Roxie Washington, the mother of George Floyd's six-year-old daughter, spoke at a news conference on Tuesday after days of protests following his death in Minneapolis. "I'm here for my baby and I'm here for George because I want justice for him," Washington said through tears. "He was a good man"
CEO says decision was ‘tough’ but ‘thorough’ as company faces harsh criticism and public dissent from employees
Mark Zuckerberg is standing by his decision to allow Donald Trump to threaten violence against George Floyd protesters on the platform despite harsh criticism from civil rights leaders and public dissent from his own employees, including a public resignation.
In a video conference with staff on Tuesday, Zuckerberg said that his decision to not remove Trump’s warning on social media on Friday that “when the looting starts the shooting start” was “tough” but “pretty thorough”, the New York Times reported. The company usually holds an all-staff meeting on Thursdays, but the session was moved up to address growing discontent among employees, hundreds of whom staged a “walkout” on Monday by requesting time off.
Continue reading...More than 100,000 have died in a pandemic and troops are on the streets. The rate of fresh affronts has outpaced the ability to digest them
The sheer tumult of the Trump era, the unceasing torrent of events that were unthinkable even hours before, has left a nation constantly off balance, unable to find its bearing and grasp how far it has traveled.
The developments of the past 24 hours were a reminder of how slippery the downward slope has been.
Continue reading...The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, was silent for 21 seconds in reaction to a question on Donald Trump's handling of protests across the US over the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer.
Trudeau said Canada also had to face up to 'systemic discrimination' and become allies against it
Protesters marched in their thousands in towns and cities across America, part of a wave of demonstrations that have followed the killing of George Floyd
Continue reading...New Jersey produced some striking images as protests elsewhere descended into violence but relied on trust previously being built
When Larry Hamm, a veteran activist with People’s Organization for Progress, kicked off last weekend’s protest in Newark, New Jersey, he asked the crowd what they wanted. The majority – though not all – said they wanted a peaceful protest.
Continue reading...Joe Biden has addressed the killing of George Floyd and the protests that his death has sparked. During a speech in Philadelphia, the Democratic presidential candidate said Floyd’s last words, 'I can’t breathe', were a 'wake-up call for our nation'. Biden also sought to draw a clear distinction between himself and Donald Trump, saying the US president was 'part of the problem'
Continue reading...Wuhan doctor who worked with whistlebower dies; Abu Dhabi closes borders; Dr Fauci says he hasn’t spoken to Trump in two weeks
In England, an official study has found that black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people are up to 50% more likely to die after being infected with Covid-19.
The report, published today by Public Health England (PHE), reveals that people of Bangladeshi ethnicity had around twice the risk of death than people of white British ethnicity.
It’s Simon Murphy here covering the global live blog while my colleague, Damien Gayle, takes a break.
Continue reading...Abandoned by mainstream Republicans for his racist rhetoric, the Iowa congressman finds himself in a nightmare situation
This might actually be the year Iowa Republican congressman Steve King loses re-election.
King, the conservative congressman who’s been repeatedly reprimanded by leaders in his own party for racist rhetoric and interactions with white nationalists, finds himself in a nightmare situation for an incumbent congressman.
Continue reading...Activists say Facebook boss’s decision to leave ‘shooting threat’ up sets dangerous precedent
Civil rights leaders have criticised Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to take no action against a Facebook post from Donald Trump appearing to threaten to start shooting “looters”, after a Monday night meeting with the company’s executives ended in acrimony.
“We are disappointed and stunned by Mark’s incomprehensible explanations for allowing the Trump posts to remain up,” Vanita Gupta, Sherrilyn Ifill and Rashad Robison said in a statement. “He did not demonstrate understanding of historic or modern-day voter suppression and he refuses to acknowledge how Facebook is facilitating Trump’s call for violence against protesters.
Continue reading...The president suggested the US could use troops against Americans – true to the instincts of a man surrounded by sycophants
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross,” goes an oft-quoted line of uncertain origin.
On Monday evening, Donald Trump, with four US flags behind him, threatened to send in the military against the American people, then crossed the road to pose for a photo outside a historic church while clutching an upside-down Bible.
Continue reading...There is something so wounded in American society that basic commitment to justice is not part of the operating code
In 1919, as soldiers returned from the first world war, many white Americans saw African American men in military uniforms for the first time. That sight, and the challenge it posed to the political, social, and economic order, was deeply threatening to them. Groups of armed white men hunted down and slaughtered hundreds of black Americans across the country. The wave of lynchings and race riots came to be known as the Red Summer.
