A summer of street marches will culminate over the Labor Day holiday weekend with some rallies backing US President Donald Trump, while others continue protests against racial inequality and police violence across the country.
Trump’s supporters have organized rallies for the weekend, including a plan by supporters in Georgia to decorate their vehicles in American flags and signs and drive loops around Atlanta on Interstate 285 to “show our love and pride for our country and this president,” according to organizers.
In Louisville, Kentucky, a crowd of reportedly hundreds of people, some of whom were heavily armed like militia and included supporters of President Trump, rallied on Saturday morning as ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests were planned elsewhere in the city, demanding that the police officers involved in the fatal shooting of local woman Breonna Taylor be charged.
Taylor, a Black 26-year-old medical worker, was killed on March 13 by Louisville police who burst into her apartment with guns bearing a “no-knock” arrest warrant.
Her death, alongside that of George Floyd, a Black man who died in May after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck, helped spark one of the largest protest movements in the country’s history, with near-daily protests in cities ever since.
The nationwide demonstrations have moved to the forefront of Trump’s re-election campaign for the November 3 presidential election.
