This afternoon, there was a peaceful protest in Rochester. Crowds gathered in Martin Luther King Park downtown:
My wife is a healthcare professional and we can’t be in protests when there’s a pandemic going on, because if she gets sick, a lot of people who rely on her would be out of luck. But we drove downtown around 4 PM and we saw the remnants of this crowd dispersing, peacefully. Around 5 PM, this happened:
Whoever this guy is, and some of his comrades, turned over cars and lit them on fire. There was also some looting in other parts of the city, and in some inner ring suburbs, so I’m not trying to portray this as a white riot. That said, if you’re a white guy and your idea of supporting the concept of “Black Lives Matter” is taking a tire iron to a car, then fuck you. Also, this photo should win a Pulitzer Prize.
Generally, I’m skeptical about the concept of “outside agitators,” but after seeing this picture, and witnessing the peaceful end of the other protest, I’m inclined to believe.
rikyrah
Watching MSNBC in Minneapolis with Ali.
This is my sister’s old neighborhood.I recognize every street on my TV screen. She just moved from there about a year ago.??
Patricia Kayden
Patricia Kayden
I’m going to say something controversial. I really don’t care about the rioters. The other three murderous cops must be arrested. That’s the issue. That’s the only issue that matters right now.
rikyrah
Thread
Jeffro
It’s a different day and age, outside agitators. Everyone has a cell phone now, and you’re going to get caught/fired/arrested/nationally humiliated.
All it will take is a handful of ‘busts’, and all of these cowardly scum – ok, most of them – will melt away like the ahem snowflakes they are. So let’s get ’em, protestors and allies. More pics like the one of the wacko above, plz.
rikyrah
Thread
NotMax
In any environment, trolls ain’t pretty.
Just sayin’.
lamh36
Jeffro
OT but when times are tough, you can always count on the Dropkicks! ;)
Elizabelle
We are likely to eventually learn who that masked and umbrella’d guy in St. Paul was. The white guy — middle aged, all dressed in black, prepared for mayhem — who was breaking the windows at AutoZone all by his lonesome. And then was challenged by a young black man in a pink tee shirt.
No one needs the wanton destruction these a-holes cause.
Emma
I saw an interesting tweet from the NYC protests yesterday, with photos of individual young, muscle-y white guys, but who all by SOME coinky-dink were wearing the same sort of tied-on white armband. Lots of speculation of “color of the day” systems among undercover cops. Although that asshole in the OP looks like a regular asshole.
Delk
Just got an alert: Chicago under curfew until 6 am.
Martin
@rikyrah: I’ve never seen a black anarchist, and the anarchists will take almost any excuse to burn shit down.
lamh36
I mean is anyone really surprised?
dr. bloor
That guy has “Greece” written all over him.
Once upon a time, he would have been a second-shift guy at Kodak Park. Dunno what’s available to him these days.
Emma
@Elizabelle: Not going to bother with embedding tweets, but umbrella guy is a Minneapolis cop, ID-ed by his ex-wife (lol). Twitter thread with screenshots of his ex-wife’s texts here: https://twitter.com/GypsyEyedBeauty/status/1266162964727562240
Chip Daniels
Here in downtown Los Angeles, the march yesterday afternoon was a largely mixed crowd, but as the night wore on the crowd got whiter and younger until around 10 it was almost entirely comprised of young white males, who were just chaotic thrill seekers.
ThresherK
In the last 24 hours my skepticism about outside agitations has declined significantly.
See this NeoNazi flash the sign, live on CNN, in Mpls . See this white twit in Pittsburgh.
Ruckus
That car looks like it might be a cop car. May have a spotlight on the drivers side A pillar, under the guys left arm.
Not that that is OK just that with all the crap a lot of the cops are pulling some are going to go for revenge in any way possible.
SiubhanDuinne
@lamh36:
There’s at least one comment on Ali Velshi’s thread basically saying that he should have expected this because curfew.
Do people not understand about REPORTERS DOING THEIR FUCKING JOB?!?!?!
download my app in the app store mistermix
@dr. bloor:
Yeah, he headed to Nick’s for a plate when he was done stirring up shit.
Jay Noble
Just watched some coverage from early this morning in Lincoln, NE and I was yelling at the stupid clueless reporter and camera person who watched as some shady white folks in hoodies who went by and looked to be using hammers on business windows while the cops were out of sight on the other side of the building. What did they focus on? The big (probably drunk) black guy trying and failing to throw a park bench through the window on the same side the cops were on. There were an awful lot of white folks there.
And as always, the media guys are totally clueless as to local history
Laura Too
@Patricia Kayden: Yeah, unless you live here, And see them target minority owned businesses, grocery stores they shop, pharmacies they need. ANd now hospitals.
Abbott Northwestern
A BMTN source says that Abbott Northwestern on Chicago Avenue has been working to move patients after a suspected break-in. They are now closed to new admissions, even labor and delivery.
During a fucking pandemic.
geg6
Here in Pittsburgh, too. Peaceful all day and when the shit hit the fan, the violence and looting was done by white men. Saw several videos here that left no doubt.
