In massive day of rallies, more than 10,000 people pour into nation’s capital to protest racism, police brutality. 

Demonstrations across the United States, which began as spontaneous eruptions of outrage after the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police less than two weeks ago, appeared to have cohered by Saturday into a nationwide movement protesting systemic racism. 

Thousands marched in big cities like New York and Seattle, and tighter groups in small towns like Vidor, Texas; Havre, Mont.; and Marion, Ohio, denouncing a broken law enforcement system marked by racial injustice.

The outpouring of activism came at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has underscored many deep inequities in society, and has also removed competition for the public’s attention by disrupting work, school and entertainment.

One of the largest protests was in the nation’s capital, where new fences, concrete barriers and a force of unidentifiable guards have shrouded the White House, projecting a new symbolism of militarized defensiveness rather than openness and democracy.

 

A multiethnic, multigenerational crowd of thousands of protesters converged there, at the mouth of Lafayette Square. Demonstrators on foot and bicycle headed to the freshly painted Black Lives Matter mural on the main thoroughfare, passing cars with “BLM” and “Stop Killing Us” written on their rear windows. Later, they also passed people sipping cocktails at a few upscale restaurants open for outdoor dining.

At times, it felt as if the entire city had emptied into downtown Washington as the numbers swelled to high for the two weeks. Lines of protesters — often but not always masked against the virus — snaked their way through side streets, while others converged in nearby parks.

By early evening, 16th Street had the feel of a street fair. Ice cream trucks idled on the side of the road, parents rolled tired children in strollers, people played guitars and harmonicas. Music was playing out of the back of cars. Some people danced.

Protesters also gathered in the once predominantly black neighborhoods of U Street and Columbia Heights, north of the White House. In Meridian Hill Park, which locals call Malcolm X Park, a large crowd gathered to chant, “No justice, no peace.”

Just down the street, the intersection of 14th and U Streets was filled with protesters who had gathered to listen to D.J.s and musicians play go-go music, a type of funk music recently designated the official music of the district. The chanting crowd paused to listen to a woman sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which black Americans have embraced for more than a century as an anthem of liberation.

Protesters fill the streets of the boroughs of New York 

Several thousand demonstrators marched from Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza at noon Saturday, walking through the borough and eventually crossing over the Brooklyn Bridge to New York city hall in Manhattan. The event was just one of dozens of protests planned throughout the day in the city, with tens of thousands of people out in the streets.

The first protests kicked off around 11 a.m., with demonstrators meeting at dozens of locations across the city’s five boroughs and continuing to do so sporadically later in the day. Multiple waves of rallies and marches are expected at such places as Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn and Washington Square Park in Manhattan.

In a city hit hard by the coronavirus, parents could be seen carrying children on their shoulders, and even blocks away from the marches, the sidewalks were filled with people walking to and from protests, carrying signs at their sides. Police officers have been escorting participants of the marches, which have so far been free of clashes.

A largely peaceful night, as marches continue well after curfew.

Protest marches against racism and police brutality continued in New York City well past 11 p.m. on Saturday, defying an 8 p.m. curfew but allowed to continue peacefully by the police, who had moved aggressively to stop protests after curfew on recent nights.

The biggest march of the night, which began at Barclays Center as curfew fell, with well over 1,000 people, made a jubilant 8-mile loop through the center of Brooklyn.

“We’re in our neighborhood!” Courtney Taylor, an organizer, yelled into a megaphone as the procession turned onto Church Avenue in Flatbush, a heavily African-American and Caribbean area. “This whole neighborhood, they got us!” The Brooklyn protest took one last knee and observed a minute of silence back at Barclays Center before dispersing with a loud cheer shortly after 11:30 p.m.

 

There were no reports of major confrontations or mass arrests as of 1 a.m.

After more than a week of images flooding social media of the police cornering, roughly arresting and sometimes beating protesters, one of few arrests the police reported Saturday was of an angry motorist who drove onto the sidewalk to get around protesters on a street in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The driver struck a man on the ankle, the police said, and mangled a protester’s bike. He was arrested.