The George Floyd protests are an ongoing series of protests and civil unrest which began in Minneapolis in the United States on May 26, 2020.[5] The protests began as a response to the killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man who was killed during an arrest after Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis Police Department officer, knelt on Floyd's neck for nearly eight minutes as three other officers looked on.[6][7][8][9] Chauvin and the other three officers involved in the arrest which led to Floyd's death were later arrested.[10]
The unrest began as local protests in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area of Minnesota before quickly spreading nationwide and in over 2,000 cities and towns in over 60 countries in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.[11][12][13] Protests continued throughout June and early July, with polls at the time estimating that between 15 million and 26 million people had participated at some point in the demonstrations in the United States, making the protests the largest in United States history.[14][15]
While the majority of protests have been peaceful,[16] demonstrations in many cities escalated into riots, looting,[17][18] and street skirmishes with police.
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