2020 Protests megathread

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Protests currently in front of the white house chanting SHAME ON YOU

That’ll stop him!

Shouldn't we be at least outwardly happy that they are demonstrating? It shows vigorous peaceful protest is normal in this country. Tea partiers did the same thing...

If they keep it peaceful than sure. But they’re not gonna do so.

I can assure you that it if it was allowed to have gone in front of the White House, the Secret Service would have ensured that it was incapable of going violent, or they would have failed miserably in their jobs.

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

This country's police are completely out-of-control. Obviously, I don't condone burning down Target, but life is far more valuable than property.

[SevenEleven]

This country's police are completely out-of-control. Obviously, I don't condone burning down Target, but life is far more valuable than property.

The whole country is out of control. Aside from protesting, people are networking and organizing. This will continue as days and nights pass.

[Roronoa D. Law]

I can't believe those looters came to my neighborhood. They ain't but 1 exit to get here and it's pitch dark once you leave Peachtree. I'm going to need y'all to go back to Clayton county or back to Tucker with the rest of rednecks I don't know its late.

[Stockdale for Veep]

People are just making up for losing the post-NBA Finals victory riots.

[HisGrace]

I've been trying to be gentle with this stuff but this is the dumbest s***. Attacking CNN, destroying a pharmacy, and looting have nothing to do with police brutality. If they were storming police stations and flipping cop cars and stuff that would at least make sense in the context of what they were purported to be protesting about, even if you did not agree with the methods. This is essentially just a large scale hissy fit.

This absolutely helps Trump. How do nationwide left-wing riots which are in turn defended by "liberal elites" not help Republicans like it did in 68. I am relieved by how comparatively measured  the response is here but elsewhere on the internet the left is making a full bodied defense of this and saying people should "focus on the issues they're angry about" instead of the violence, which they would never say if it was a right wing riot. As another person alluded to, if you'd asked everyone last week what their response would be to a protester chucking an explosive into the CNN building, all of PC Twitter who are now defending this would have said it was categorically wrong just because they would assume it was a right-wing protester.

Then there's the Corona angle which is a bit comical, to be honest. You had people straight up saying not social distancing (even specifically in the context of political protests) was akin to murder, but now it's okay. There's all these videos of people getting screamed at for not wearing a mask at the grocery store, but if now I were to run in to the grocery store, smash everything, and light the building on fire to performatively show everyone how upset I am about Floyd dying, they'd defend me and say the focus should be on the issues and not on what I did.

[PSOL]

Thread theme

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ADdpLv3RDhA

[Orwell]

Who's ready for the race war?

[PSOL]

Who's ready for the race war?

This isn’t a race war, it’s a class war. Anything saying otherwise is propaganda.

[Sumner 1868]

Attacking CNN

At least this is something both sides can cheer for.

[Orwell]

Who's ready for the race war?

This isn’t a race war, it’s a class war. Anything saying otherwise is propaganda.

As a member of the Proletariat, I am supportive of the Bourgeoise struggle here. Because Rioting brings down property value.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Who's ready for the race war?

This isn’t a race war, it’s a class war. Anything saying otherwise is propaganda.

As a member of the Proletariat, I am supportive of the Bourgeoise struggle here. Because Rioting brings down property value.

Please tell me this is some sort of sarcasm.

[Orwell]

Who's ready for the race war?

This isn’t a race war, it’s a class war. Anything saying otherwise is propaganda.

As a member of the Proletariat, I am supportive of the Bourgeoise struggle here. Because Rioting brings down property value.

Please tell me this is some sort of sarcasm.

Yes, in all seriousness there needs to be some major change in American society because we have reached a point where it hasn't just been once, but dozens of times when White Police officers have unjustly slain unarmed African American men. The Class war comment was this conflicts version of the "As long as the DOW is doing good Grandma can die".

[#TheShadowyAbyss]

https://twitter.com/alex_zee/status/1266612805005762561

[Coastal Elitist]

This is ridiculous: https://twitter.com/ElijahSchaffer/status/1266614898219462657

These rioters clearly don't care about George Floyd they're just out there to destroy property and attack people

[lfromnj]

https://themetrodetroitnews.com/19-year-old-shot-and-killed-during-downtown-detroit-protest/

Teen shot in detroit in driveby shooting.

[NOVA Green]

https://twitter.com/alex_zee/status/1266612805005762561

Although naturally we have yet to see the unrest growing into smaller Metro Areas in "Downstate Oregon", there a few observations IMHO.

https://www.wweek.com/news/2020/05/29/portland-protesters-set-justice-center-on-fire-police-deploy-flash-bangs-tear-gas/

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/05/protest-escalates-at-downtown-portland-justice-center.html

https://twitter.com/KATUNews?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

1.) It appears based upon the original starting points of the Demos that they originated in the most historically African-American parts of the City (North Portland & Inner NE Portland).