Elizabelle
@Emma: At this point, that is still unproven. Stay tuned.
Snopes embedded the tweet you provided. They have not been able to verify it, either. At this time.
gwangung
Yes, this is certainly the case in Seattle with outside agitators…who were all white when the protestors where black, brown and Asian.
Far as I’m concerned, FUCK anarchists. FUCK ANARCHY. They’ve taken away the righteous voice of black men and women who are protesting injustice. They made it all about them and their cause.
(White supremacists…fuck you already. Don’t need to waste time gilding the lily.)
And essentially, these white people are stone cold racist, as racist as the white supremacists, because both think their cause trumps the plea for justice from black and brown people.
Ruckus
@Ruckus:
Don’t mistake that I’m OK with this. I’m not. Just one possibility. Remote, yes but possible.
Benw
@lamh36: I’m not on twitter but my wife is and we’re watching the protests in NYC. Last night the police jumped the protestors near the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn: spraying, beating and arresting with no warning. Tonight also in Brooklyn they ran down a group of protestors who entered the street, again without warning. Several reported injured, no dead.
SiubhanDuinne
@lamh36: I’m not the teeniest bit surprised. Once Biden is President, he won’t have the luxury of that kind of time — half an hour for a condolence call — but there will never be any question about the sincerity of his sympathy. Joe’s the real deal, and more and more I’m convinced he is exactly who we need right now.
ziggy
I am just sick to my stomach over this. The situation in Seattle is out of control. What started as a peaceful protest has turned into a bunch of thugs, punks just looting, destroying and setting on fire cars, stores, anything they can get their hands on. A man tried to stand in front of a store to stop them and they jumped him. The police can’t be everywhere at once, so they aren’t able to stop them. The national guard has been brought in. There is NO excuse for this behavior, this can’t be acceptable in our society.
Achrachno
@Emma: Snopes rates this as “unproven” and I think they’re right: I was concerned about the weak supporting evidence from the beginning. Could be true, but needs to be nailed down a lot better.
Ukai
My social media feed is rife with reports of non-Minneapolis infiltrators from anarchists, militias, and the KKK.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: As the President, if he decided it was important, he would have the half hour. Hopefully, he will never have to make that decision.
Emma
@Elizabelle @Achrachno:
Agree that we definitely need more details, but at least for now, I don’t really see an upside to pretending to be or know this guy’s ex-wife.
Achrachno
@ziggy: I’d like to know who these violent people are. Black Block, right wingers trying to discredit BLM, free range loonies? Probably not United Vegetarians or Girl Scouts.
It’d be nice if the police could arrest a few so we could figure this out.
Luciamia
@Jeffro: Exactly. Nothing is anonymous anymore.
Achrachno
@Emma: Yeah, she may be mythical anyway. Probably is, IMO.
oopzwtf
@dr. bloor:
No way. That’s a 3rd shift Rochester Products guy off a Quadrajet line
NotoriousJRT
@gwangung: There are many faces to the destruction in Seattle, which is shocking & pointless right now. The local news filmed in real time a young black man jumping on and bashing in the windshield of a public vehicle. So – at least in that instance the perpetrator was not white. The vehicle was later torched. But there are many white legs (masks make seeing faces hard) moving through and destroying things. A lot of wanton destruction that does not elicit sympathy from me. Those of you who don’t care about rioters might not be watching your city get waxed.
Mike J
I can’t tell what his hat says, but it’s in gothic script. Decent people don’t use gothic.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This is the third video I’ve seen today of black people trying to explain to white people that some won’t get to walk away from what the white people are doing.
Elizabelle
From the LA Times:
Op-Ed: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Don’t understand the protests? What you’re seeing is people pushed to the edge
Elizabelle
I hope the cops are working overtime to identify the miscreants, particularly the white ones. Would be a two-fer: calm down their/our communities, and make known who these anarchists/jackasses are. Make it easier to monitor them and intervene.
These actual agitators cost localities a fuckton of money. Let’s be real here.
Laura Too
I will throw in that some of the buildings that burned were brick. Like the post office. These people knew what they were doing, it was no accident. They are discrediting all of the peaceful protesters and people who want change. There are lots of 3%, KKK, and Boogaloo groups that would love to get the folks from outstate MN to vote for 45 because they are the “law and order” people who would never allow this to happen. I don’t know this, but I do wonder if 45 is withholding intel on who these people are and what their tactics are so that our officials are in the dark about the magnitude of what the situation could become. The chaos this is creating will have lots of intended consequences.
jc balinger
@Patricia Kayden:
i want justice for George Floyd, but burning and looting is inexcusable and indefensible.
.
Nelle
MikeJ – are you the one that knew or knows Mike Franken? He’s getting hit with dishonest ads by Emily’s List of all people – one million dollars worth, according to what I heard. Can’t figure out why national Dems are so eager for Greenfield, but they’ve already put 8 million behind her – she had no resume but keeps telling us to vote for her because her first husband died when they were young and had two kids. She works in family real estate and is willing to lie. But Schumer, et. al, have doubled down behind her and it is inexplicable to me.
