US protesters go back to streets defying curfew after Trump calls them 'lowlifes'

Undeterred by curfews, protesters streamed back to the US’s streets yesterday, hours after president Donald Trump pressed governors to place down the violence set off by George Floyd’s death and demanded that New York call up the National Guard to avoid the “lowlifes and losers.”

As more demonstrations began taking shape around the united states, and cities including Washington prepared for the possibility of more violence, the president amplified his hard-line calls of a day earlier, where he threatened to send in the military to restore order if governors didn’t do it.

“NYC, CALL UP THE NATIONAL GUARD,” he tweeted. “The lowlifes and losers are ripping you apart. Act fast!”

1 day after a crackdown on calm protesters close to the White House, a large number of demonstrators massed a block from the presidential mansion, facing police personnel standing behind a black chain-link fence. The fence was put up overnight to block access to Lafayette Park, just across the street from the White House.

“Yesterday evening pushed me way over the edge,” said Jessica DeMaio, 40, of Washington, who attended a Floyd protest Tuesday for the first time. “Being here is much better than coming to home feeling helpless.”

The crowd remained set up after the city’s 7 p.m. curfew passed, defying warnings that the response from law enforcement could be even more forceful. But the protest lacked the strain of the prior nights’ demonstrations. The crowd Tuesday was peaceful, polite even. At one point, the crowd booed whenever a protester climbed a light post and took down a street sign. A chant went up: “Peaceful protest!”

On Monday, police officers by walking and horseback aggressively drove protesters from Lafayette Park, clearing the way for president Donald Trump to accomplish a photography op at close by St. John’s Church. On Tuesday, pastors at the church prayed with demonstrators and passed out water bottles.

Protests ranged across the U.S., including in NEW YORK, Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, St. Paul, Minnesota, Columbia, South Carolina, and Orlando, Florida, where a lot more than 1,000 persons gathered in the afternoon to decry the killings of black people.

“This has to change,” said 39-year-old Aisxia Batiste, an out-of-work massage therapist in Orlando. “Something has to give. We’re done. This can be the beginning of the end of something. It must be.”

In NY, midtown Manhattan was pocked with battered storefronts after Monday’s protests. Macy’s flagship store was among those hit when crowds of individuals smashed windows and looted stores because they swept through the region. A police sergeant was hospitalized after being hit by an automobile in the Bronx, where persons walked Tuesday between ransacked buildings and a burned-out car on the Grand Concourse, a commercial thoroughfare.

Police made almost 700 arrests and Mayor Bill de Blasio extended an 8 p.m. curfew all week.

“We’re likely to have a tough few days,” he warned, but added: “We’re going to beat it back.” He pleaded with community leaders to step forward and “create peace.”

Thousands of protesters marched Tuesday night in a string of demonstrations across Manhattan and Brooklyn after merchants boarded up their businesses, fearing a repeat of the night time before. Many people remained on the streets after the curfew hour. Police eventually ordered them to go along and commenced taking some into custody.

A lot more than 20,000 National Guard members have been called up in 29 states to cope with the violence. NY is not among them, and de Blasio has said he will not want the Guard. On Tuesday, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo called what happened in the location “a disgrace.”

“The NYPD and the mayor didn't do their job yesterday evening,” Cuomo said at a briefing in Albany.

He said the mayor underestimated the problem, and the nation’s greatest police force was not deployed in sufficient numbers, though the town had said it doubled the most common police presence.

Tuesday marked the eighth straight night of the protests, which started in Minneapolis, where Floyd died, and quickly spread in the united states.

The mother of George Floyd’s 6-year-old daughter, Gianna, said she wanted the world to learn that her little girl lost an excellent father.

“I want everybody to know that is what those officers took,” Roxie Washington said throughout a Minneapolis news conference with her young daughter at her side. “I want justice for him because he was good. Whatever anybody thinks, he was good.”

On Monday, scattered violence flared in multiple protests, including an officer who was simply shot and gravely wounded outside a Las Vegas hotel and casino, and four officers shot in St. Louis. These were expected to recover.

About a dozen other deaths have been reported around the country in the last week. And almost 8,000 persons nationwide have already been arrested, according to a count by The Associated Press.

Some protesters framed the burgeoning movement as a necessity after a string of killings by police.

“It feels as though it’s just been an endless cascade of hashtags of black people dying, and it feels as though nothing’s really being done by our political leaders to really enact real change,” said Christine Ohenzuwa, 19, who attended a tranquil protest at the Minnesota state Capitol in St. Paul. “There’s always going to be considered a breaking point. I think right now, we’re seeing the breaking point around the united states.”

“I are in this state. It’s really painful to see what’s going on, but it’s also really important to comprehend that it’s linked to a system of racial violence,” she said.

Meanwhile, governors and mayors, Republicans and Democrats alike, rejected Trump’s threat to submit the military, with some saying troops will be unnecessary and others questioning if the government has such authority and warning that such a step would be dangerous.

“Denver isn't Little Rock in 1957, and Donald Trump is not President Eisenhower. This is a period for healing, for bringing persons together, and the ultimate way to protect civil rights is to move from escalating violence,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, both Democrats, said in a statement, discussing Eisenhower’s usage of troops to enforce school desegregation in the South.

A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the president isn't rushing to submit the military and that his goal was to pressure governors to deploy more National Guard members.

Such use of the military would mark a beautiful federal intervention rarely observed in modern American history.

Amid the protests, nine states and the District of Columbia held presidential primaries that moved Joe Biden nearer to formally clinching the Democratic presidential nomination. Voters waited in long lines hours after polls closed, brushing against curfews in Washington and Philadelphia, two cities rocked by protests.

Also Tuesday, Minnesota opened a study into whether the Minneapolis Police Department includes a pattern of discrimination against minorities. Floyd died May 25 after a white Minneapolis officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee on the handcuffed black man’s neck for a few minutes.

Chauvin has been charged with murder. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said prosecutors will work as fast as they can to determine if the three other officers at the scene should be charged too. All have been fired.