Meanwhile, in Brazil.......

[marmar]

(Guardian UK) João Pedro Matos Pinto was young, gifted and black, and he died last month with an assault rifle shot to his back.

“He had dreams. He wanted to be a top lawyer,” said Neilton da Costa Pinto, the father of the Brazilian teenager, whose shooting during a botched police raid has drawn comparisons to the killing of George Floyd, 9,000km north in Minneapolis.

“He always used to say: ‘Dad, one day I’ll make you proud’,” remembered Pinto, a driver from São Gonçalo, a city just east of Rio. “And I’d say: ‘I’ve no doubt about it, son.’ Because he was such a dedicated boy. He really knew what he wanted in life.”

João Pedro, who was 14, was far from the first young black Brazilian man to meet a premature death at the hands of the police. Thousands have been killed in recent years – and 75% of the victims were black.

But his killing has sparked an unusually loud public outcry, amid growing fury over an upsurge in deadly police violence that continues unabated despite a government-ordered shutdown designed to combat Covid-19. ...............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/brazil-black-lives-police-teenager

[Mike 03]

1. I feel real kinship with Brazilians right now. Both nations struggle with a

mad dictator, and now this.