Actor and comedian Jamie Foxx was in Minneapolis on Friday to lend his support to the demonstrators protesting the police-involved death of George Floyd.
‘All I wanted to do is let you know we not afraid to stand,’ Foxx said on Friday in Minneapolis.
‘We are not afraid of the moment.’
The actor also had a message for sympathetic white Americans.
‘To all of our friends who aren’t black, just try to put yourself in our position,’ Foxx said.
Foxx was seen alongside retired NBA player Stephen Jackson, who has revealed he and Floyd were friends back from their days living in Texas.
Jackson spent part of his career with the hometown Minnesota Timberwolves and has been an outspoken community advocate.
Actor Jamie Foxx was in Minneapolis on Friday to lend his support to demonstrators protesting the police-involved death of George Floyd, 46, on Monday
Foxx spoke as demonstrators took to the streets nationwide demanding justice for Floyd (above), who died in police custody in Minneapolis on Monday
Stephen Jackson (center), a former NBA player with the Minnesota Timberwolves, speaks to the press on Friday in Minneapolis
‘I’m here because they’re not gonna demean the character of George Floyd, my twin,’ Jackson said on Friday.
‘A lot of times when police do things that they know that’s wrong, the first thing they do is try to cover it up and bring up your background to make it seem like the bull**** that they did was worthy.’
Foxx, the star of such hit films as Ray, Django Unchained, and Any Given Sunday, told protesters that he has witnessed similar unrest before.
‘I’ve experienced this before, able to watch the Rodney King [riots] when I was in [Los Angeles],’ he said.
Floyd, 46, died on Monday in police custody. He was arrested by Minneapolis cops who were called to the scene because of a suspected forgery at a deli.
Video of Floyd’s arrest, shows police officer Derek Chauvin pinning him down to the pavement, with the officer’s knee pressed against his neck for eight minutes.Floyd is heard saying he couldn’t breathe as Chauvin and other officers ignore him.
On Friday, Minnesota authorities announced criminal charges against Chauvin, including third-degree homicide and manslaughter.
Foxx also mentioned his friendship with Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin.
Demonstrators face off with police in riot gear near the Capitol building in Denver on Thursday
In 2012, Martin, a 17-year-old African American boy from Miami Gardens, was fatally shot by a Florida man, George Zimmerman, while visiting his father’s fiancee at her townhouse in Sanford.
Zimmerman, an armed member of the community watch, told police that Martin looked suspicious because he was wearing a hooded sweater with the hood draped over his head.
During an encounter, Zimmerman fatally shot Martin. He was charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter, but was acquitted by a jury after he claimed self-defense.
Foxx said that he spoke to Sybrina Fulton, Martin’s mother, who is now running for a local government seat in Miami-Dade County.
‘If you guys get a chance, please find a circle of mothers, where there are a hundred, 200 cases like this that don’t get the visibility and don’t get the cameras, and they’re strong women,’ Foxx said.
Fulton is a candidate for a seat on the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners. She is seeking to represent District 1.
Her primary election is scheduled for August 25. If she wins, she would move on to the general election on November 3rd.
Foxx praised Fulton for her efforts ‘to try to do something different.’
‘This is the toughest time when things like this happen,’ Foxx said.
Foxx also noted that he and Floyd both had roots in Texas. Floyd was a football player for Yates High School.
‘We used to hear about how great their football team was,’ Foxx, who is a native of the Dallas suburb of Terrell, Texas, said on Friday.
Minneapolis mayor declares 8pm curfew as fourth night of carnage looms and Minnesota Gov. admits ‘abject failure’ in trying to control George Floyd rioters who ‘set a city on fire’ forcing residents to hide in their homes
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on Friday admitted an ‘abject failure’ by law enforcement in trying to control crowds of rioters who took over Minneapolis on Thursday night, torching buildings and overrunning a police station, as a city-wide curfew was declared between the hours of 8pm and 6am.
Protesters have been running rampant in Minneapolis for the past three nights in a united show of outrage over the murder of Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who was killed on Monday when a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes because he’d allegedly tried to use a fake $20 to pay for something in a store.
It has sparked a national conversation about race relations and police brutality in America.
