'Beautiful, peaceful and diverse': Thousands of protesters flood streets near White House
WASHINGTON — Thousands of people gathered outside Washington D.C. monuments and the White House on Saturday protesting the killing of George Floyd, years of unanswered calls for police reform and President Donald Trump's use of the military in response to largely peaceful demonstrations.
“I’m tired of the racism. Just tired,” said Rochelle Grate, a 58-year-old information technology specialist from fort Washington, Maryland, who described the Saturday protest as “beautiful, peaceful and diverse.”
“This is different," she said about the protests seen around the country over much of the past two weeks since Floyd, a black man, was killed in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25. "It snapped people not of color to say ‘Man, this is real and I’ve been blind to it.’”
After more than a week of protests in Washington, city officials said they expected Saturday to be the largest demonstration yet with potential for tens of thousands of people taking to the streets.
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PHOTO: Protesters at the Lincoln Memorial
Thousands defy coronavirus bans to take a knee at global George Floyd protests
From Paris to London, Sydney to Tokyo, thousands of protesters got down on one knee to honor George Floyd, during the second weekend of worldwide protests.
Many dressed in black and most defied coronavirus lockdown rules to pour onto the streets.
In Paris, police officially banned protests on Saturday, citing fears of the respiratory illness. It was to no avail as people turned out in force in the center of the French capital.
In a gray and rainy central London, thousands defied a plea from Britain's Home Secretary Priti Patel to stay at home and gathered in Parliament Square, a traditional venue for protests outside the country's legislature.
LA Galaxy release Serbian soccer star Aleksander Katai over wife's racist social media posts
The LA Galaxy said it released Serbian soccer star Aleksander Katai on Friday after his wife, Tea Katai, shared a series of "racist and violent" social media posts in response to the George Floyd protests occurring across the country.
The Major League Soccer club met with Katai on Thursday after it was made aware of two of his wife's Instagram posts that she shared the day before. After fans protested outside the LA Galaxy stadium, the club announced in a one-sentence statement on Friday that it would drop Katai from its roster.
The club said the two sides had "mutually agreed" to part ways.
"The LA Galaxy strongly condemn the social posts and requested their immediate removal," the club said in a statement days before announcing Katai's removal. "The LA Galaxy stands firmly against racism of any kind, including that which suggests violence or seeks to demean the efforts of those in pursuit of social equity."
Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr voice support for George Floyd protesters
The two living Beatles members have issued statements of support for those protesting the police killing of George Floyd.
"I feel sick and angry that here we are almost 60 years later, and the world is in shock at the horrific scenes of the senseless murder of George Floyd at the hands of police racism, along with the countless others that came before," Paul McCartney wrote.
"All of us here support and stand alongside all those who are protesting and raising their voices."
The singer-songwriter also shared a story from 1964 when the popular British band refused to play to a segregated audience in Jacksonville.
Drummer Ringo Starr echoed his band-mate's sentiment: "The Beatles always stood for equal rights and justice and I’ve never stopped working for peace and love," he said online.
"I send my peace, love and continuous support to everyone marching and speaking up for justice."
'Blackout Tuesday' on Instagram was a teachable moment for allies like me
This week I discovered the extent to which some of my attempts at allyship were hurting, not helping, the struggle for black liberation. As a queer woman of color, this was a difficult pill to swallow. But I wasn’t alone. #BlackoutTuesday forced a lot of us wannabe allies to confront the ways in which our allyship can be misguided and, frankly, lazy.
On Tuesday, as Americans across the country searched for ways to express solidarity with black people, #BlackoutTuesday took social media by storm. It was an ostensible display of allyship — posting a black square with the aforementioned hashtag — with a promise not to post anything else that day and instead take the time to think about the ways in which many nonblack Americans benefit from structural racism.
While Tuesday morning saw a great many Instagram feeds flooded with black tiles, by the evening, many of these posts had been deleted, with people attempting to make amends. I was one of these people. There was an important lesson to be learned, if people were paying attention, and it had nothing to do with policing behavior or judgement. Rather, the #BlackoutTuesday debacle was a reminder that being an ally, sometimes, means making mistakes. But a true ally doesn’t give up when corrected; a true ally listens and course-corrects without shame or resentment. I say this as someone who’s wished, on numerous occasions, friends and family would do the same when I point out their transgressions, but who can still gets defensive if I’m not being thoughtful about it.