BroD
“Decent people don’t use gothic.” LOL!
I’m not surprised about provocateurs. Trump & his crowd have no scruples. I await verifications (that photo is suggestive but not proof) but a gang that would green-light on-line bots is certainly capable and we know there really are crazy white looking for trouble out there.
I fear the protests may turn out to be an act of mass self-disenfranchisement. OTOH, is we can channel the energy into getting out the vote…
opiejeanne
@Delk: Seattle mayor Jenny Durken announced curfew starting at 5 pm today and tomorrow, the I-5 is closed, and Governor Inslee has called in the National Guard.
My middle child says she can hear the cops firing blanks, which statement I don’t understand. I wonder if she’s hearing flash-bangs.
ThresherK
@Elizabelle: Kareem has been a very big man of the world (no pun) on any number of fronts since (ETA: and even during) his playing days.
This is in stark contrast to many celebrities who should not venture into public statements on any significant matter.
August West
@Elizabelle:
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a national treasure! Thanks for sharing this link.
Nelle
On the looting, please be as enraged as when a “friend” of Trump’s gets 27 million that the House intended for victims of Covid-19 and the economic shutdown. Think of the violence and looting involved in that. We have a criminal enterprise running the government telling people to behave while they loot, steal and lie. And that is if those looting aren’t the white supremacists trying to start a race war. White collar crime is still white and unremarkable with their country club prisons and getting out because of Covid-19. Seriously, go cluck over that instead of intoning that looting is wrong. This nation was founded on looting – from Native Americans and slave labor. What could be more truly American?
Princess
@Patricia Kayden: I don’t find it that controversial. We will rebuild buildings and replace glass. We can’t bring George and the others back to life.
But we can’t stop with charging the other three. The whole case needs to be taken away from Hennapin county and given to an independent prosecutor under the MN AG’s office.
gwangung
@opiejeanne: The suddenness of the announcement has pissed a lot of people off, as it stranded a lot of people making their way back from the more peaceful parts of the protests.
LaenCleardale
I think it’s safe to say the police precinct burning was purposeful. Same with the “attacking CNN”, nice job not mentioning the building houses a police station most of the media. A lot of the side stuff, businesses, and particularly some escalation among otherwise peaceful crowds certainly seems to be outsiders or people trying to cause problems.
Edit: As always, fuck the police and as a white person I don’t get to tell black people when it’s time to resort to violence.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Things are getting real in Philly. I’m in the burbs, I’m reading this but not seeing it first hand. Store windows broken, police cars on fire. Philly under curfew. They tried to pull down the statue of Frank Rizzo but did not succeed.
Is it agents provocateurs? Dunno, but I wouldn’t be surprised. The fact that we’re getting those reports from all around the country sounds like an organized effort.
ziggy
@Achrachno: Young males, some black, mostly white. These are just punks that come into the city, like they did for the WTO riots, looking for any excuse to riot and fight cops.
It looks the heart of downtown has been completely tagged, gassed, broken and set on fire. Even the newscasters are tired. There is a curfew now for the entire city.
Elizabelle
WaPost: Officials blame outsiders for violence in Minnesota but contradict one another on who is responsible
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) told reporters he had no doubt that protests over Floyd’s death began with Minnesotans frustrated and outraged “with inequality, inequities and quite honestly racism that persisted” in the state.
But state officials have assessed that up to 80 percent of those protesting or rioting came from outside Minnesota, Walz said. He suggested that far-right white supremacists and perhaps organized drug cartels were chiefly responsible.
A federal law enforcement official was not aware of any intelligence about cartels infiltrating the protests.
But according to local officials, most people arrested in protest-related incidents were state residents.
… State officials said that after reviewing posts online, they were confident far-right racist groups had encouraged their followers to descend on the state and take advantage of the crisis.
John Harrington, commissioner of Minnesota’s Department of Public Safety, said officials were “checking to see, are they part of an organized criminal organization?”
“Is this organized crime? Is this an organized cell of terror?” he said, referring to posts by white nationalist groups.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) said local law enforcement had been “overwhelmed” by the huge number of people on his city’s streets.
“We are now confronting white supremacists, members of organized crime, out-of-state instigators, and possibly even foreign actors to destroy and destabilize our city and our region,” he said.
Walz suggested that U.S. intelligence agencies were providing the state with information about who was behind the protests, implying that the National Security Agency, which monitors foreign governments and terrorist organizations, might be playing a role.
U.S. officials dismissed those claims, noting that, by law, the NSA does not monitor domestic political activities. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence, were also skeptical that foreigners were taking part in protests or had helped organized them. Foreign media, including Chinese and Russian sources, have sought to portray the violence as emblematic of systemic political failings in the United States.
State officials weren’t the only ones trying to pin protests in Minneapolis and other cities on politically motivated outsiders.
“The voices of peaceful protest are being hijacked by violent radical elements,” Attorney General William P. Barr said in a statement from Justice Department headquarters.