2.) Naturally, just as in Managua and San Salvador in the Revolutionary Movements, streams of demonstrators merged the closer that they got to downtown areas.

3.) Although Mass Transit and Light Rail services have been heavily curtailed as a result of COVID-19 protections, this does not prevent protesters from migrating towards Downtown Portland.

4.) Portland, Oregon much like Minneapolis has a supposed "hipster vibe" that white-washes the history of racism and police violence against minority populations...

5.) Even "Leftist" Demonstrations until recent years have been faced with rubber bullets and tear gas, even a peaceful gathering at the North Park Blocks in West Portland in the early '00s that caused massive changes within the PDX Police Mgmt Chain, not to mention City Council and Mayoral Elections.

6.) Since the early '00s, the Portland Police Department and City Gvt has gone a long way forward from where the City was way back in the days...

7.) Massive increase of unemployment, homelessness, and an increasingly unaffordable living structure accentuates these grievances, despite the massive improvements of the performance of the Portland Police Department over the past two decades.

8.) Many large major Metro Areas such as Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, etc... are being faced with a massive invasion of what back in the mid '80s we used to call "Yuppie Scum" when I was a Teenager.

Gentrification is real, and believe it or not, when you Atlas folks make choices about where you move and why you move there, sometimes it feeds the bottom swamps of the Real Estate Industry that just want to jack everything up *based upon market value*, because sometimes your choices are part of the problem and not the solution, just like I have observed in Portland over the past 15-20 yrs.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Is it bad that this situation makes me finally understand what pro-cop people think even if I still hate the behavior of the MPD in bringing this about and feel deep within my bones a strong sense of dislike towards police brutality? I know that the white majority of this country (me included) doesn't know what it is like to be over-policed, but if you look at what happens when the police's grip slips, the events of recent days show what most likely happens in the aftermath is anarchy. And anarchy is something scary to anyone who owns a small business, anyone who just wants to go about their lives, anyone who knows the same-old-same-old rhythms of life like the back of their hand and whom simulatenously wants steadyness and regularity even at the cost of some potential long-term improvement. And when you have mobs with no sense of rationality attacking things, it only causes more fear of the unknown, of a world where there is no law and order.

Mentally I am now somewhat imagining what would happen if this happened in my metropolitan area. Thankfully something like this can't possibly happen where I live due to it not being in Dallas proper, but it would still worry me if something like this was happening in Dallas anyway due to proximity - I live in southern Collin County. I would have no real recourse other than pray to my Lord, and yet knowing that such a thing was happening would bring some level of unpleasantness no matter what I do. I don't know if this could happen in DFW Metro but the mere prospect of it, no matter how marginal, makes me worried. And it was fairly random too, where it has happened.

While this raw worry (which a rational one to have) is very much understandable, it does not excuse police abuses and it absolutely does not merit any actual harsh denounciations of BLM, but it helps inform me as to what drives the pro-cop opposition. Much like their opposites, they are driven by human emotions that you and me both share in different ways, in our own individual manner. And this has also exposed to a certain extent why base emotions themselves cannot be allowed to drive us humans astray. It is easy to look at the chaos and think "send in more guns" and "crush them all" without thinking deeply. That's listening to base emotion. I myself have had to on some occasions over the past few days had to expend some effort to resist my own base emotions.

Mankind was created with not just base emotions but also capacity for complex thought. It is one thing to say "crush them all" it is another to look at why this happened and understand why the status quo as it existed violated the social contract, why the police themselves have a fair amount of blame in bringing this situation about. Looters and rioters cannot be allowed to damage our cities when practicable and cannot be permitted to run amock making mockery of our rule of law, but law enforcement in particular is also corrupt to at least a certain extent, and the MPD's failures were the primary cause of the events in MSP and thus a major cause in the chaos that has ensued elsewhere. If the police indulged in agent provocateur to make peaceful protestors look bad, then that too should be punished.

ALL causes of violations of social peace must be dealt with if possible, and law enforcement needs not be left off the hook for their role in what has happened. We ought to be even-handed and act in a way that is fair to all instigators - singling out either the cops nor the looters and rioters is unfair. We must protect rule of law and social peace by handling those who harm it in appropriate matter, whether they be black or white or latino or any other race. Inevitably those in law enforcement will benefit from a higher threshold for punishment but that's pretty much baked in their job description due to both the nature of the job and the history of jurispence in this country. But even if you are a cop, you are not above the law. The killer of George Floyd needs to go to jail, first and foremost.

