Louisville tensions rise as right wing and left wing groups clash at racial justice demonstrations

Several people complained police allowed an armed group to confront and intimidate peaceful protesters without stepping in

A protester demanding justice in the police killing of Breonna Taylor confronts far-right activists near city hall in Louisville on Saturday (Joshua Lott for The Washington Post)

Hundreds of demonstrators clashed in downtown Louisville ahead of the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, with guns and camouflage replacing the traditional scene of colourful hats and bespoke suits. It was the latest in a series of tense confrontations in a summer that has been marked by violence and acrimony in many American cities.

Some of the protesters sought to use the signature horse race to draw attention to the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman killed by police in her Louisville apartment in March.

But tensions escalated as an armed group carrying long guns and those protesting over Taylor's death came into contact in front of Louisville's Metro Hall, according to the Louisville Metro Police Department.

While no shots were fired and the feuding groups eventually separated, the scene mirrored many of the hostile showdowns across the country as peaceful protests over racial inequality have descended into riots and, in some cases, street battles between Black Lives Matter demonstrators and supporters of Donald Trump in recent weeks.

With demonstrations expected throughout the Labour Day weekend in cities including Portland, Rochester, N.Y., and Louisville, police across the country prepared to deal with a nation on edge over racial inequality and police misconduct.

Several protesters in Louisville complained that police allowed the armed group to confront and intimidate peaceful protesters without stepping in. Police said they were mostly assembled near the racetrack at Churchill Downs and decided to monitor the situation from a distance.

“Due to the size of the crowd, we determined it was not safe to go in and we did not want to escalate the situation with police presence,” the department said in a “Midday Update” posted on Facebook. “The two groups continued to engage, working to separate themselves from each other.”

While there were visible firearms being carried by members of both groups, the confrontations did not escalate beyond shouting, police said on Saturday afternoon. The group of mostly white militants later left the scene.

Police said they later were able to create a barrier separating protesters and counter-demonstrators. Later on Saturday, a separate group of armed, mostly black, self-described militia members also assembled in Louisville.

A separate, larger group of several hundred Black Lives Matter protesters marched to Churchill Downs, where the Kentucky Derby was set to take place without spectators because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Demonstrators carried two red, black and green flags and some had guns.

They stopped in a grassy area near a white picket fence that stands in front of a neighborhood of small and neatly kept houses. A wall of riot police in black stood in front of the protesters, along the avenue.

A moment later, the sound of the call of the 13th race rang out, with track announcer Travis Stone describing a front-runner “trying to go wire to wire!”

The march marked more than 100 days of demonstrations over Taylor's death, which remains under investigation, according to Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron.

“Today, while we honour a KY tradition with the running of the Derby, we remain cognisant of the community's desire for answers in the investigation into the death of Ms Breonna Taylor,” Cameron wrote on Saturday on Twitter.

As protests continued Jacob Blake - the black man who was shot late last month by a Kenosha police officer - urged the public to remain calm from a hospital bed on Saturday night in an emotional video released by his lawyer. Wearing a loose-fitting hospital gown, he told members of the black community to focus on constructive goals.

“Your life, and not only just your life, your legs - something that you need to move around and move forward in life — can be taken from you like this,” Blake said, snapping his fingers. “Every 24-hours it's pain. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to sleep. It hurts to move from side to side. It hurts to eat.”

“Please, I'm telling you, change y'all lives out there. We can stick together, make some money, make everything easier for our people, because there's so much time that's been wasted.”

In New York, attorney general Letitia James announced on Saturday that her office will empanel a grand jury as part of its investigation into the death of Daniel Prude. A recently released video shows Prude being handcuffed and hooded while in police custody in Rochester in March. Officials said Prude, who was naked at the time, was having a mental health emergency when he was placed in custody. He died a week later. Seven officers have been suspended.

“The Prude family and the Rochester community have been through great pain and anguish,” Ms James said in news release, saying her office would “immediately move to empanel a grand jury as part of our exhaustive investigation into this matter”.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said in a statement on Saturday that “justice delayed is justice denied and the people of New York deserve the truth”.

