Author: TheGuardian

Police in the United States are three times more likely to use force against leftwing protesters than rightwing protesters, according to new data from a non-profit that monitors political violence around the world. In the past 10 months, US law enforcement agencies have used teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and beatings at a much higher percentage at Black Lives Matter demonstrations than at pro-Trump or other rightwing protests. Law enforcement officers were also more likely to use force against leftwing demonstrators, whether the protests remained peaceful or not. The statistics, based on law enforcement responses to more than 13,000...

Joe Biden plans to lead a unique nationwide memorial service on the eve of his inauguration to honor the grim toll of nearly 400,000 American lives lost to the coronavirus. The presidential inauguration committee (PIC) announced recently that it would host a lighting ceremony around the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool along the National Mall in Washington, a day ahead of Biden’s swearing-in ceremony at the U.S. Capitol. Cities and towns across the country are invited to join the ceremony by illuminating buildings and ringing church bells at the same moment, shortly after east coast sunset on 19 January, the...

In his new film MLK/FBI, Sam Pollard lays bare the injustices the FBI heaped on the civil rights leader, but paints a picture of a complex man dealing with his personal life and its baggage alongside his political beliefs. As a child in 1960s east Harlem, documentary film-maker Sam Pollard was “profoundly touched” by two events. The assassination of John F Kennedy, in 1963, when Pollard was in junior high school. Then, five years later, the murder of Martin Luther King. Yet as he grew up, Pollard found his memory of those events softening round the edges. “You think...

“No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently from the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol. We all know that’s true. And it’s unacceptable. Totally unacceptable.” – President-Elect Joe Biden The contrast between the law enforcement reaction to the storming of the Capitol on January 6 and the suppression of peaceful protests in the summer is not just stark – it is black and white. The Black Lives Matter demonstrators crowd outside the White House on June 2, 2020 was...

America was shaken on January 6 as a mob of Donald Trump supporters staged an insurrection at the US Capitol building in Washington, storming the debating chambers and clashing with armed police. The siege was among the worst security breaches in American history and came after Trump had earlier urged a crowd of protesters to march on the Capitol and undo his November election defeat. The violence halted the tallying of electoral college votes to affirm Joe Biden’s victory. Mike Pence, the vice president, and members of Congress were evacuated to undisclosed locations for their own safety. Local police...