Obviously perceptions about what happened in history are going to differ from people’s perceptions at the time.
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Exactly. While it can be said the lynching of Emmett Till helped ignite the flame that started the Civil Rights movement no one can reasonably claim the race riots in Watts & Detroit a decade later that resulted in 77 deaths were in retaliation to the travesty of his murder. I bet only a small percentage of the population today even remembers who Emmet Till was. The people who drew those cartoons about MLK tried to persuade the public of one way of thinking & obviously they failed. Looters, rioters & murders of Detroit & Watts riots probably told themselves they had a justifiable reason like the murder of Emmet Till but I’m not buying it. Soon George Floyd will join the cliffsnotes of history books to only be remembered by nerds & pictures of burnt cities & nationwide riots that affected so many more people will be what is remembered. A frequent commenter told a story on this thread about his daughter flinging a protester off of her car. When she tells the story to her kids, grandkids, nieces & nephew she’ll won’t remember them as peaceful & probably won’t even mention George Floyd.
Who is making this claim?
I said “no one”. It wouldn’t make any sense. And good luck to anyone 30 years from now who claims the rioting, looting & destruction today was on George Floyd’s behalf.
According to Wikipedia the claim being made now is that the protest are:
against incidents of police brutality and all racially motivated violence against African-American people.
To say that the protest are on George Floyd’s behalf would be like saying WW I was about the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand
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You’re the one who posted a picture of a peaceful looking lady wearing a coronavirus mask holding a George Floyd sign. But okay, if you & Wikipedia say Antifa attacking a federal courthouse on a nightly basis using explosives & blunt objects against federal agents has something to do with police brutality against blacks so be it. My whole life I was under the impression it was the feds who broke up racism & corruption on the local level & this whole time what we really needed was Antifa to run the feds out of town & to burn down a courthouse. I bet the Birmingham & Little Rock Police Departments would of loved to have these types of protesters on their side against the feds back in the day. After the feds left they would have made quick work of the anti-fed agitators & went back to business as usual.
Buckle up, this ride is going to get wild.
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Why send in federal troops? Smoke and mirrors on a colorful scale. A convenient excuse to upset 231 years of democracy and cancel an election. For those of you who skipped out on your civics classes, the words from POTUS45, from the horse’s mouth below, have never been uttered by any American president.
From WAPO, By John Wagner and Amy Gardner. July 30.
President Trump on Thursday floated the prospect of delaying the November election, as he ramped up his attacks on mail-in voting, claiming without evidence that its widespread use would be a “catastrophic disaster” that could lead to fraudulent results.
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” Trump tweeted. “It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
The U.S. Constitution gives the power to regulate the “time, place and manner” of elections to the U.S. House and Senate, with Congress also empowered to alter the rules. Nowhere is the president granted such power…
As I’ve said elsewhere, today’s lawful protests, and the commingled and criminal rioting, aren’t a pimple on the ass of the civic disturbances that occurred in the 1960s/1970s, or even the 1930s. And yet no president before was so power-mad as to dare talk about monkeying with elections.
Smoke and mirrors, folks.
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“Who caterogizes cars or trucks based on politics anyway?”
That is a uniquely USA algorithm.
How will they interpret my political leanings when they discover I have vehicles being identified with both camps. They might have to rely on my choice of boats but I also have more than one. How am I supposed to vote now?
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My understanding is it only works by neighborhood or zip code. Not down to the individual level. Maybe they think you are a true moderate.
In that case, the algorithm would be 100 % accurate.
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Most of us don’t know any policemen. The only policemen I have ever had conversations with are the guys who worked overtime at events like our quarterly pilot’s meetings. We had some cars broken into one time and decided to give the local precinct some overtime by hiring an officer on those occasions. We are required by the city to have policemen at art shows when we serve alcohol. All of those officers have been pleasant people and interesting to talk to. I suspect that the officers who sign up for overtime at an art opening are different from those who sign up to be bar bouncers.
