Here’s what you need to know:
- N.B.A. arenas will be used as polling stations as part of a plan to get back on the court.
- ‘My son is fighting for his life,’ Jacob Blake's father says.
- A 17-year-old accused in the killing of two people at the Kenosha protests will remain in custody in Illinois.
- A new ‘March on Washington’ hopes to build on Dr. King’s inspiration.
- The National Hockey League’s playoffs are back on.
- Play will also resume in the W.N.B.A.
- President Trump barely mentioned Kenosha in his convention speech.
N.B.A. arenas will be used as polling stations as part of a plan to get back on the court.
The N.B.A. and its players’ union announced a plan to convert league arenas — provided they are under team ownership control — into polling locations for the November election as part of an agreement to resume the playoffs on Saturday, officials said in a joint statement on Friday.
“We had a candid, impassioned and productive conversation yesterday between N.B.A. players, coaches and team governors regarding next steps to further our collective efforts and actions in support of social justice and racial equality,” said the statement signed by the league’s commissioner, Adam Silver, and Michele Roberts, the executive director of the players’ union.
The announcement came two days after N.B.A. players staged a dramatic work stoppage in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., on Sunday. Some staffers in the N.B.A.’s league office also chose not to work on Friday to spend time on social causes instead, though it was not clear exactly how many people participated in the action.
The joint plan also includes, according to the statement, the creation of “a social justice coalition, with representatives from players, coaches and governors, that will be focused on a broad range of issues, including increasing access to voting, promoting civic engagement and advocating for meaningful police and criminal justice reform.”
Establishing more polling locations was a key goal of More Than A Vote, the initiative led by Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James and other athletes aimed at protecting voter rights and increasing civic engagement, particularly among Black people.
The N.H.L. and the W.N.B.A. also announced plans to resume play.
‘My son is fighting for his life,’ Jacob Blake's father says.
Jacob Blake, the Black resident of Kenosha, Wis., who was shot by a white police officer, is shackled to his hospital bed, his father said on Friday morning, adding that his son remains paralyzed from the waist down.
In an interview with CNN, Jacob Blake Sr. said that he had been able to speak with his son at the hospital on Wednesday, but that conversation was limited because his son was heavily medicated and in intense pain. “My son is fighting for his life,” he said.
It was unclear why Mr. Blake would be confined to his hospital bed with an ankle shackle. The authorities have said that the police were arresting Mr. Blake on Sunday afternoon when an officer shot him seven times, but they have not said what charges he was facing or offered other details of the shooting. The shooting set off demonstrations in Kenosha and in cities across the country.
“When I got to his side, he grabbed my hands and began to weep,” the elder Mr. Blake said of his son. He said his son asked, “‘Why did they shoot me so many times?’ And I said, ‘Baby, they weren’t supposed to shoot you at all.’”
Three of Mr. Blake’s children — ranging from 3 to 8 years old — were in the back of the car that Mr. Blake was climbing into as he was shot. “In his mind’s eye, he just wanted to get his sons out of harm’s way, but before he could get them out of the car he was just counting shots,” Mr. Blake’s father said his son had told him. “He said he was counting them. I guess he lost consciousness around number four or five.”
He said he did not know why his son had been shackled to the bed. “Why do they have that cold steel on my son’s ankle?” he said. “He couldn’t get up if he wanted to. So that’s a little overkill to have him shackled to the bed.”
A lawyer for the family, Ben Crump, said that Mr. Blake's injuries are severe, including damage to his bowels, shattered vertebrae and bullet fragments in his spinal cord. He has undergone several surgeries, Mr. Blake’s father said, and it was unclear whether the paralysis would be permanent.
Also on Friday, the Wisconsin Department of Justice revealed new details about the shooting of Mr. Blake. The department had previously reported that one officer had fired a Taser in a failed attempt to stop Mr. Blake, but on Friday said Officers Rusten Sheskey and Vincent Arenas had both discharged their Tasers before Officer Sheskey shot Mr. Blake seven times in the back.
A third officer, Brittany Meronek was also present at the scene, the department said. All three officers have been put on administrative leave.
A 17-year-old accused in the killing of two people at the Kenosha protests will remain in custody in Illinois.
Kyle Rittenhouse, a white teenager who took to the streets of Kenosha, Wis., armed with a military-style rifle this week and is accused of killing two people in a shooting that took place amid a skirmish between demonstrators and counterprotesters, is being held for the time being in Lake County, Ill.
Mr. Rittenhouse, 17, was arrested at his home in Antioch, Ill. this week. He faces six criminal counts, including first-degree reckless homicide, first-degree intentional homicide and attempted first-degree intentional homicide.
A judge in Lake County held a brief hearing on Friday morning to address Mr. Rittenhouse’s extradition to Wisconsin. At the request of a lawyer for Mr. Rittenhouse, the judge agreed to delay the matter until late September.
