Spent the last 36 hours walking around Kenosha in a daze. Large swathes of the city are indistinguishable from a war zone.

The destruction in places is total, the locals dazed, shocked and trying to be brave.

Here are some pictures /1

The worst hit area is uptown, beating heart of the city's black community. Ice cream shops, nail salons, faith missions, all smouldering husks /2

I couldn't even work out what this building used to be /3

Every single local I spoke to blamed "out of towners" for the worst of the destruction. They didn't offer a huge amount of evidence for this, but it's a blanket consensus /4

This is the car lot next to where the Kyle Rittenhouse shootings took place. You could still taste the smoke /5

Pretty much every boarded up shop has a mural or painting on it now. Some have plaintive requests to prospective fire starters: "Kids live upstairs" /6

A (former) job centre in uptown Kenosha /7

The owner of this bar told me they'd opened just before the pandemic. Having eventually reopened, it was broken into this week, he estimated $25k worth of damage /8

As we were talking, a young man came to ask the owner where the nearest post box was. "There used to be two across the street," he replied. "But they both just got burnt."

/end

Story here

@thesundaytimes https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/charred-ruins-of-kenosha-endanger-joe-bidens-march-to-presidency-hpqdhdq6s