However, there was one way in which this tragedy differed from all the others. In the Floyd protests, people took to the streets. There is nothing new about that. Americans have been doing that for a couple of hundred years. But this time, the sheer scope of the protests was staggering. Every state in the country experienced protests. The country's 200 largest cities had demonstrations, and 64,000 national guardsmen were mobilized to control the crowds. Sixty foreign countries sent notices of support. Together, 26 million Americans took to the street.