What Mayors Are Saying About the George Floyd Protests

What did the weekend of terrifying civil unrest that has seized America’s cities look like from City Hall? For the mayors of major U.S. cities, what began as protests over police violence triggered by the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police on May 25 has intensified into something else — a national uprising that’s also a complex, fast-changing threat to public safety, driven by forces and actors not yet fully understood and threaded with the unseen menace of a still-active pandemic.

One week after Floyd’s death, this convergence of urban crises is shaping up to be an unprecedented test of municipal governance, one that’s putting city leaders in a global spotlight. Here’s a sample of what they have been saying in recent days as events unfolded.