Unlike state officials, Barr was unequivocal on who was to blame, claiming that the protests were “planned, organized and driven by anarchic and far-left extremist groups using antifa-like tactics,” referring to anti-fascist groups that have used violence.
Barr offered no evidence to support those assertions, and his descriptions ran counter to Walz, who blamed the violence, at least in part, on far-right actors.
President Trump wrote in a tweet that 80 percent of the Minnesota protesters had come from out of state, concurring with the governor’s assessment. But like Barr, he singled out only far-left groups.
“It’s ANTIFA and the Radical Left. Don’t lay the blame on others!” Trump tweeted.
=========
We will find out, soon enough.
My guess is it is some far-left (thinking that was the young white people in the Nancy French tweet [Jim’s comment at 40], who were putting horse crap on police cars and breaking their windows in Nashville and got called out by a black guy), but the vast majority is rightwingers and the usual anarchists/people who gravitate to mayhem.
But drug cartels? Really?? Where did THAT come from?
FelonyGovt
Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti has now asked Gov. Newsom to send the National Guard.
Villago Delenda Est
@Patricia Kayden: That man is a known MAGAt and white supremacist himself. efgoldman ’em.
Laura Too
@Nelle: Tell that to the folks in my neighborhood that are now in a complete food desert, with no access to any pharmacy, Do you have any idea if we will get shops back? How long it will take to buy groceries and do laundry on a bus? What should I say to the Somali immigrant woman who the first night they broke all her windows and then came back a night later and burned it down? I bought Eid dinner for all of my employees from there last year. What do I tell her? https://usarestaurants.info/explore/united-states/minnesota/hennepin-county/minneapolis/mama-safia-restaurant-612-367-4175.htm
Elizabelle
@ThresherK:
@August West:
Glad you liked it. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a humane and clear thinker, and a to the point writer. Always look forward to his stuff.
rikyrah
@Benw:
I admit that I still don’t understand them at Barclays. Why?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
this is the playwright who does the twitter Nixon account, who is originally from the Philly area, I gather (and I think he means “overstate”, or “overestimate”). I don’t know if it’s true, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
HumboldtBlue
In Baltimore they read out the names of victims of police abuse.
Dan B
Minnesota officials have stated they have information on many people from outside the area who have provoked and / or are threatening violence.
On the Seattle TV coverage I saw one angry black guy. He was riding in a car and shaking his fist. A young white guy pulled a police rifle out of a destroyed police car. He was stopped by a middle aged muscly guy who pulled a pistol on him and took the rifle away.
A young woman said she was offered cash to join a violent group – unconfirmed but it doesn’t sound like the usual stories from a 99.9% peaceful protest.
Back to Minnesota, officials have found posts inviting people to Minneapolis to wreak havoc. It will be interesting to see what is revealed. I believe the Minnesota AG is Keith Ellison. He should crack some skulls.
I see Elizabelle has posted the info from the Governor. Thanks!
Elizabelle
@Laura Too: I know. It’s heartbreaking. Sometimes a community does not recover. For years.
I can understand being angry enough to throw a brick — lot of us at that stage — but not to torch a small business. To prove what?
NotoriousJRT
@Nelle: I’ll cluck over what I fucking please, thank you very much. Don’t assume that my condemnation of looting precludes outrage over Trump’s ongoing corruption, incompetence, and racism. I want that mofo bounced in November. I feel dismay at what had happened in my home city tonight, and I feel that those who incited & participated in the destruction did nothing to make things better. YMMV, of course.
Elizabelle
@Dan B: Yeah. I am hoping that in between cell phone and media footage, and monitoring social media and internet stuff, they can get a handle on who is fomenting the rioting.
It’s important to be able to gather in large groups for protests, even during a pandemic. (Masks, masks, masks.)
But who is responsible for turning on the violence?
PS: I found the federal sources’ responses in the WaPost article highly interesting. For obscuring. They seem to be on the same page; as to whether they’re being honest ….
gogiggs
@Achrachno: How is the solution to the problem of police murdering people during arrests for police to arrest more people?
opiejeanne
@gwangung: What time was the curfew announced today? Granted, she probably should have called it this morning, first thing.
I really thought the rainstorm would discourage this, we got a lot of rain today, but maybe it’s not that much right now in Seattle. I’m over on the East Side in King County, near Redmond.
Laura Too
@Elizabelle: They think drug cartels might be involved because of the number of pharmacies that have been targeted even in areas of the city that aren’t in the heart of the protests. They took advantage of the lack of police protection to those areas and it was very organized.
Martin
So, this is what I’ve been taught at work regarding these folks.
More common up in Oakland, but we have some groups in SoCal and they do travel. You have three labeled groups with some overlap – antifa, anarchists, black bloc. Black bloc is a loosely organized group as is antifa. They’re both leftist groups, with some similar views. Some antifa are black bloc, but not many.
