Journalists are arrested, injured by police while trying to cover George Floyd story

Ali Velshi knew almost instantly what had happened when he felt a sharp pain in his leg Saturday night in Minneapolis: He’d been hit with a rubber bullet fired by police.

“As a kid growing up in Canada, it felt familiar. It felt like a puck hit me in the shin,” said the MSNBC anchor, who was covering what he described as a peaceful march of protesters. “It hit in a place that hurt.”

Velshi, who suffered minor bruises, was one of at least a dozen journalists injured in cities across America this weekend — including a photographer who was blinded in one eye — as police fired rubber bullets, pepper spray and tear gas to quell unrest. Not since the 1960s, when the nation was racked by civil rights demonstrations, antiwar protests and urban riots, has the press been embroiled in so much violence on American shores.