Tear gas, Trump’s threats, cleanups mark 3rd day of protests | Morning Newsletter
Today’s primary in Pennsylvania will feel very different.
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President Donald Trump last night threatened to deploy the U.S. military unless states did more to stop violence alongside the demonstrations against police brutality and the mourning of George Floyd. In Philadelphia, and in other places across the nation, people gathered to demonstrate and were met with bolstered law enforcement, including the National Guard. Folks also were cleaning up the damage from broken-into buildings from the previous two days. Here’s what that looked like.
— Josh Rosenblat (@joshrosenblat, morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)
Following the weekend’s protests, yesterday’s clashes between police and people demonstrating contained a particularly striking scene as thousands of marchers moved on the Vine Street Expressway, stopping traffic. Police then fired tear gas into the crowd, setting off a stampede of people trying to escape up walls and steep hills. At that point, people scrambled as they were gassed again, some of them trapped, leaving their belongings behind as they ran.
Mayor Kenney and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said in a statement late last night that Philadelphia SWAT officers released the tear gas and non-chemical white smoke after they say some people protesting had thrown rocks. The gas was “a means to safely defuse a volatile and dangerous situation and restore order,” Outlaw said in the statement.
The chaos occurred an hour before the city’s 6 p.m. curfew, on a day when the National Guard rolled into aid city and state police. Later last night, after the curfew took hold, police again sought to more forcefully clear the streets. Tonight, the city’s curfew will begin at 8:30 p.m in order to give Philadelphians the chance to vote in today’s primary before the polls close at 8.
My colleagues are out reporting on an unusual Pennsylvania primary day. Here’s some of what you need to know to vote in today’s primary. Yesterday, Gov. Tom Wolf extended the mail ballot deadlines for one week in Philadelphia. Here are the things we’ll be watching for as state and local election officials deal with the first statewide election since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
Along with the local and congressional races on the ballot, Joe Biden supporters and the Democratic establishment in Pennsylvania are taking a quiet victory lap regarding the ex-vice president’s emergence as the party’s presumptive nominee to take on President Trump in November. Biden’s campaign announced that he will visit Philadelphia today to speak about the “the civil unrest facing communities across America.”
You can follow all the news today live at this link.
What you need to know today
Unrest could delay Philadelphia’s loosening coronavirus-related restrictions. But the Pennsylvania suburbs and New Jersey will move ahead.
Pennsylvania’s revenues took another coronavirus-related hit in May, falling $440 million short of expectations.
The impact of COVID-19 and police brutality has health experts concerned about what are called “deaths of despair.”
Young Latino professional organizers are working to help and highlight the work that migrant workers do and the risks they face, as they’re deemed “essential” while harvesting South Jersey crops during the coronavirus pandemic.
Dental offices that are trying to reopen are having a hard time getting back to work.
In New Jersey, protests in Atlantic City were peaceful for hours before a brick was thrown through the window of an old business in town. In Camden, police joined people during demonstrations on Sunday.
A third day of protests against police brutality and the killing of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody began throughout Philadelphia yesterday afternoon. Here’s what it looked like.
That’s interesting
🦅The Eagles’ QB room will look a bit different this season, with new a new set of expectations and a new face.
⏸️The music industry will pause in solidarity with the nationwide protests against police brutality.
🏳️🌈A 1984 Wharton grad is funding the $149,000 tuition for one MBA student who is a member of the LGBTQIA community and demonstrates leadership, Penn’s business school announced yesterday. School officials believe it’s the first program of its kind.
🙌Eric Gokcen has received the Pennsylvania Medical Society’s Physician Award for International Voluntary Service. “Dr. Gokcen stood out for all his many years of dedication to serving children with disabilities, and for sharing that passion with the next generation of physicians through mission trips,” said Michael Della Vecchia, the medical society’s president-elect. “We’re proud to have a colleague like Dr. Gokcen in Philadelphia.”
Opinions
“Murder from police brutality, combined with no swift, concentrated, and deliberate effort to decrease the spread of coronavirus disease in the black community: What is the message they send? That our lives don’t matter to those in power. If we want change, we must create it. We have seen time and again: No one cares about us but us. We were brought to America, our families broken, lives lost, lifetimes taken, women raped, men lynched, and children left to fend for themselves. Then after over 200 hundred years, someone in power proclaimed: ‘OK, you’re free now, go do something with yourselves—while I have my foot on your neck.’" — writes Dr. Ala Stanford, a pediatric surgeon who founded the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium in her hometown of Philadelphia, about the deadly impact of police brutality and the coronavirus on black people.
“Does the destruction of buildings matter when black Americans are being brazenly murdered in cold blood by police and vigilantes?” asks architecture critic Inga Saffron.
Columnist Helen Ubiñas writes that the government’s priorities favor racism over citizens’ lives.
What we’re reading
NJ.com reports on the people who were impacted when New Jersey’s unemployment system melted down.
The Atlantic writes about the conspiracy theories that fueled the Civil War.
For 30 years, a college football coach hid his bipolar disorder diagnosis before he retired last year. ESPN has the story.
Your Daily Dose of | Music as protest
Anthony McGill is the New York Philharmonic’s first-ever African American principal player and a Curtis Institute of Music professor and graduate who’s also a frequent guest with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. He posted a video of himself playing “America the Beautiful” on Facebook, then others joined in. “I’m saying, let’s continue to do it, and take two knees. Because it’s a sign of prayer, of vulnerability, of peaceful protest. In a way it’s a sign of surrender to this situation we are in, that we are on our knees and praying people pay attention to this," McGill said.