Protesters yesterday were to take to the streets again across the US, one day after the funeral of George Floyd, whose death in police custody has ignited the biggest surge of anti-racism activism since the civil rights era of the 1960s.
Into early yesterday, hundreds of protesters filled the city hall in Seattle, Washington, calling for the mayor to resign and for police reforms.
More protests were expected from Atlanta to New York City and Los Angeles in what would be the 16th straight day of demonstrations.
Photo: AFP
In the US capital yesterday, one of Floyd’s brothers was due to speak to a Democratic-led congressional panel, as lawmakers take on the twin issues of police violence and racial injustice.
At the funeral in Houston, Texas, on Tuesday, civil rights advocate the Reverend Al Sharpton told mourners that Floyd is the “cornerstone of a movement that is going to change the whole wide world.”
Sharpton said that the Floyd family would lead a march on Washington on Aug. 28 to mark the 57th anniversary of the 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech given from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, who was assassinated in 1968.
Floyd, 46, died on May 25 after a police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes while he was face down in a Minneapolis street.
During a four-hour service broadcast live from a church in Floyd’s boyhood hometown of Houston, relatives, clergy and politicians exhorted Americans to turn grief and outrage at his death into a moment of reckoning for the country.
About 2,500 people attended the funeral after more than 6,000 people had filed past Floyd’s open casket on Monday.
Two columns of Houston police officers saluted the golden casket as it was wheeled from the hearse into the church before the service. A horse-drawn carriage later bore the coffin to the cemetery in Pearland, Texas, where Floyd was buried.
Among those attending were relatives of several other black men killed by white police or white civilians, including the family of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Georgia man who was shot and killed in February while jogging. Three white men were charged in his death.
Sharpton called Floyd “an ordinary brother” who grew up in a housing project, but left behind a legacy of greatness, despite rejections in jobs and sports that prevented him from achieving all that he once aspired to become.
Democratic US presidential candidate Joe Biden was among politicians embracing police reforms.
“We need to root out systemic racism across our laws and institutions, and we need to make sure black Americans have a real shot,” Biden wrote in an opinion piece published in USA Today yesterday.
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