Antifa is the most focused group, are most likely to engage in peaceful protesting but also believe that fascism can’t be reasoned with so when the Nazis show up, they usually do as well. They’re rarely aggressors, but if the white supremacists decide to throw down, they do too. They see their role more as protecting the public from fascists than being aggressors. They really don’t loot or riot or break shit for the hell of it. Think of them as the first line outside of the rule of law. Unlikely that there’s any organized antifa action here, at least until the MAGAs show up in an organized sense.
Black bloc also oppose fascists, but also capitalism, and police violence and a bunch of other stuff. This is much more their kind of show. They are certainly sympathetic to BLM, but they aren’t interested in sparing BLMs reputation. They do believe non-peaceful protest is necessary. They will loot and riot, but are generally a little thoughtful about it – they’ll bust the windows of the big bank, but will spare the small business owner. They aren’t trying to set up the BLM folks, but at the same time they’ll look down on the BLM folks for not going beyond non-violent protests (similar to how we think negotiating with Republicans is not just pointless but often counterproductive). Black bloc folks tend to be anarchists, but aren’t necessarily. Lots of (most?) anarchists aren’t black bloc. The WTO protests are black bloc, not antifa. The Trump inauguration protests are black bloc, not antifa. The Milo speaking tour had both turn out.
So, we don’t usually get these groups, but they’ve floated through a few times. They pop off pretty quickly anywhere BART can reach. Theres an intent to deal with them differently among my local police – pretty hands-off if it’s antifa, because they tend to react to violence but not incite it. Much more aggressive with black bloc because they will break your shit without any real provocation.
White guys flipping police cars is very black bloc. Stereotypically so. Subtly breaking the windows of an Autozone – no. Looting a local diner – no. Throwing rocks at police – yes. Beating down white trash legolas – that’s all of em. (guessing the compromise with that guy was that cops would keep the crowd from beating him to death in exchange for the crowd burning his car)
So, I suspect we’re seeing a lot of opportunism from black bloc groups, and some infiltration from other agitators.
Of course once rioting and looting starts, lots of normal folks go along for the ride. That’s just what happens. The instigators count on it.
Elizabelle
@Laura Too: Oh that’s interesting. And people looking to score opiates to sell. Wow.
West of the Cascades
@download my app in the app store mistermix: Is Nick’s open for takeout? Brings back memories of growing up in Buffalo and driving to Rochester for a “snack.”
Here in Portland there was some downtown violence/vandalism in the wee hours of last night, done by white people, of course, after a completely peaceful multiracial vigil and rally honoring George Floyd. Curfew started at 8:00 pm, about 20 minute ago, local TV says protesters are on the street. Hoping it stays peaceful tonight.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: The cops don’t want to bust these people, they’re too busy shooting rubber bullets into crowds of protesters and press. Probably some of them ARE cops.
Fair Economist
Twitter is just swarming with photos and stories about white agitators destroying property, frequently after the protests are over. Of course some are anarchists, and there is some violence by real protesters, but I think the large majority of this is MAGATs.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
just turned on MSNBC: a car set on fire two blocks from the White House, windows smashed up and down Connecticutt Ave (I don’t the geography). Reporter says crowds have been pushed back from the White House and Lafayette Park.
Watching firefighters put out the car, looks like it might be a police vehicle
JaySinWA
@opiejeanne: She called it at 4:45 according to the report I saw. I first saw a tweet at 4:58 that had been posted eight minutes earlier. Damn short notice.
trollhattan
My kid marched last night and reports it was tense with the route heavily policed. There were verbal challenges but nothing further, even after they reached the destination police station. She and her friend left at sundown. It’s reported that after dark a group of “about 75” broke off, gathered at a freeway overpass and started tangling with the cops and busting things. I have not seen stills or video of that and won’t comment on who, only note that it’s a tiny fraction of the thousands who marched earlier.
Another protest at the Capitol this a.m., don’t know much of that one, only that it evidently made our weekly “Open mah Applebee’s nao!” protest vanish. (Wonder if the astroturf checks cleared?)
Laura Too
@NotoriousJRT: Thank you. I am on my 5th night of no sleep. We had neighborhood meetings because these guys are threatening to burn our houses. I live in one of the most diverse areas in the city among people who can least afford it. I’m a little raw from all the people who feel free to comment on rioting from the comfort of their home. My throat and sinuses are raw from crying and teargas and smoke.
Matt McIrvin
The problem is that the only tools any officials have to restore the peace are… the police. The fascist shitheads who caused all this in the first place.
Not tremendously confident that sending in the National Guard is much better.
ziggy
Yes, that’s my gut feeling about it. They just have to get the ball rolling. I have a bit of experience from the WTO riots. My boyfriend at the time (yes, a real winner), would go to the riots, “just to watch and be part of it”, but I suspect he was a bit more involved, even though he swore up and down he wasn’t. He certainly wasn’t part of any organized group. Just a young male with anger issues that hated cops.
Gravenstone
@Elizabelle: It may be self-endangering, depending on how quick they are to resort to physical violence against a person. But if you grab a full face respirator like that guy was wearing and pull down, you WILL have their complete attention. Having worn similar for my job, they only come off by loosening the straps/harness or by pulling up (which tends to hurt like hell). Even if they manage to twist their way out of it, you’ve now unmasked them. Unfortunately, if they’re asshole enough, you may also have just gotten yourself stabbed or shot.
