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Eight Year Old’s Death in Atlanta Sparks Backlash: Protest Wrap

(Bloomberg) — Armed protesters had taken over an area near the burned-out Wendy’s in Atlanta where weeks ago Rayshard Brooks was killed by a police officer. Now an eight-year-old girl is dead. Secoriea Turner was in the car her mom was driving and as they tried to pull into a parking lot, they were stopped by armed individuals, police said, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Shots were fired on the car, Turner was hit and died of her injuries.

“They say black lives matter,” local TV station WSB-TV 2 quoted her father as saying. “You killed your own this time. You killed a child. She didn’t do nothing to nobody.” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, known to be under consideration by Joe Biden for the vice presidential spot on the Democratic ticket, said police will clear the area of protesters. “At the point that an 8-year-old baby is killed, the discussions have ended.” A $10,000 reward was offered for information leading to arrests.

Mark Zuckerberg will meet Tuesday with leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Anti-Defamation League and Color of Change to address a range of concerns about Facebook. Advocates have helped press companies, including Starbucks Corp. and PepsiCo Inc., to join an advertising boycott over accusations that Facebook hasn’t done enough to curb hate-speech and disinformation.

All Formula One drivers in the season-opening Grand Prix in Austria wore black T-shirts printed with “End Racism.” Yet six of the 19 drivers didn’t join Lewis Hamilton, the sport’s only Black driver, in taking a knee during the event, the Associated Press reported. At Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the ‘Trump 2020’ car driven by Corey LaJoie was caught up in a wreck early on in Nascar’s Brickyard 400, while Bubba Wallace — the series’ only Black driver — came ninth. The pro-Trump car, funded by a pro-Trump super PAC, will run for another eight races.

In Gettysburg, Pa., word spread on social media that Antifa protesters would converge at the historic Civil War battlefield on July 4th to burn American flags. According to the Washington Post, self-proclaimed militias, bikers and far-right groups flooded in by the hundreds. Except, like with several other recent fake claims of imminent Antifa violence headed toward small towns, it was all made up. Like similar hoaxes around the country in the wake of George Floyd’s death, it’s an illustration of how shadowy figures online can stoke fears about the protests against racial injustice, and how willing those who fall for it are to mobilize their own armed response.

A statue of abolitionist Frederick Douglass was torn down in Rochester, New York, where almost 150 years ago Douglass gave his famous “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” speech. It’s not clear why it was torn down. The statue is too damaged to be repaired and is expected to be replaced, the Democrat & Chronicle newspaper reported.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican twice elected in the otherwise blue state, said Baltimore city leaders “need to regain control of their own streets.” The comments came after protesters took down a Christopher Columbus statue near the Little Italy neighborhood and rolled remnants of it in the Inner Harbor.

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