(This is about the incident that had already been posted in this thread.)
https://twitter.com/RiotVids/status/1267410263159914497
god fucking damnit Alex Jones should be in prison
2 Likes
Edit. Damnit. This may be from a protest last year in Latin America somewhere. Gonna leave it anyway.
1 Like
Update on whataboutism. Today a guy on my baseball board wondered if the other three cops are going to be charged, why shouldn’t they charge the bystanders and people who were taping the encounter?
He’s just asking questions.
7 Likes
Maybe ask this intellectual heavyweight why the crowd doesn’t call balls and strikes either.
9 Likes
Same thing used to happen at my work until I told my boss that if he really wants to talk about things like this in a professional setting that I’m going to share my point of view whether he likes it or not. Now we’re on a pretty much “do not touch” basis with this stuff, at least when I’m around.
5 Likes
This isn’t a response to your post, but it kind of is, because I’m depressed. I’m pretty sure I know what’s coming, and it’s not good.
I see the same old shit on facebook, twitter, and everywhere. People will really never wise up. The media, the fascists, I’m not even sure they’re better at narrative, but their narrative is the one people want to hear and it gets amplified everywhere. People want to focus on broken windows not the ongoing, widespread, and ineluctable stream of police murders. I’m dumping Facebook because I can’t stand anyone and, to be honest, I was probably using it to virtue signal how awesome I am by hitting the streets even just a little- I really never post there. I’m not sure about that, trying to be self-critical, but I really do want to encourage people to join up and be on the right side here.
One thing I have to come to terms with is that I am down for a fight, but I am definitely one of those guys who doesn’t do enough in the interim. I need to spend many more hours volunteering for the right kind of causes and learning skills and fomenting relationships with people who can carry on through dystopia. This is about getting life right and not being a consumerist piece of crap liberal who just checks out for vast swaths of time because, hey, that’s my white privilege and I can. I’m far from the worst person, but I’m definitely not my best, and I think this moment is a completely appropriate time to commit to doing better when (if?) life returns to something resembling normal. I need to channel the energy I feel now to make it through times when the adrenaline isn’t flowing.
14 Likes
I’m on an email chain of a couple hundred people for a fantasy golf league. Last night some deplorable sent a blatantly racist email to the entire list about rioters and looters blah blah blah. Today I wake up and some random guy fired back basically calling the guy a dipshit racist asshole, after which a bunch of other people immediately reply all supported him. This is a group of almost exclusively upper middle class white collar types, was a pleasant surprise.
18 Likes
Heh, maybe things change. One can hope.
It really is the best people out in the streets. A few of the worst, but just a huge cross-section of people that don’t suck.
I get the point but crossing out changed the world is simply historically wrong.
So the Chicago mayor has decided to hurt poor communities to get people to be against the protestors.
Yesterday the CTA was completely shut down throughout the city around 6pm with about 20 minutes notice given to people. This only fucks over people who need public transportation during a pandemic but don’t worry Chicago has your back
https://twitter.com/chicago/status/1267319708472270849?s=21
And then also last night they did this bullshit with 2 weeks left in the school year
https://twitter.com/naderdissa/status/1267297605601673216?s=21
No one is fucking looting or destroying schools (the Chicago police have done an amazing job of that over the years) so this is just an extremely cruel thing to do
4 Likes
Oh good “radical leftwing terrorism” is the new thing.
Shit got a little wild in Davenport last night. One cop got winged, one fatal shooting with no police involvement. Looks like curfew is 9 tonight. Should be an interesting shift!
ETA: two fatal shootings
4 Likes
Last night as I was going to bed a guy from my poker game sent a group text about how this isn’t really a protest anymore and “black folks” need to be heard but this isn’t the way to do it blah blah meow chow. This guy is a early 60’s Jewish liberal married to a black woman. Immediately the rest of the game chimed in, and one told a joke about police brutality (cops get to the protests early so they can beat the crowd). I just asked to be removed from the chain, didn’t want to get all riled up as I was going to sleep.
I have a serious problem with the framing of “this is black people’s protest, white people need to follow their lead”. For one thing, protests don’t have ownership, and they don’t even need to have a single unifying cause. To quote a great song from a meh band:
“ They said it was for the black man,
They said it was for the mexican
And not for the white man
But if you look at the streets
It wasn’t about Rodney King
It’s bout this fucked up situation and these fucked up police
It’s about coming up
And staying on top
And screamin’ 187 on a mother fuckin’ cop”
I can understand the argument that pissed off destructive white people might distract from peaceful black people’s message, but LOL if you think it will make one iota of difference in how this is received.
Second, and more importantly, there is not a unified black voice in these protests. Black people are looting and destroying, and black people are demonstrating silently with their hands up. The vast majority of black people are sitting at home, and some large number of them are tut tutting the same way your Fox News watching uncle is. Who should white protestors look to for the OK before they do anything?
Basically I think a lot of y’all, actually a really surprising number, are doing the outside agitator thing, one step removed. I mean some of you are straight up arguing that this is outside agitators - and btw you guys should really stop trying to take away the legitimacy of protestors who go beyond what you’re comfortable with - but saying things like “white people need to stop being violent” is like… the exact same thing. It’s saying “white people don’t actually have an interest in this stuff, so the destruction they’re causing is hurting the cause”. It’s insulting, it is inaccurate (there are obviously lots of black peeps burning shit… we’ve posted videos here applauding them), and it is counterproductive to what all of these people are fighting for.
Any large scale event like this is going to bring in people who have different, sometimes competing interests. Of course there are probably some white supremacists out there, and anarchists, and generally people who don’t care about any of it but feel compelled to bust a window and steal some pampers. But everyone needs to recognize that you’re participants in an ongoing propaganda war, and the side who is going ham about how “yes this kneeling person cares about police violence but this person stealing coats/burning cars/chiseling away at a sidewalk is an agent provocateur” are the bad guys. Their goal is to take a movement of hundreds of thousands of people and frame it such that only a small minority ACTUALLY care about these issues and so ignore everyone else who is so pissed off that they are destroying the places they live and the institutions that make up those places.
19 Likes
And for proof we can see how the cops shot cookies and milk at all the white protesters instead of tear gas.
3 Likes