The black community did its best to fight back, without protection from the state. In some cases, police actively participated in the lynchings. The US attorney general, A Mitchell Palmer, claimed that leftwing radicals were behind the uprisings – a false charge and one that further endangered African American lives. Palmer worked for President Woodrow Wilson, an ardent segregationist who screened Birth of a Nation in the White House and praised the Ku Klux Klan even as it deployed terrorism to keep blacks away from the voting booth. Wilson had been silent while whites slaughtered African Americans in East St Louis in 1917, and he did little to nothing in 1919 when they again attacked and killed black people, this time on an even more horrific and grisly scale.
Continue reading...Secretary of state says he is considering immigration option similar to move announced last week by UK
The US is considering letting people who no longer “feel comfortable” in Hong Kong move to the US, secretary of state Mike Pompeo has suggested.
The comments, made in a conversation with the American Enterprise Institute on Friday, come amid worsening relations between the two countries over China’s moves to impose national security laws on the semi-autonomous region.
Continue reading...Comments likely to raise fears he is being squeezed out of White House as coronavirus continues to ravage US
Anthony Fauci, the government’s top public health expert and a member of the national coronavirus taskforce, said on Monday that he was no longer in frequent contact with Donald Trump, which is likely to spark fresh fears that he is being frozen out of the White House.
The pandemic continues to ravage communities across the United States, where the death toll on Monday had reached 105,000, and last month Fauci warned the US Congress during a hearing that the virus was not yet under control.
Continue reading...US president Donald Trump has authorised the use of "heavily armed soldiers" to "dominate the streets" in a press conference held in the White House Rose Garden. A few hundred metres away on the streets of Washington DC, police used teargas to disperse crowds of protesters.
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Bobby Rush, an Illinois congressman and a Civil Rights era leader who co-founded the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers in 1967, responded to Trump’s Rose Garden address with this:
We are living in a police state. https://t.co/YjO8x7QZjt
The Episcopal bishop of DC told The Washington Post that she was “outraged” after the officers cleared peaceful protestors gathered near the White House with tear gas and rubber bullets, to clear the way for Donald Trump to take photos outside St. John’s Church.
The Episcopal bishop of DC – who oversees the DC church Trump just stopped at – tells the @washingtonpost she is "outraged" and that neither she nor the rector was asked or told… “that they would be clearing with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop.." 1/3
"We so disassociate ourselves from the messages of this president. We hold the teachings of our sacred texts to be so so grounding to our lives and everything we do and it is about love of neighbor and sacrificial love and justice." @Mebudde Bishop Mariann Budde 3/3
Continue reading...George Floyd’s brother implores protesters to remain peaceful, urging people to go out and vote rather than turn to violence. ‘Stop thinking our voice don't matter, and vote,’ Terrence Floyd said, visiting the site of his brother’s death. ‘If I’m not over here wilding out, if I'm not over here blowing up stuff, if I'm not over here messing up my community, then what are y'all doing?’
Continue reading...A US activist arrested as part of a brutal crackdown in Cairo has filed a lawsuit against a former Egyptian prime minister who now lives in Washington DC, arguing he was targeted for assassination, arrest and torture.
Mohamed Soltan was arrested following the violent dispersal of protesters in Cairo in 2013. Court documents chronicle the extensive physical torture Soltan suffered in multiple detention facilities during his 643-day detention, including beatings, denial of medical treatment and cigarette burns to the back of his neck.
Continue reading...Facebook employees are staging a rebellion over Mark Zuckerberg’s refusal to act against Donald Trump, expressing their dissatisfaction with their boss on social media in a rare public display of dissent and, in some cases, staging a “virtual” walkout.
Disagreement came from employees at all levels of the company, including some senior staff. Particular criticism was levelled at Zuckerberg’s personal decision to leave up the Facebook version of a tweet sent by Trump in which the president appeared to encourage police to shoot rioters. By contrast, Twitter hid the message behind a warning.
Continue reading...US president initiated call with Russian leader, according to Kremlin account, where they discussed pandemic, oil and space
Donald Trump has offered to invite Vladimir Putin to an expanded G7 meeting in September, but the invitation has already been adamantly opposed by the UK and Canada.
According to a Kremlin account on Monday, the US president initiated the call, in which the two leaders talked about the coronavirus pandemic, oil prices and cooperation in space, as well as Trump’s postponement of a planned G7 summit at Camp David this month and the inclusion of other countries.
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