstrators. Before him, other Republican leaders were also positioned against this threat and were disconnected from Trump. More generally, this gesture Trump seems to have been the first of his tenure have led to a significant drop in his popularity with his own electorate.
While the demonstration against police violence and racism in Seattle is set in the quiet, to 20 h 30, a man rushes drive on demonstrators. One of them runs to the window of the car to try to stop him, but the driver shoots him. While other protesters rush to go help the wounded, the driver gets out his pistol and then will go to the police. The injured protester must be hospitalized, and was in stable condition by evening.
The van of far-right insurgent movement member Boogaloo Steven Carrillo is spotted on a road on the outskirts of Ben Lomond (Santa Cruz County, California). He is suspected of having committed the shooting in Santa Cruz County Court in Oakland which claimed the life of one policeman and injured another (see above). County police then attempt to stop him, but Carrillo attacks them with an AR-15 and some homemade bombs he was carrying in his vehicle. Killing a policeman (Sergeant Damon Gutzwiller) and injuring three, he abandons his vehicle and tries to carjackanother, before being shot and arrested alive. Investigators believe that at the time of his arrest, he was on his way to commit an attack of magnitude, especially since in addition to the AR-15, a workshop for making homemade bombs and a bulletproof vest are found in van. The fact that Carrillo wrote the slogan of the Boogaloo movement and started writing "boog" in his blood upon his arrest, and that he had sewn a patch with the name of the movement on his bulletproof vest, seems to indicate that he acted in the name of this movement, and that it intended to infiltrate the demonstrations to start a civil war.
June 8
Faced with the impossibility of reforming the Minneapolis Police Force, City Council (nine of 13 members), Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Madaria Arradondo agree to dismantle the city police and redistribute its funds to citizen associations. This extreme decision is taken because of the opposition of the police union of the city, which covered all the racist blunders, and whose leader Bob Kroll systematically blocked the attempts at reform and actively maintained a warlike, violent and Trumpist attitude, as well. A climate of mistrust of the African-American population. Given the impossibility of reforming the union agreements, which in turn prevented renovate the police, the dissolution seemed to be the only remaining solution to local politicians.
June 11
Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley says he regrets being on Trump's side when he threatened to send the Army to disperse the protesters, to make it clear that he does not support the threat issued by the president.
June 14
A 27-year-old African-American driver, Rayshard Brooks, is shot dead while trying to stop in Atlanta. He had fallen asleep on his way to a Wendy's drive-through and was probably drunk. Police were called because he was blocking other motorists. According to CCTV cameras, when the police arrive, Brooks steals the taser from one of them, and tries to escape on foot. One of the policemen shoots him with live ammunition as the fugitive turns around. Another video later revealed that the officer who fired, Garrett Rolfe had given more kick in Brooks once on land. Brooks died in hospital shortly after an operation. City Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, announces that Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields has resigned, and the officer responsible for the fatal shootings must be removed from his post. In the evening, protesters block highway in the city, while the Wend'y's side to which the facts happened was burned.
June 17
The autopsy will confirm that Rayshard Brooks died from two bullets in the back. After concluding that Brooks posed neither a threat of death nor a threat of serious injury at the time he was killed, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard charges Garrett Rolfe, the officer responsible for the fatal shootings against Brooks, of eleven counts including murder. Another officer present at the scene, Devin Brosnan, is charged with assault and violation of his oath, partly because it stood up on the injured. An arrest warrant is issued against the two men, who have a day to get.
June 19
On the occasion of Juneteenth, an unofficial celebration of the end of slavery (except in Texas where it is official since its date was chosen in reference to the liberation of the slaves of this state), Black Lives Matter demonstrations have held across the country.
Donald Trump was to hold an election rally in Tulsa, the city where the worst massacres of African Americans in US history took place in 1921. But the fact of organizing a meeting in this city on this date, during this social movement and while Trump is already frequently accused of complacency with white supremacists, triggers so many indignant reactions that the meeting is postponed until the next day.
On the night of June 19 to 20, demonstrators debunk and shoot down the statue of Albert Pike in Washington.
June 20
While Donald Trump is holding his election rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, (despite recommendations against Covid-19 and even though six of the rally's organizers had tested positive there), around a thousand anti-Trumpist and Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrate in front of the room where it takes place 58. Shortly before, another Black Lives Matter gathering was held in a city park in.
June 27
During the movement, the city of Louisville (Kentucky) was one of the cities that saw the most demonstrations. In March 2020 the city had experienced a racist blunder, when the police had killed an African-American, Breonna Taylor, by eight bullets in her sleep while they were looking for a person who no longer lived at this address. In addition, on June 2, David McAtee, a local celebrity from a predominantly black underprivileged neighborhood, was also shot by police for being out during curfew, and his body left on the streets for twelve hours. Which shocked the city 60. The local context makes the city one of the places where Black Lives Matter events are most regular. On June 27, one or two person (s) has (have) on peaceful demonstrators in Jefferson Square Park before taking flight. One protester was seriously wounded and died in hospital. According to the local newspaper Louisville Courier Journal the attack was conducted by a "patriotic armed group" opposed to the protesters.
June 28
New demonstrations are taking place.
In St. Louis, Missouri, five hundred people demonstrate to demand the resignation of the city's Democratic mayor, Lyda Krewson, after she posted a Facebook video where she read a list of names of people who wanted to decrease or delete police funds, one of the movement's demands. During the protest, a white couple, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, civil rights lawyers supporting the Black Lives Matter cause, come out of their home and threaten violent protesters who have entered private property, aiming them with a pistol and an M4 rifle, for protection. The demonstrators prefer to ignore them in order to prevent the situation from escalating. A video of the altercation is shared and then deleted by Donald Trump.
The Mississippi Congress votes to withdraw the Confederate standard from their flag (in the Mississippi House of Representatives 91 votes for and 23 against, in the Mississippi Senate 37 votes for and fourteen against), the last flag of an American state to keep it, while the Confederate standard is often considered or used as a symbol of slavery or racism.
In the evening, a pacifist demonstration takes place in Detroit (Michigan). A patrol car runs over twelve demonstrators, some must be hospitalized, according to the police it is an accident.
That same evening, French activist Assa Traore, leader of the Justice and Adama movement, received the American BET Global Good award for her commitment.
June 30
After an excessive use of the police of the city, the mayor of Portland Ted Wheeler prohibited from using the tear gas, except in cases of riot. This instruction will not be respected by municipal and federal police.