Several hundred people gathered in Rochester on Saturday evening for a rally and march, as speakers called for the resignations of mayor Lovely Warren, Police Chief LaRon Singletary and Monroe county executive Adam Bello. Boxes of gloves, elbow pads, knee pads and helmets lay out on the street for protesters to take, while marchers wielding homemade shields of garbage can tops went to the front of the line.

Speaking before the crowd, activist Danielle Ponder said that the tax dollars they contributed to the Rochester Police Department was being used to help corporations rather than local residents. “So we're paying to protect Wegmans, Top, Family Dollar, and Walmart. Billion dollar corporations,” she said. “We are paying for our own oppression!”

In Portland, where protesters planned to use the weekend to mark the 100th day of demonstrations amid a national reckoning on race and policing after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, things began on a mellow note Saturday.

Small crowds gathered at a pair of parks on the eastern side of the city to listen to speakers.

At a park named for Martin Luther King Jr., about 100 people gathered before 1pm. They were seated in small groups spaced apart on a baseball field and listened to speakers who shared messages of unity and peace. One woman led the group in a meditation exercise.

Ryon Nicholson, a 42-year-old white man, walked around the park wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt and holding his biracial daughter, Nora.

He watched the protests over the past several months, longing to join but wary of the potential for violence. The quiet defiance at the park, however, felt comfortable to him.

“Here we are another 100 days later and nobody is letting up and, if anything, it's heating up,” said Mr Nicholson, a wholesale cannabis distributor.

As the mostly white crowd at the King park baseball field in Portland grew, a black married couple watched with skepticism from the porch of their home overlooking the park.

Patsy McKinney and Thomas Glenn, both 62, sympathised with the movement against police brutality because they said they were victims of it. Mr Glenn said he couldn't march because of lingering trauma from an encounter with police and injuries making it difficult to walk.

Mr McKinney dismissed the gathering unfolding in front of her as “all talk”, though a welcome break from the more contentious parts of the protest movement.

“I'm tired of all the destruction. What are they going to do about it all the violence?” she said. “It hasn't helped yet.”

Her husband was slightly more optimistic that changes in policing could come if the protesters do not relent.

The president spent much of the day at his Virginia resort, playing golf and tweeting about a White House memo aimed at curtailing racial sensitivity training.

As he arrived at Trump National Golf Resort, he was greeted by protesters and supporters who gathered outside the resort to make their views about his presidency known.

Some held signs that read “Trump Is A Loser Not Our Troops” and “Soldiers are Not Suckers”, references to recent allegations in the Atlantic magazine that the president had called dead American service members “suckers” and “losers”. Mr Trump has denied making those comments.

The president's supporters waved pro-Trump flags and signs calling for “Four More Years”. The demonstration remained peaceful.

The president has done little to address the rancour across the country, instead calling for “law and order” and dismissing calls for racial justice.

Late Friday, Mr Trump moved to overhaul federal agencies' racial sensitivity trainings, casting some of them as “divisive” and “un-American”, according to a memo by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

In the two-page memo, OMB Director Russell Vought said Mr Trump has asked him to prevent federal agencies from spending millions in taxpayer dollars on training sessions addressing “white privilege” or “critical race theory”.

Mr Trump tweeted more than a dozen times on Saturday morning to celebrate the move.

“This is a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue,” Mr Trump wrote. “Please report any sightings so we can quickly extinguish!”

In one retweet, he circulated a post by the far-right account @ColumbiaBugle that said: “Sorry liberals! How to be Anti-White 101 is permanently canceled!”

Mr Trump has declined to condemn groups that have taken to the streets with guns to confront protesters, instead praising his supporters for openly expressing themselves.

A caravan of Trump backers is scheduled to drive near Portland on Monday, just over a week after a similar event descended into violent confrontations between demonstrators and counterprotesters. One man was slain and, days later, police shot and killed the suspect in the case.

The Washington Post