Two months after the killing of George Floyd, violence from the police and law enforcement agencies have intensified protests across the United States. On Saturday, July 25, as the US witnessed nationwide demonstrations, a protester part of a Black Live Matter march in the city of Austin was shot dead. Witnesses have stated that the shooter drove his car into the march and then shot at the protesters. A similar attack happened on a demonstration in Aurora where a car was driven into the march.
In the city of Seattle, another demonstration faced intense repression from the police, leading to the arrest of 45 protesters. Similar crackdown on protesters occurred in the city of Omaha, where 75 protesters were arrested, and in Los Angeles, where the police preemptively declared “tactical alert” against a rally under the banner “Refuse Fascism” and arrested four.
These violence on protesters occurred on a day of nationwide demonstrations in solidarity with the protesters in Portland, who are speaking up against the violence of the federal law enforcement agencies in the city.
In Seattle, the clash between police and protesters was particularly intense, as the police declared a riot and made use of stun-grenades and pepper spray to disperse the crowd. The demonstrations were largely peaceful, until a group of protesters set fire to an under-construction detention facility for juveniles, and then vandalized the adjoining courthouse.
Attempts to harm anti-racism protesters by individual attackers, often times people driving their cars into protests, have greatly increased since June, with several injuries and even a few deaths reported. Violence and detention of protesters in Portland, Oregon, by federal law enforcement deployed by the Donald Trump administration, has prompted nationwide outrage.
