For a week now, three words have been echoing across the United States: "I can't breathe." Five days after George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, was killed during his violent arrest in Minneapolis, thousands of protesters took to the streets of the United States to demand justice, on the night of Friday the 29th to Saturday, May 30th.
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In Atlanta, New York, Detroit, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, Des Moines, Memphis, Portland, and even outside the White House, recordings of the protests sometimes reveal very violent images, which subsequently circulate the Internet, making crystal clear the extent of the tension that can be felt all over the country.
Clashing with the police
Hundreds of people protested outside the White House in Washington, DC, holding up signs bearing words like "Stop killing us" and "Black lives matter." In New York, nearly a thousand protesters gathered to call out the police. Protesters soon began to clash with the police, giving rise to the exceptionally violent images we've seen of what is being referred to as an "urban guerrilla."
The police officer has been charged with manslaughter
The police officer who caused the death of George Floyd was arrested on Friday and charged with manslaughter, which is "too little, too late" according to the family of the deceased. "We expected a first-degree murder charge. And we want to see the other officers arrested," the family said in a statement.
"We’ve been crashing for far too long. We die, brother, with someone’s knee on our neck when we haven’t done anything (…) so it’s over, we’re sick of it. I mean, we’re already dead, so we might as well die for a good cause, right?" said one protester in Minneapolis.
