(1 Jun 2020) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: apus137266
Downtown Boston cleaned up Monday after mostly peaceful protests over the killing of a black man by a white police officer in Minneapolis evolved into violence and looting across the nation.
Shop owners and city crews cleared trash and broken glass along Downtown Crossing, a mostly pedestrian shopping and commercial district.
Others were cleaning up the Common, the city's central park, and the Back Bay, a nearby neighborhood of high-end shops and stately brick townhouses.
Vandals shattered two glass walls and stole laptop computers, office chairs and smashed flat-screen television sets at venture capital firm Bolt Innovation Group LLC.
Workers hugged and consoled each other, and proceeded to pick up documents and other material strewn on the floor as contractors arrived to board up the gaping glass holes.
George Palladino is a security guard who was deployed at midnight to guard the premises, after inspecting every room with a Boston police officer to ensure that no one was hiding inside.
"I know they had a good protest yesterday and stuff like this definitely hurts and makes that protest look bad, even though they tried to do something good. You have a couple, you know, bad apples that go around doing stuff like this. It just wipes the whole good that they had out," Palladino said.
But Sylvia Kurinsky disagreed.
Kurinsky, who moved to Boston about a year ago and works with seniors in assisted living, was in Downtown Crossing after attending the rally on Sunday.
"I came down just to see if I can volunteer somewhere and help clean up our community. You know, I mean, I was proud to be a part of the march yesterday, and I'm conflicted because I think it is sad what happened last night. But I understand it. And I don't know if it was, you know, anarchist, white supremacist starting it, protesters starting breaking things and property. But in some small way people ... I can understand that kind of anger, too," she said.
Thousands of mostly mask-wearing demonstrators marched peacefully through Boston in several protests Sunday in response to the killing of George Floyd, who died June 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on his neck as he was handcuffed and pleaded for air.
The largest gathering began in the historically black Boston neighborhood of Roxbury, with several thousand people making their way about 4 miles to the State House downtown near the Common.
But as the march ended around 9 p.m., protesters and police clashed. The National Guard was called about a few hours later to help quell the unrest.
"I don't wanna say if it's right or it's wrong, you know. People have been dying for a long time and property can be, you know, rebuilt and fixed. You know, it's our systems that need to be rebuilt and fixed," she said.
Looters on Sunday plundered stores including a Walgreens and a shoe retailer, and vandals smashed store windows and scrawled graffiti across parts of a church, a law school and other structures.
Boston police say 40 people were arrested and seven officers injured after being pelted with bricks, rocks, and glass bottles. Twenty-one police cruisers were damaged.
Kurinsky says she is confident that protesters and their message have not lost the moral high ground.
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