Mr. Rittenhouse did not appear during the brief hearing, which took place by video because of the coronavirus pandemic.
He is accused in the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, whose friends said were protesting against the shooting of Mr. Blake by the police in Kenosha on Sunday. He also faces a charge of reckless endangerment in the injury of a third man.
Mr. Rittenhouse, who had showed strong support for the police and President Trump on social media, had portrayed himself as a helper to injured people and defender of property when he arrived on the streets of Kenosha during demonstrations earlier this week.
But as demonstrators and counterprotesters clashed late Tuesday night, video footage showed Mr. Rittenhouse in the streets of Kenosha, as the situation turned violent. Several people chase him, some shouting, “That’s the shooter!”
Even after shots rang out, Mr. Rittenhouse appears to go unnoticed by police officers. In one video, he can be seen, weapon in full view, hands up, walking toward groups of officers — who drive around him as they respond to the confusing scene.
A new ‘March on Washington’ hopes to build on Dr. King’s inspiration.
Fifty-seven years after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. galvanized the civil rights movement by outlining a dream of racial equality from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, a new group of advocates for racial justice returned to the same spot on Friday hoping to rekindle some of that passion.
This time, the speakers addressed the crowd from an area marked off in grids occupied by small knots of attendees, to limit physical contact and the spread of disease during the coronavirus pandemic.
As the march commenced on Friday, Aalayah Eastmond, a survivor of the Parkland school shooting, addressed the crowd, saying that gun violence, including mass shootings and police violence, can create multigenerational cycles of poverty. “We must change this reality,” she said. “We demand to live in spaces where the best of Black culture can thrive.”
Dr. King’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom drew an audience of a quarter-million in 1963. The Friday protest, called the Commitment March: Get Your Knee Off Our Necks, was expected to attract a small fraction of that, in part because the city is requiring quarantines for visitors from 27 states. Still, by 9 a.m., the pavement around the Lincoln Memorial was filled with several hundred people.
Lakresha Smith, 39, of Columbus, Ohio, was with a group of friends who said they drove six hours to be there.
Ms. Smith said the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha had motivated her to take part in a protest for the first time this summer. “I’m here because I have an 18-year-old son, and he needs to know it’s not OK,” she said.
Before the march, Marc Morial, the former New Orleans mayor who is president of the National Urban League, a sponsor of the march, noted that it must be “understood as a moment for which these protests must lead to something.” He added: “Structural racism is not addressed with talk or good will alone.”
At the march on Friday, several speakers implored citizens to vote. Frank Nitty, who marched to Washington from Milwaukee, said he hoped his grandchildren would not be protesting for the same things his grandfather marched for. “We need change — and we can get that by voting,” he said. “This is the revolution.”
The protest’s larger purpose is to rally African-Americans and others on behalf of concrete goals, ranging from increasing voter registration and participation in the 2020 census to enacting a new version of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, organizers said.
Another major goal is to push for passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would overhaul law-enforcement training and conduct rules to limit police misconduct and racial bias.
Representative Ayanna Presley, Democrat of Massachusetts, speaking at the rally on Friday, urged the public and her fellow lawmakers to put work in to incite change. “Another world is possible,” she said at the March. “Yes it is possible to legislate justice and accountability.”
The National Hockey League’s playoffs are back on.
The National Hockey League will resume its playoffs on Saturday, the league announced, after halting play Thursday under pressure from players who said that “moments of reflection” were not enough amid a sports-wide walkout against social injustice.
“It makes me so proud to be an N.H.L. player and see that this is player-driven action,” Matt Dumba, a defenseman for the Minnesota Wild, told Sportsnet on Thursday.
The Tampa Bay Lightning will face off against the Boston Bruins at noon on Saturday, followed by Thursday’s postponed games: the New York Islanders against the Philadelphia Flyers and the Las Vegas Golden Knights playing the Vancouver Canucks.
While other major North American sports saw significant stoppages on Wednesday, hockey played its games after the Milwaukee Bucks of the N.B.A. refused to come out of the locker room for a playoff game. The N.H.L. then suspended its games on Thursday at the urging of several players.
“It’s incredibly insulting as a Black man in hockey, the lack of action and acknowledgement from the N.H.L.,” wrote Evander Kane, a left-winger for the San Jose Sharks, in a post on Twitter, “just straight up insulting.”
Mr. Kane, Mr. Dumba and several other players lead the Hockey Diversity Alliance, which called for the suspension of games in response to the shooting of Jacob Blake. The group also called on the league’s teams to commit to promoting communities of color through education, business and grass-roots initiatives and other “rule changes to make the culture of the game more inclusive.”
Instead of walking out, players at the Wednesday game between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Boston Bruins stood for seven seconds of silence and listened to an address to “end racism,” with the phrase written across screens around the rink. The Colorado Avalanche and Dallas Stars played their game without acknowledgment of the unrest.