Benw
@rikyrah: it was crazy! The protestors in that area were spread out and standing calmly. My wife was there in person and took a video to show how safe people were being right before the attack. Then the police just burst in, and starting waving spray and shoving people. The police were yelling about the kids who’d climbed up on the benches and planters around the park but were pretty chaotic and violent so it’s hard to understand them. My wife’s reading of scene is that the cops were looking to start shit (other parts of the protest had been chanting “fuck the police” etc) and found a pretty “soft” area they could fuck up some people without risk to themselves.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
looks like organizers forming a human chain in front of the target.
Tazj
There’s a curfew in the city of Buffalo, NY and Erie County until 7am. There was a peaceful protest for hours in the city but then things seemed to change quite late in the evening. There’s a van and something else on fire near Niagara Square and the police are trying to get the crowd to disperse. The County Executive also said someone was pulled from their car and beaten but didn’t elaborate on that incident.
When they showed the crowd ( on the tv news) it appeared to be almost entirely very young white people, mainly men but a few women. I’m home on my couch and I’m only commenting on what I’ve seen on local tv news.
The County Executive and the Mayor of the city of Buffalo are both blaming outside groups for the worst behavior and say only a few hundred people at most have behaved badly.
ziggy
Really? That’s painting with a pretty broad and nasty brush. Thank FSM for the “fascist shitheads” who kept downtown Seattle from turning into a smoking cinder tonight. I don’t envy their thankless job at all.
gwangung
@opiejeanne: 4:45 pm. 15 minutes notice.
Belafon
Because the people doing the damage are white people, and they’re not going to be killed by the cops.
theturtlemoves
The morons trashing a few stores in Eugene, Oregon last night seemed to just be opportunistic shit-stirrers. One of the prominent tweets going around with the folks smashing up the Five Guys and the young woman that some really imaginative folks are trying to claim was a cop is from Eugene. The heartbreaking part of that video is the lone black woman with the megaphone, in tears, begging the pasty assholes to stop. My daughter’s local social media included a video of some idiot asking, next to the bonfire in the middle of the street, “What else do we hate?” and some rando offering “Factory farming?” So, yeah, opportunistic cosplay revolutionaries around these parts at least.
Matt McIrvin
@ziggy: At this point, I’m sick of giving police any slack at all. I’ve been hearing the reports from Minneapolis and NYC–police driving cars into crowds of protesters, shooting rubber bullets into groups of reporters. For all I know, there might be some decent cops somewhere but in the cities with the worst trouble, the cops are rioting.
stinger
@Nelle: I don’t know Mike Franken personally, but have been on multiple calls (town hall, happy hour, etc.) with him. He says that Schumer “approved” him to run against Grassley in 2022, but he decided to try to beat Ernst this year. The DSCC, however, wants a woman to run against Ernst. I’d like a (Democratic) woman for senator, but have already cast my primary vote for Franken. All Greenfield seems to have is the widow-with-small-children story.
The anti-Franken ads are an insult to every veteran in the country, IMO. He didn’t “move to Iowa to run”, he came home. He does own a million-dollar home in Northern Virginia, because his most recent duty assignment was in DC, and that’s what houses cost there. There are things a reasonable person might not like about him, but the ads I’ve seen are, as you say, dishonest.
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
I’m beginning to think there’s some sort of secret, coordinated effort going on between all the police departments and in support of Trump.
gwangung
@debbie: You see how ICE and CPB got free reign with Trump. They want to do the same things.
Patricia Kayden
Yep
different-church-lady
Well, I guess the lie that only minorities are capable of rioting is being put to bed on national television.
opiejeanne
@gwangung: thanks, I saw, upthread. That’s like no notice, boom! We’re closed in 10, 9, 8,7….
My two daughters live in Seattle, one just south of the Fremont bridge, above Lake Union. The other one used to live across the lake and they could see each others’ buildings but now she lives right near the Indian restaurant where we had a meetup, Saffron Grill in Northgate. The one on Lake Union said they watched the I-5 being closed, both girls said they could hear what sounded kind of like gunfire but I’m guessing they heard flash-bangs or maybe teargas being fired (I don’t know, do those make a loud bang?).
My son lives in Garden Grove, CA. I need to call him and find out how they’re doing.
Benw
@Matt McIrvin: I hate to say it because it sounds crazy, but based on the current reports from Minn and Chi, plus our personal experience in NYC, these are police riots and provocateurs. The actual protestors are for the most part the non-violent ones.
Elizabelle
Great. After midnight and someone is setting off firecrackers a few blocks away. At least, I hope those are firecrackers.
debbie
@gwangung:
I can’t get that cop’s face out of my mind as he was crushing Floyd’s windpipe. All passive-aggressive with a look just daring anyone to do anything about it.
rikyrah
Martin
@opiejeanne: Things are pretty quiet here in OC. Some peaceful protests in Santa Ana, Orange and Fullerton, but that’s it. I heard there was supposed to be protests in Huntington Beach, but I don’t know if that happened – they’ve got the reopen protesters there most days.
