Are ‘outside agitators’ exploiting Floyd protests?

As thousands of people gathered in Richmond, Virginia, on Wednesday around a heavily graffitied Robert E. Lee statue to protest racism and police brutality, some in the crowd worried that not everyone was there for the right reasons.

“I heard it’s not all Richmond people here,” says Ikeisha, who asks that her last name not be used because she skipped work to join the demonstrators. Sitting on a blanket with her 8-year-old son, who is shirtless in the hot sun and licking Cheetos crumbs off his fingers, she adds: “People are blowing our stuff up, and then they just go to their home.”

Many of the mass protests that have swept across the country, ignited by the death of George Floyd under a policeman’s knee in Minneapolis last week, have been peaceful. But in various cities and locales, they’ve been accompanied by looting and

The fragmentation of fringe and extremist groupsRussia exploiting, but not stoking protestsRioting is ‘the language of the unheard’