Minneapolis police officers have stationed themselves in front of a Target store that was mercilessly looted by rioters on Wednesday night. The rioters peeled off from an organized protest by Black Lives Matter and other activists to loot the Target and violently attack those who tried to stop them.
On Thursday, protesters came back to the Target, perhaps waiting for the right moment to attack the store to do a little early Christmas “shopping.” The rioters and looters-in-waiting threw projectiles and yelled epithets at the cops.
Riots, protests, and looting were all done in the name of George Floyd who been killed by police on Sunday.
On Sunday, Floyd was facedown on the pavement with his hands cuffed behind his back when a police officer held down his neck with his knee. Floyd was pronounced dead at the hospital after minutes of being held down.
Activist Tells Rioters to ‘Go Home!’
Thursday afternoon, Diane Binns came back to the Target to pick up some medicine. Binns, the former head of the St. Paul NAACP from 2016-2018, told Minnesota Reformer reporter Ricardo Lopez that she wasn’t surprised the protests had turned into riots.
Looking at the lines of protesters taunting the cops the day after the riots, she told Lopez, “These people don’t give a damn about George Floyd. They want to attack. They need to leave this sh*t alone. These mother f**kers need to go home.”
Diane Binns, 70, of St. Paul is angry at the people here. Binns came here to get medication for her daughter. pic.twitter.com/GA1EJpx4XL
— Ricardo Lopez (@rljourno) May 28, 2020
Binns declared that the protesters had planned for riots since the day after Floyd’s death. She knows because she was there.
I went to the rally in Minneapolis on the first day after Mr. Floyd was killed, and I thought that it was going to be a rally. But after I got there, and it was about 30 minutes, I realized that this wasn’t a rally, it was going to be a riot. So I left. I haven’t been back to that no more.
I listened to what was being said, I listened to the young people who weren’t following the elders who had organized this rally. And when they started talking about going to the third precinct, I knew how it was going to end, so I left the rally. It took me two hours to get back to St. Paul, and I haven’t been out here since.
Diane Binns was president of the NAACP St. Paul from 2016-2018. She was here for the north Minneapolis riots in the 60s pic.twitter.com/AuuHIdAxZx
— Ricardo Lopez (@rljourno) May 28, 2020
She told Lopez that she was disgusted with the riots, looting, and fires of the night before.
And I just watched what they were live-streaming last night on video and the destruction that they did to their own community. What are people going to do who live in those communities? And they need those resources. We don’t have that many stores as it is. So why are we going to burn down the small business owners who are there for us?
As Binns gave protesters a piece of her mind, one of them asked what they had to do with her town of St. Paul. Minneapolis is a 16-minute drive from St. Paul and is part of the same metro area. Its close proximity to Minneapolis is why the metro area is called the “Twin Cities.”
In Los Angeles, there were also standoffs with police on Wednesday afternoon in protest of George Floyd’s killing. Protesters blocked parts of the 101 freeway and vandalized police cars.
Nobody knows what Minneapolis has to do with them, either.
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