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US Heads Into A New Week Shaken by Violence and Pandemic

Associated Press

   WASHINGTON - With cities wounded by days of violent unrest, America
   headed into a new week with neighborhoods in shambles, urban streets on
   lockdown and shaken confidence about when leaders would find the
   answers to control the mayhem amid unrelenting raw emotion over police
   killings of black people.
   All of it smashed into a nation already bludgeoned by a death toll from
   the coronavirus pandemic surging past 100,000 and unemployment that
   soared to levels not seen since the Great Depression.
   Sunday capped a tumultuous weekend and month that saw city and state
   officials deploy thousands of National Guard soldiers, enact strict
   curfews and shut down mass transit systems. Even with those efforts,
   many demonstrations erupted into violence as protesters hurled rocks
   and Molotov cocktails at police in Philadelphia, set a fire near the
   White House and were hit with tear gas and pepper spray in Austin and
   other cities. Seven Boston police officers were hospitalized.
   In some cities, thieves smashed their way into stores and ran off with
   as much as they could carry, leaving shop owners, many of them just
   ramping up their business again after coronavirus pandemic lockdowns,
   to clean up their shattered storefronts.
   In others, police tried to calm tensions by kneeling in solidarity with
   demonstrators, while still maintaining a strong presence for security.
   The demonstrations were sparked by the death of George Floyd, a black
   man who pleaded for air as an officer pressed a knee into his neck.
   Floyd's death in Minneapolis came after tensions had already flared
   after two white men were arrested in May for the February shooting
   death of black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, and the Louisville
   police shooting death of Breonna Taylor in her home in March.
   The scale of the coast-to-coast protests rivaled the historic
   demonstrations of the civil rights and Vietnam War eras.
   "They keep killing our people. I'm so sick and tired of it," said
   Mahira Louis, 15, who was at a Boston protest with her mother Sunday,
   leading chants of "George Floyd, say his name."

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