If there is one lesson to take from this, it is that inequality in treatment and wealth has helped foster growing anger and annoyance in some parts of the country and that it has now boiled over. Just arresting all the looters and rioters and stonewalling the protesters' demands would be lunacy, but so would just sitting idly by while bad people just go around and treat our cities as playgrounds to be trashed and cashed out for fun. The single biggest, most important currency in this country, from a socioeconomic perspective, is property - homes, businesses, etc. We need more people to be able to access the American Dream. We need more minority enterpreneurs and more minority-owned SMEs.

Reform is needed, and we need to focus institutional power on making life for the downtrodden people of this country better. We need better policing. We should help with cost-of-living issues in urban centers. We must seek to mend the divides in society to the point we can say without any irony that this country is one that has social peace in extremis and social contract in genuine effect. When we as a nation come together to solve a problem we can achieve an good result pretty fast when we put our mind to it. We are fundamentally a nation of doers and pioneers but too often we fail to focus our energies optimally. In relative terms, this once, just this once, it is of particular urgency we step up and try to advance here, even if the progress we can make is uncertain and the durability is up in the air. Even if what we will accomplish is not known, the alternative to not acting is worse. Remember: the possibility remains that what we see now in Minneapolis was nothing but an appetizer.

[DabbingSanta]

I don't really get what the protesters are trying to accomplish. Burning down their communities is definitely not going to gain any sympathy with suburbanites or white moderates, key votes in these states this November. If I lived in one of these Democrat-run communities, I would be packing my bags and heading for the suburbs where law and order is maintained. To all the suburbanites watching with horror, I wouldn't be surprised if Republicans get a boost in support as a result of this. This is not how you gain any sympathy heading in to an election. If anything, these protesters are ruining their cause and tainting the Black Lives Matter movement. I understand that a man was wrongly murdered, but the guy responsible has been charged. What more do you want? Pinning the blame on an entire race or occupation is not going to help you, nor will destroying your community and forcing businesses to go elsewhere.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Yeah these riots are gonna deliver Trump his re-election just like the King riots helped Bush 41 get re... oh wait. Everyone saying this is gonna be like Nixon in 68 ignore the key difference that Nixon was the candidate for president not the incumbent. Hell if anyone is Nixon here it’s Biden as the former Vice President of the previous administration running on a nostalgia and return to normalcy platform 

[DabbingSanta]

I should note that the Detroit area never fully recovered from the race riots in 1967. Go to the 12th and Clairmount today and the area is impoverished, with entire stretches of homes and businesses burnt out or gone. Many places never rebuilt after the riots, and the ramifications from the riots are still strong 50+ years later. The riots greatly increased white flight (and upper class black flight) to the suburbs, forced numerous businesses to close shop, and greatly increased racial tensions that are still poor in the region today. As MLK said, "riots are a voice of the unheard". After he died in April 1968, numerous cities erupted in violence, similar to what we saw last night. There is no doubt we need police reform in America, and these people need a voice in this, but if I were to guess, the riots ongoing will just continue to expand the rural vs  suburban vs urban divide we see today.

[Gass3268]

What?

https://twitter.com/foxwoundband/status/1266613385862447104?s=21

[Intell]

I'm just saying that white moderates (who are still democrats) are more supportive of protests, at least vocal about it, than they were in Fuergerson or Baltimore where there was a much more tone of opposing the riots. Could be my American Facebook feed. Even apolitical people in Australia are involved in this story.

[Koharu]

I'm just saying that white moderates (who are still democrats) are more supportive of protests, at least vocal about it, than they were in Fuergerson or Baltimore where there was a much more tone of opposing the riots. Could be my American Facebook feed. Even apolitical people in Australia are involved in this story.

It's not just you.

It's a perfect storm of things. COVID has been the only news lately and this is something new and people have the "time" to truly pay attention. I'm addition, with George Floyd, there is nine minutes of heart-wrenching video. This isn't Trayvon where we can't see what's going on. This isn't even Philandro Castile, where we saw it happen, because in this case, we saw it happen and we also saw no sympathy, no remorse, and a willingness to ignore a human being asking for air. There's no "it happened so fast." And, the public has been made aware and each story that people who don't experience this regularly hear serves as further proof that the issue is not being exaggerated.

[Koharu]

As I mentioned on the Minneapolis thread, it's also really important to realize there are other forces coming out now that are not just folks looking for justice for minorities.

A major issue is, surprise surprise, alt-right folks interested in The Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo. Literally.



This article from April discusses the issue, and these protests give them the perfect cover. These Facebook groups could be being used for the organization that Walz and Frey have discussed.