As the French government enacts new austerity measures in the midst of quarantine and the coronavirus pandemic, people turned out en masse to demonstrate these policies. Police responded with additional brutality, although they were rapidly pushed back by a crowd far larger than theirs.
Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Cali on the first day of a general strike against a tax hike on basic goods and services in Colombia. After police attacked the crowd, widespread looting and attacks on police stations and other government targets became rampant, resulting in the fiercest protest of the day.
Albanian protesters gathered in Tirana in preparation for a 5th day of protests, intended to march to the Tirana Police Directorate after the police murder of 25-year-old Klodian Rasha for buying cigarettes past curfew. Police responded heavy-handedly, preventing protesters from reaching their destination and deploying tear gas and water cannons. A majority of demonstrators did not even make it a few hundred meters past the starting point of the nightly protests.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Cali for a 6th day of demonstrations against the privatization of healthcare and police violence amid a general strike. Police attacked demonstrators at the La Luna sector of the city, using tear gas and later live rounds, resulting in fires and clashes across the city with law enforcement and paramilitaries.
100 protesters gathered in Minneapolis for a New Year’s noise demo outside of prisons, following suit with dozens of other cities across the world. Confrontations with police occurred, with 21 people arrested and 12 booked at the protest.
