caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

Tired of tear gas, the protesters have been coming every day to the intersection of Breckenridge Lane and Shelbyville Road, and they try to get everyone to leave at 8 p.m. each night.

On the night of the first protest in Louisville on May 28, Kayla Meisner and her boyfriend watched everything unfold downtown on the news. She said, for a long time, they talked about taking to the streets to demand change. But it’s also been scary.

“Then we go [to the protests] Friday with the same mentality, this is something we’re fighting for, but we’re scared of this,” said Meisner, who is Black and works at the University of Louisville.

Meisner thought the protests felt peaceful on Friday, but said things had “a totally different energy” when it got dark.

“We ended up getting hurt and tear gassed,” she said. “I had a pepper [ball] blow up on my leg.”

She said that was the impetus for working with some friends to organize protests in St. Matthews, an affluent eastern suburb of Louisville.

I came across this article that examines the protests and focuses specifically on the media narrative of violence and looting. It gives us a good jumping off point to further discuss points brought up in comments in some of the most recent essays on the protests.

In this article, the writer interviews

[They] gathered to watch live as Trump walked from the White House to St John’s. “My mother just shouted out, ‘God give him strength! He’s doing a Jericho walk!’”

A Jericho walk, in some evangelical circles, refers to the biblical book of Joshua, where God commanded the Israelites to walk seven times around the opposing city of Jericho, whose walls then came crashing down.

Eleanor said that no US President could be elected without support from the Bible Belt. That they composed 30% of the vote. About 80% of the 94 million Evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016.

Obama can kiss my ass.
I reared a child on my own. I taught him/her that they could make a difference.
I encourage him/her to make a statement that they would be happy to fight for.
Then 2008 happened. Without help from me, they decided that it was a just cause to elect the first Obama.
Then they were informed that we had to look forward and forget the past.

3 more Minneapolis police officers charged over death of George Floyd as Chauvin’s charge raised to 2nd degree murder

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is charging the three other officers involved in the George Floyd killing, and Derek Chauvin will now face a second degree murder charge, Senator Amy Klobuchar confirmed on Wednesday.

An Op-ed by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, May 30, 2020, LA Times (a few outtakes; my bolds)

“What do you see when you see angry black protesters amassing outside police stations with raised fists? If you’re white, you may be thinking, “They certainly aren’t social distancing.” Then you notice the black faces looting Target and you think, “Well, that just hurts their cause.” Then you see the police station on fire and you wag a finger saying, “That’s putting the cause backward.”

You’re not wrong — but you’re not right, either. The black community is used to the institutional racism inherent in education, the justice system and jobs. And even though we do all the conventional things to raise public and political awareness — write articulate and insightful pieces in the Atlantic, explain the continued devastation on CNN, support candidates who promise change — the needle hardly budges.

I am going to go over the critiques of "allyship" here. But they're not my main focus. My main focus is that I'm not your ally. I don't buy into "allyship." In fact, as more and more people say "I'm not your ally," I expect, the various groups who depend upon the support of "allies" will have to rethink their strategies and their tactics, and focus instead on the solidarity that is a prerequisite to dealing effectively with the rule of the 1%.

came to me in an e-mail:

As you come out to protest, here's what our video notes to keep in mind:

1) The right to protest is a fundamental human right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment.

2) If you get stopped, ask if you are free to go. If the police say yes, calmly walk away.

3) You have the right to record. The right to protest includes the right to record, including recording police doing their jobs.

Nothing makes me question the dominant narrative more than headlines like these.
It makes me wonder, "Are we being played? Or is something else going on?"

Here are 3 videos that I think should get some discussions on. I posted them in my fed up essay in comments, but I think they might get lost there.

“I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere. White strings of gulls drag over it like beads. It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.”
~ Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See