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Gov Walz called Friday for order to be restored in the streets after the third devastating night of protests
The National Guard has said it was given no clear direction when 500 soldiers were ordered to descend onto the streets of Minneapolis
A member of the National Guard patrols near a burned out building on the fourth day of protests in Minneapolis
Buildings were torched and structures torn down leaving widespread destruction across Minneapolis
Graffiti is scrawled on to a sign in Minneapolis after protests erupted in violence in the city
Devastation: People clean up debris from destroyed businesses – more than 170 businesses have been destroyed
A destroyed vehicle is seen above after a third night of looting and protesters setting fires in the city
Minnesota State Patrol officers stood guard blocking access to streets where businesses had been damaged
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz called for peace during a press conference on Friday saying order must be restored in order for justice to be served. He admitted an ‘abject failure’ on the part of government that he vowed would not happen again. Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey ordered a curfew from 8pm to 6am
On Thursday, as tensions in the city boiled all day, the National Guard started putting in motion plans to intervene to help local law enforcement agencies that were struggling to cope with the mounting threat.
But they weren’t given the order to act quickly enough, according to officials who spoke at a press conference on Friday, and it led to a night of chaos that climaxed with the Third Police Precinct being set on fire.
Walz said on Friday that he was considering a curfew to avoid another night of anarchy and later Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey signed a declaration of emergency that imposes a curfew between the hours of 8pm and 6am on Friday and Saturday night.
Walz earlier told reporters that he’d heard from state senators whose constituents were ‘locked’ in their homes, terrified to go out, with a total lack of police presence or firefighters to help battle streets of blazes.
‘Minneapolis and St. Paul are on fire. The fire is still smoldering in our streets. The ashes are symbolic of decades and generations of pain, of anguish unheard. Now generations of pain is manifesting itself in front of the world – and the world is watching,’ Walz said.
He added he’d received a complaint from a state senator of a city ‘on fire, no police, no firefighters, no social control, constituents locked in houses wondering what they were going to do’, and said: ‘That is an abject failure that cannot happen.’
The National Guard defended its response, saying it could only act once it had been given a mission but that the mission never came.
They were eventually snapped into action at 12.05am, after the police precinct had been overrun.
Gov. Walz said it was down to city mayors to coordinate the response and that they simply never asked for his help but that on Friday and going forward, there would be no such vacuum of leadership.
‘You will not see that tonight, there will be no lack of leadership,’ he said.
Major General Jon Jensen of the Minnesota National Guard on Friday said there was a lack of clear direction and he was ‘very concerned about being asked to move to an unfamiliar area of Minneapolis under the cover of darkness’.
‘What traditionally comes with the request is the layout of capability needed and exact the problem trying to be solved. Typically the request for the guard and that type of information come at the same time, sometimes it lags,’ he said.
President Trump responded to the carnage late this morning in a tweet saying ‘George Floyd will not have died in vain’ – after threatening to ‘assume control’ of Minneapolis with military intervention and warning ‘thugs’, ‘when the looting starts the shooting starts.’
The president’s incendiary tweet last night is now hidden by a warning that it violated Twitter’s rules about glorifying violence – but the message can be bypassed and the tweet remains live.
Walz said President Trump’s tweets which had suggested shooting looters were ‘not helpful’.
He said he spoke to Trump before he tweeted. Walz said: ‘I did speak to the President. At that point in time, it was in the process where I said we were going to assume control of this and it was unnecessary.’
Derek Chauvin along with three other officers – Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, and J Alexander Kueng – have been fired over Floyd’s fatal arrest. Chauvin has been charged with third degree murder and aggravated assault and is now in custody.
Walz also issued a public apology to the CNN television crew who were arrested by Minnesota State Patrol while reporting on the mayhem this morning.
The governor said he took ‘full responsibility’ over the incident and had called CNN President Jeff Zucker, who he described as ‘incredibly angry’, to apologize.
The extraordinary incident was captured live on air showing CNN reporter Omar Jimenez being handcuffed and led away by state troopers. A producer and a photojournalist for the network were also taken away in handcuffs.
‘I failed you last night in that,’ Walz said. ‘And it does not escape me that we are here on the catalyst that lit this spark by what happened with a police detainment of George Floyd and the idea that a reporter would have been taken while another police action was in play is inexcusable.
‘The protection and security and safety of the journalists covering this is a top priority. Not because it’s a nice thing to do. Because it is a key component of how we fix this.’
A total of 500 National Guard soldiers were deployed to the streets of Minneapolis and neighboring St. Paul last night and Mayor Frey was forced to declared a state of emergency as rioting continued into the early hours.