Bear with me… I have a point. What would happen if peaceful protesters who suspect federal police might turn violent asked to hire off duty local officers to support and protect the peaceful protests? It would have to be a legitimate, squeaky clean assignment like protecting a first aid station which could evolve into having police liaison at the organizing center.
I am probably dreaming, but I see it as a win-win situation. I have no doubt there are local police who sympathize with the goal of reform. The “good” police officers will be given an opportunity to act as other than their more aggressive colleagues, the protesters and police will have an opportunity to meet each other in a non-confrontational setting, the organizers will have someone to turn to if a few bad actors begin to get out of the non-violent framework - and that initiative would come from the peaceful demonstrators themselves rather than from Washington DC. And it will set a positive example that might be covered by the media.
I suspect there is some friction between the local police and the Federal officers who have been sent to replace them. There might be no local objection to having the officers work that way and officers willing to do it… if the request came from the protesters themselves.
What I don’t know is who this suggestion should be made to.
I do not understand the cars as politics thing, but I definitely see it happening. The car is must be more symbolic to people who have never had to use some ugly vehicle as a tool day in and day out.
There is a lot of status-symbol psychology in general at work in the white-collar suburbs where I live that eludes me. I am glad I married someone who grew up in the middle of nowhere and doesn’t really get the point of “keeping up with the Joneses” either.
i think one of the MANY problems in Portland is again its a small percent of the total crowd that are into making trouble, but they are standing shoulder to shoulder with legitimate protesters. what would the above mentioned police escorts of the protesters do when people started throwing bricks and burning things? now they have a vicous circle thing going on with the feds in the courthouse and the rioters trying to burn it down every night. it only takes a percent of the crowd when there are thousands, and then once the feds push back protesters turn into rioters… the worst part is most people are behind the ideals of the protests, but burning and trashing things dont help… the next thing that will happen is some baby of pregnant lady will get shot by feds and its gonna blow up properly…
U.S. population is 328 million. so that would be between 4.5% and 8% of the population.
“Really, it’s hard to overstate the scale of this movement,” said Deva Woodly, an associate professor of politics at the New School.
Professor Woodly said that the civil rights marches in the 1960s were considerably smaller in number. “If we added up all those protests during that period, we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people, but not millions,” she said.
Even protests to unseat government leadership or for independence typically succeed when they involve 3.5 percent of the population at their peak,
Peaceful protestors don’t need mediators to communicate with Federal officers because they are not attacking them and suffering the consequences. Rioters and anarchists on the other hand are not looking for mediation or de-escalation. Their goal is to maim those they perceive as enemies and vent their frustration at symbols of authority because they feel victimized or just for the sheer joy of destroying what others have worked hard to build. They are criminals, losers and thugs who don’t want police around to prevent them from their rampaging.
I was a federal law inforcement officer for a few years and interacted with “the locals” as we referred to municipal police departments.
Most are balanced good hearted individuals who join so they can contribute to the community. Many are immature bullies who want a badge and a gun so they can push people around with impunity. Few have progressed beyond high school, and have no idea how to diffuse confrontations. They spend an inordinate amount of time diffusing spousal disputes and trying to settle petty squabbles. They deal with the dregs of society day after day, the cursory law courses they learned in a quickie academy environment are soon forgotten and an ‘us versus them’ attitude sets in.
Unless you’ve been in combat or risked your life chasing a violent criminal, only to have him fight to take your gun so he can shoot you, you have no idea of the level of adrenalin flowing through your veins when your survival depends on eliminating the threat. It’s not something you can shut off like with a spigot. It’s a stressful job. Studies show that police officers have a higher suicide rate than any other profession.
Rather than mindlessly defunding the police and allowing crime to flourish, what is needed is better screening, education and oversight. That is not going to happen overnight.
…and maybe leaders at the top trying to deescalate the situation instead of trying to make political bank over it.
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