Donald Trump has blamed “anarchists” and “domestic terrorists” for a protest in Seattle overnight and threatened to intervene as anti-racism demonstrations again erupted across much of the US, in rage at the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis last month.
Following a week of nightly standoffs with police, who regularly used teargas to disperse crowds, protesters in Seattle have set up an “autonomous zone” in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood after police agreed to vacate the area and abandon their police precinct station.
The area, bordered by barricades, is thronged with people protesting against police brutality and systemic racism.
On Wednesday night, Trump, who has repeatedly raised the specter of an armed crushing of the roiling protests coast to coast, tweeted that the mayor of Seattle and governor of Washington state need to “take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game. These ugly Anarchists must be stooped IMMEDIATELY.” Trump followed this by tweeting, with no evidence, that Seattle had been taken over by “domestic terrorists”, abetted by Democrats.
Jenny Durkan, the mayor of Seattle who has faced calls for her resignation from the protesters at City Hall, tweeted in response that Trump should “go back to your bunker”, in reference to the secure area in the White House that the US president at one point withdrew to during fierce protests outside the presidential residence.
Protests again swept across the US, with a sizable demonstration in Portland, Oregon, for the 14th night in a row. The words “Defund police” were painted in block letters outside the headquarters of the Atlanta police in Georgia.
A march in Detroit took place amid bad weather. In Washington DC, Philonise Floyd, George Floyd’s brother, marched with protesters after testifying in Congress, calling on lawmakers to overhaul policing in the US.
On Wednesday night protesters toppled a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States during the US civil war. Symbols of white supremacy are now being regularly targeted by the protests in the US and in Europe, where several statues associated with slavery have been removed or vandalized.
The statue of Davis was torn and dragged away by a cheering crowd in Richmond, Virginia, videos posted on social media showed. Richmond was the capital of the short-lived Confederacy, with Davis’s statue just one of several Confederate monuments on a major avenue in the city. Levar Stoney, Richmond’s mayor, has vowed to remove all of the statues as Richmond is now “filled with diversity and love for all”.
Protesters beheaded and partially tore down four other Confederate statues in Portsmouth, Virginia, with one of the falling structures injuring one of the demonstrators. In Miami, police said seven people were arrested for defacing statues of explorer and colonialist Christopher Columbus and conquistador Juan Ponce de León.
The outcry has regularly been met by an aggressive police response, with protesters complaining of being beaten, teargassed and held for long periods without water or toilet breaks. In Los Angeles, 56 claims of police misconduct during the protests are being investigated, with seven police officers already removed from their field duties for using excessive force.
One of the four former Minneapolis police officers who were charged over the death of Floyd was released on bail on Wednesday. Thomas Lane, 37, had been held on $750,000 bail and was freed from Hennepin county jail, sheriff’s office records showed.
He was one of three officers charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in the 46-year-old Floyd’s death on 25 May.
A fourth officer, Derek Chauvin, 44, was videotaped pressing his knee to Floyd’s neck as he gasped “I can’t breathe” and called for his mother before he died. Chauvin was charged with second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. All four officers have been fired from the Minneapolis police department.