Laura Too
@debbie: Yes. The white agitators seem to have disappeared tonight. From what I’m seeing things aren’t burning and no one is shooting at the guard or firefighters, the only people out are young people who are idealistic and will get hurt. We were abandoned by the police for the last few nights and we were all very afraid knowing if anything happened we were on our own. It does seem orchestrated.
gwangung
@different-church-lady: Well, if people are paying attention. I’m afraid too many swing state voters won’t be…They were not paying attention that Ferguson residents got tear-gassed in their homes or the folks who got arrested weren’t locals…
@opiejeanne: A lot of folks got caught unawares, so, yeah, I can see where they were pissed. And it still may be the case the Seattle police could have been too quick to lob tear gas and do beat downs…
Martin
@opiejeanne: Flash bangs are very loud. Teargas usually not. I am hearing a lot of fireworks around.
NotoriousJRT
@Laura Too: I am so sorry about all of this & where it leaves your neighborhood. Most of all I am sorry that this will take the focus of the continuing horror of police murder of black men.
Matt McIrvin
@Benw: I’ve been following Maggie Koerth’s tweets from the street in Minneapolis. At one point she was having a conversation with a protester and a cop just shot the guy in the leg with a rubber bullet, right there, while they were talking.
HumboldtBlue
I’ll try and catch some followup video, but Jane Doe in Los Angeles just spoke for a generation.
I have noticed that criticism from experienced overseas journalists have pointed out how our protest coverage differs from coverage in places like Egypt or Hong Kong. News folks caught on because I saw a lot more “what does the actual protestor think and why are they here?” on the ground reporting.
This was a case of that.
Yutsano
@Laura Too: I wish I had an answer for your Somali immigrant who just lost her business. She’s going to have to deal with years of insurance hell, needing legal assistance she probably can’t afford. What would be great is if we could buy like virtual gift cards for her place or something like that.
Matt McIrvin
Police beat the shit out of John Cusack because he had a camera:
https://twitter.com/johncusack/status/1266938983575101441
PaulWartenberg
Send that photo to the local papers and tv channels. get zoom- ins on the guy’s tattoos and patches. I get the feeling he’s a proud boy / militia type.
the Far Right militias have been spoiling for a race war for years now. you can tell they’re trying to make things worse.
Laura Too
@NotoriousJRT: Thank you. As my last comment, I think it is intentional and orchestrated. I think they saw 15,000 of us came out Tuesday in a pandemic to protest-all colors-saying we are no longer going to tolerate this. And it scared them. Mike Freeman knew he would throw a match on gasoline when he said he needed to wait to charge or bring in the murderer. And then after thing got violent he finally charged them.
trollhattan
@opiejeanne:
Giant circle of life. When I was in HS, antiwar protestors shut down I-5 in downtown Seattle after the Cambodia invasion and Kent State. It was mostly an outgrowth of a year of turmoil at UW.
Laura Too
Another observation in watching CNN pattern of stores broken into, looting and then huge fires. That’s how it started here. A lot of these businesses have heavy tempered glass. How are they breaking it? How are they starting fires in brick buildings? I am really worried about this.
Persistent Illusion
@Patricia Kayden: Eff the cops, they are not the good guys here.
mrmoshpotato
Fuck these motherfuckers. That guy should be beaten with that tire iron.
Downtown Chicago was a fucking warzone today. Police scanner traffic was crazy. And then there’re the overturned and burned police cars, looting, throwing rocks, etc. Why, you shitstains? Why? Fuck! You!
Martin
@Laura Too: Oh, it’s really not that hard. The glass is heavy and tempered but large panes aren’t hard to break even so. And every building has plenty of stuff inside ready to burn.
We discover that every fall here in CA – stuff burns WAY easier than you think.
Matt McIrvin
Okay, here’s a place where the cops seem to have behaved–New Orleans:
https://www.facebook.com/george.williams.iv/posts/10163605136740024
Note, this seems to have been the result of reforms instituted by city government with the help of Obama’s DOJ. So political leadership can make a difference if it wants to.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hard to follow with all the background noise, but you can still hear the white-splaining tone
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: Aaahhhh. Fuck Wilmer and his whiny trash supporters.
The Pale Scot
I really need Rose Tyler to hurry up and send Donna Noble back to her own past and make herself turn right at the intersection so she can save the Doctor and we can avoid these insanities. If a UFO crashes into Big Ben I wouldn’t be surprised.
l3000
@Laura Too: I am so sorry you all are going through this. A younger family member lives in Seward and has been up nights on guard duty and cleanup. I completely support the protests but fires and the destruction of minority communities is heartbreaking–and I can’t stop thinking of three weeks from now and what happens with covid.
I donated to WeLoveLakeStreet.com as there’s very little I can do from far way. Wish I could do more.