Frey called the looting ‘unacceptable’ but raged at Trump for ‘refusing to take responsibility for your own actions’, saying the president ‘knows nothing about the strength of Minneapolis’.
Trump’s first tweet in the chain accused the ‘Radical Left Mayor’ of showing ‘a total lack of leadership’ and warned he was poised to send in troops. This tweet was not hidden by Twitter.
Harrowing new details of how Floyd died also emerged on Friday in Chauvin’s criminal complaint.
It described in detail how he was held down for 8 minutes and 43 seconds.
‘The defendant had his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in total.
‘Two minutes and 53 seconds of this was after Mr. Floyd was non-responsive,’ it read.
Floyd family attorney Ben Crump, who was among the first to call for criminal charges to be laid against Chauvin in the wake of Floyd’s death, said the move is ‘a welcome but overdue step on the road to justice’ and demanded he be tried for murder in the first degree.
‘We expected a first-degree murder charge. We want a first-degree murder charge. And we want to see the other officers arrested,’ Crump said in a statement.
‘We call on authorities to revise the charges to reflect the true culpability of this officer. The pain that the black community feels over this murder and what it reflects about the treatment of black people in America is raw and is spilling out onto streets across America.
‘While this is a right and necessary step, we need the City of Minneapolis – and cities across the country – to fix the policies and training deficiencies that permitted this unlawful killing – and so many others – to occur.’
US Attorney General William Barr meanwhile said he is ‘confident justice will be served’, calling the videos of Floyd’s death ‘harrowing to watch and deeply disturbing.’
The Justice Department and FBI are conducting an investigation to determine whether federal civil rights laws were broken.
Minnesota State Patrol deploy around the scene of daily protests and looting, as fires continue to burn
Five hundred National Guard soldiers and airmen have been deployed in the northern US cities of Minnesota and St. Paul after three nights of violent protests
Protesters face off with Minnesota State Police officers on Friday in Minneapolis, Minnesota
A man walks among rubble in the streets of Minneapolis early Friday after chaos erupted last night
A destroyed home is seen above. Minneapolis Police Department were forced to flee the 3rd Precinct after angry rioters set fire to the building
A torched car sits at an empty lot after rioters set the city ablaze as they demanded justice of George Floyd’s death
A man collects scrap metal from rubble near the Minneapolis Police third precinct which was set on fire and destroyed by protesters yesterday
Apocalyptic scenes of fire and destruction are seen in the Downtown area of Minneapolis after a savage night of lawlessnes
Burned out cars litter the streets near the area of recent protests in Minneapolis
National Guard troops blocked access to streets where businesses had been damaged. Cars were destroyed as seen above
Two men begin to board up a vandalized dry cleaning store in Minneapolis after it was targeted by protesters
Another burnt out car is seen with its windows blown out and tires melted off after the city was set on fire
Out of control fires rage on and looting continues as authorities struggle to regain control early Friday
Law enforcement officers amassed along Lake Street near Hiawatha Ave. as fires burned after a night of unrest and protests
Police hold a line on the fourth day of protests on May 29
Protesters gathered in front of the Third Police Precinct which had to be evacuated by police after it was torched
The three other cops involved who were fired have not been arrested. They are hiding out now in their homes.
President Trump waded in on the escalating violence in Minneapolis in the early hours of Friday as he warned he would step in and take over if officials fail to bring the rioting under control.
He blasted the ‘Radical Left Mayor’ Frey saying he needs to ‘get his act together’ while slamming protesters for ‘dishonoring the memory’ of Floyd and warning ‘when the looting starts, the shooting starts’.
‘I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis.
‘A total lack of leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right…..,’ the president tweeted.
‘These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen.
Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way.
Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!’
Speaking in the early hours of this morning, Mayor Frey fired back at the president and said: ‘Donald Trump knows nothing about the strength of Minneapolis.’
‘Weakness is refusing to take responsibility for your own actions. Weakness is pointing your finger at someone else during a time of crisis,’ he said.
‘Is this a difficult time period? Yes, but you’d better be damn sure that we’re going to get through this.’
Frey said he understood the ‘pain and anger right now in our city’, but added that ‘what we have seen over the last several hours and the past couple of nights in terms of looting is unacceptable’.
The mayor revealed it was him who had decided to evacuate the Third Precinct after determining that there were ‘imminent threats to both officers and public’.