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Cities board up windows, scrub out graffiti as Americans brace for more chaos

“Stop killing us”
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U.S. President Donald Trump said late Friday that he’d spoken to George Floyd’s family to express his sorrow for their loss, and in a prepared speech Saturday in Florida, he called on protesters to seek “healing, not hatred” and justice instead of chaos. Floyd’s torturous death Monday beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer was captured on cellphone video. AP photo

WASHINGTON — Americans in cities across the United States swept up shards of broken glass, boarded shut their shattered windows and scrubbed away graffiti Sunday as they braced for yet another night of unfettered rage, wanton violence and hard-line police tactics — all of it triggered by the killing of a black man in police custody.

Outside an extended perimeter of guardrails and police tape, small groups of demonstrators milled about near Lafayette Square, the park across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House where police and Secret Service officers clashed violently with angry protesters amid clouds of tear gas and pepper spray the night before.

For blocks in seemingly every direction, work crews whitewashed spray-painted profanities and bolted plywood sheets to the shattered facades of D.C.’s stately downtown cityscape, while tourists and dog-walkers — many wearing face masks to defend against COVID-19 — mingled with others who were on hand to exercise their right to free expression.

“Stop killing us,” one group chanted as they gathered outside the west entrance to the White House grounds, motorists honking in solidarity as they drove through the intersection, while Secret Service guards clad in body armour watched from a distance.

It was a pastoral midday scene compared to the previous night’s chaos in cities across the country, where car fires, looting and push-and-pull battles with truncheon-flinging riot police now seem a nightly cable-news spectacle — all of it triggered by the death of George Floyd, whose torturous death Monday beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer was captured on cellphone video.

Ex-officer Derek Chauvin has been charged with manslaughter and third-degree murder, but activists are demanding the arrest of the other three officers involved as well.

“It’s not these protesters that started these fires across America,” Floyd family lawyer Benjamin Crump said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“It is police brutality and a racist criminal justice system. And the only thing that can put out these fires are police accountability and equal justice.”

The unrest, which taps into a deep, long-standing fissure of racial tension in the U.S., has been stoked as well by latent anger over two other recent killings: Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot and killed in February during an altercation with a white father and son, and Breonna Taylor, who was gunned down in her home in March by police during a botched drug raid.

And for some it marks a dramatic end, at least for now, to the more than two months spent avoiding other people in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19 — an ever-present threat that public health officials now fear could flare up again in the wake of the close-quarters chaos.

In Texas, where more than 200 people were arrested Saturday night, Gov. Greg Abbott declared a state-wide disaster, while South Carolina had the National Guard on standby, poised to join the 13 states that have already activated the reserve military force. Detroit and Indianapolis ordered an 8 p.m. curfew, although that step did little to quell violence in Minneapolis on Friday night.

It was a moment in history that had many wondering whether Donald Trump, whose tweets in recent days have done little to quell the unrest, might choose to address the nation and take on the president’s traditional role of unifier-in-chief.

However, White House officials gave no indication by mid-afternoon that Trump would have any public events Sunday. Instead, Trump tweeted support for National Guard efforts to sow calm in Minneapolis, accused media outlets of trying to “foment hatred and anarchy” and promised to designate Antifa a terrorist organization.

Antifa, a term often used to describe the militant, anti-establishment tactics of certain left-wing anti-fascist groups, hardly fits the description of “organization,” however, raising doubts about whether Trump would be able to make good on his threat.

Trump did say late Friday that he’d spoken to Floyd’s family to express his sorrow for their loss, and in a prepared speech Saturday in Florida, he called on protesters to seek “healing, not hatred” and justice instead of chaos.

But more than once, his words on Twitter have tended to undermine that message.

“When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” he tweeted earlier in the week, only to later deny knowing that the phrase originated in 1967 with a notorious Florida police chief known for his brutal, zero-tolerance approach to crime in black neighbourhoods.

After skirmishes broke out between police and protesters outside the White House, he warned Saturday of “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons” waiting to greet the crowd should they manage to break the perimeter. And he even seemed to urge supporters to stage a counter-protest Saturday night, although he later denied that was his intent.

One step Trump did take late Saturday was to abandon his plan to invite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other world leaders to Washington in June for a meeting of the G7, which he had hoped to use to send the message that the United States was on the road to recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The idea was publicly rebuffed on the weekend by the office of Angela Merkel, which made it clear the German chancellor would not be travelling to Washington without a dramatic change in the course of the pandemic.

Trudeau, for his part, expressed support for the idea of an in-person G7 meeting, provided all the necessary health and safety precautions were taken. Officials say the Prime Minister’s Office never tried to discourage the president.

Instead, Trump said, he wants to hold the summit this fall — and to bring Russia, India, South Korea and Australia into the fold to broaden what he calls a “very outdated” group of leading world economies. He’s musing about scheduling the gathering in September, possibly coinciding with the annual meeting in New York of the United Nations General Assembly, or even after the presidential election in November.