Some players and coaches argued that people can protest in different ways and that continuing to play provides a platform for discussing social justice causes.
“I think all the sports should play because I think the athletes in every sport have a platform, just like celebrities do,” said Barry Trotz, the Islanders’ head coach, in a media call with reporters on Thursday.
Play will also resume in the W.N.B.A.
The W.N.B.A. plans to resume play on Friday night, the league announced, after players took a day of reflection on Thursday in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake.
“We wanted to stand with our brethren yesterday, and we did,” said Nneka Ogwumike, a forward for the Los Angeles Sparks, who serves as president of the players’ association, in an interview with ESPN. “But we came here for a reason, and that was to amplify our voices. The only way that that happens is if we’re out here.”
Teams set to tip off Friday are the Minnesota Lynx against the Atlanta Dream, the Sparks against the Connecticut Sun and the Washington Mystics against the Phoenix Mercury.
The Mystics’ pregame protest, in which players wore shirts spelling out Jacob Blake’s name with marks signifying bullet holes on their backs, was one of several actions followed by walkouts in many major North American sports on Wednesday.
The W.N.B.A.’s players have been using games to call for social justice causes, including systemic racism and police brutality. The season is dedicated to Breonna Taylor and jerseys bearing her name have been worn since the season started.
“I have to go there and play like it’s my last game because she did not know that would be the last day she would live,” said Kristine Anigwe, a Sparks player, in an interview with The New York Times.
Some of the league’s athletes, including the entire roster of the Atlanta team as well as other stars, recently endorsed an opponent of Senator Kelly Loeffler, a Republican from Georgia who is a co-owner of the Dream, because she criticized the Black Lives Matter movement and the W.N.B.A. players’ social activism.
President Trump barely mentioned Kenosha in his convention speech.
President Trump made only a glancing reference to Kenosha, Wis., in his speech on Thursday accepting the Republican nomination for a second term, linking it to other American cities where protests against systemic racism and police brutality have sometimes turned violent.
Mr. Trump’s mention of Kenosha, the scene of several chaotic nights of demonstrations this week, and the other cities was shorthand for what he claims is a creeping lawlessness that will blanket the United States if his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., is elected.
But, like Vice President Mike Pence, who hit the same theme on Wednesday, Mr. Trump did not say what touched off the unrest in Kenosha: the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white police officer in an episode that has drawn widespread condemnation and is being investigated by state authorities and the Justice Department.
“When there is police misconduct, the justice system must hold wrongdoers fully and completely accountable, and it will,” Mr. Trump said, without citing specific examples of such misconduct. “But we can never have a situation where things are going on as they are today, we must never allow mob rule. We can never allow mob rule. “
He continued: “In the strongest possible terms the Republican Party condemns the rioting, looting, arson and violence we have seen in Democrat-run cities all, like Kenosha, Minneapolis, Portland, Chicago and New York, many others, Democrat-run.”
Mr. Trump’s election four years ago was aided by his narrow victory in Wisconsin, and he won Kenosha County by fewer than 250 votes. Some local Democrats have said the violence that flared amid the Kenosha protests could lift his re-election prospects.
Black Lives Matter grows as a movement, and faces new challenges.
In some ways, what has unfolded on the streets of Kenosha, Wis., over the past week has had a wearying sense of familiarity.
Another demoralizing shooting of a Black man by the police. Another angry outcry in the streets. Another disturbing trail of destruction with the potential to overshadow the message of the need to end police violence and racism.
But as the demonstrations for Jacob Blake, the man shot in Kenosha, spread, and with a huge March on Washington set for Friday, the latest surge of protests reflects something greater: the remarkable way the Black Lives Matter movement has become a lever for change and a guiding voice on issues of race in America.
Black Lives Matter protests — or even the possibility of them — have changed the way people in power respond. Elected leaders now tend to engage instantly and insistently with matters that in the past were primarily dealt with by the police. Officers are named, details are shared and thorough investigations are promised. In some instances, officers are charged or fired much more quickly than ever before.
“You’ve created an environment so whenever any incident of injustice or perceived injustice takes place, it’s going to be amplified,” said Daniel Gillion, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies protest movements.
But there is also increasing concern that images of vandalism, looting and arson are becoming inextricably linked with the protests, undermining efforts to win systemic reforms and public support. While the Black Lives Matter movement enjoyed broad approval in the weeks after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody, Democrats worry that the unrest, regardless of who is responsible, could help President Trump find a receptive audience for his argument that he will deliver “law and order.”
Reporting was contributed by Alan Blinder, Gillian R. Brassil, Michael Cooper, Sopan Deb, John Eligon, Jacey Fortin, Ruth Graham, Aishvarya Kavi, Tyler Kepner, Sarah Mervosh, Richard Perez-Peña, Ed Shanahan, Marc Stein, Neil Vigdor and Alan Yuhas.
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