People wearing masks flocked to Long Beach’s Harvey Milk Promenade Park on Monday with brooms, buckets and dustpans in hand, to clean up after looting in dowtown Long Beach during an otherwise peaceful protest against the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
More than a hundred volunteers gathered beneath a Milk mural with the quote, “Rights are won only by those who make their voices heard. Hope will never be silent.”
“Everybody feel good? Let’s get out there!” said Broc Coward, COO of Downtown Long Beach Alliance. Volunteers cheered and dispersed to nearby parking garages, storefronts and sidewalks. Downtown Long Beach Alliance, a group representing property owners and businesses downtown, manned a table surrounded by cases of water and paint cans.
Long Beach public works crews handed out brooms, rakes, gloves, buckets and masks. Two workers blasted a graffitied wall. Kraig Kojian, president and CEO of Downtown Long Beach Alliance, said he didn’t sleep last night. After leaving downtown at about 2 a.m., he stayed up messaging business owners and “helping people commiserate.”
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