CaseyL
Coming in very late to the thread: I was out of town all day, and about to head back to Seattle when I got a call from a friend letting me know the same shit has happened here: A peaceful protest that turned ugly and violent.
I called my Mom to let her know I was OK, and about to take my chances on driving back to Seattle, and she told me that there was one in Miami, and that she saw a bunch of white guys in “Anarchist” costumes start breaking windows and setting fires.
The Right and their allies the Anarchists are turning peaceful protests in bloodied mayhem. I want to know how enough of us can yell about that, often and loudly enough, to overcome the lazy MSM and the corrupt LEO agencies.
Laura Too
@Martin: Thank you! Lack of sleep makes me paranoid and I keep having bad thoughts of 45 declaring marshal law. I can’t even begin to imagine the damage that would do.
CaseyL
PS: (Can’t edit my comment for some reason) I did get home safely. Got off the freeway and took an alternate route once I was in King County.
Laura Too
@l3000: Thank you for the kindness and the donation. I want my small businesses back. It is a great community.I’m in Longfellow. We would have loved Seward but couldn’t afford it.
NotMax
@Laura Too
Tempered does not mean unbreakable. It’s a technique for ameliorating injury by splinters and shards resulting from shattering.
Large display windows may or may not be tempered but are likely laminated, which is a method for keeping the broken glass immediately contained within the frame when damage occurs.
Laura Too
@NotMax: Yeah, I saw a lot of that on Wednesday.
Laura Too
Guess it’s starting: Someone was shooting in the area of 14th and E. Lake Street a few minutes ago, a department source says. Someone taken by ambulance.
ETA new info.
Dan B
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
@ziggy: Downtown Seattle will be fine. The damage is limited. The police have been restrained despite vehicles with military grade rifles being destroyed. De-escalation may not prevail forever. We can hope.
Rule of Law in America is uncertain.
Yutsano
@CaseyL: I imagine the 99 is going to be slammed tomorrow…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
HRA
@Tazj: Hi Iam from Orchard Park and once lived in Buffalo. The news showed windows broken in City Hall. A reporter took photos of the guy doing it who then set something on fire and through it inside. The cops caught him.
Martin
@CaseyL: The anarchists/black bloc are certainly not an ally of Trump. They may be playing into their narrative, but they would argue that happens no matter what. To wit – yesterday the President retweeted a supporter saying the only good Democrat was a dead Democrat.
I accept the argument that the anarchists don’t help. Even more I agree that co-opting BLM activities is shitty. If they want to go burn down a police station, they can take their own credit for that on their own time and not drag BLM into their methods. But do POC really believe that Trump and his allies are going to change as a result of peaceful protests? It feels good to protest, you build other kinds of solidarity doing it, but I don’t expect any real change to come of it. We tend to look back on similar violent uprisings in the US fairly compassionately. The anti-war protests in hindsight don’t seem that unjustified when it became clear that the government knew for years that the war had failed and continued to draft and send young people to their death, and in those cases it almost always is the state that escalated first, much as we’re seeing here, with journalists being shot deliberately by police, police deliberately hitting uninvolved individuals.
These are not Trump’s allies. We may not think they’re ours either, but don’t throw them in with Trump. That’s unfair. MLK may not have agreed with Malcolm Xs methods, but he never accused the black panthers of supporting institutional racism or the forces that MLK was working against.
CaseyL
@Martin: I don’t think Malcolm’s people went to peaceful protests and turned them into riotous mayhem. That’s what’s happening here.
Same thing happened at WTO IN ’99. There *were* “professional agitators” at the WTO riots in Seattle: I know this because – before everything blew up – the alt.press covered their strategy sessions. They *did* take a peaceful protest and turn it violent.
Police over-reaction made it worse, but I don’t think the police started the riot. The Mayor at the time was sympathetic to the protests and explicitly told the cops to hold back.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: Burning down your own neighborhood doesn’t help much either, there are still vacant lots in Watts where building burned in the 1965 riots.
Martin
@CaseyL: The two sides feed into each other. How many incidents just today show the eagerness of police to initiate violence against non-violent people? And the people who want to draw attention to that will act in the way that draws that attention.
How many times have we commented on how 3 million women can march and yet 17 assholes with AR-15s get more media coverage. If you want media attention, unfortunately you have to bring violence to the stage. Now people are paying attention. It shouldn’t work this way, but it does.
And understand this isn’t just about George Floyd. It’s also about Trump pardoning his friends, Republicans refusing to investigate or hold criminals accountable, a government that refuses to help prevent 100,000 deaths, and so on.
There’s growing calls inside the WH to act. His hand is being forced. He’ll fuck it up, of course, but the leaders are being forced to do something, and that’s the goal of these protests. He values the stock market – well, what’s the market going to look like after weeks of this?
Look, I think this is shitty, but you don’t get spontaneous riots across the entire country unless you’ve pushed the public to their breaking point. That’s how it was in 65 in Watts. In 67. In 92. And in each of those cases, it was an act of violence against the public by the state, against a backdrop of larger social problems. Remember, in ’92, the riots didn’t happen after the Rodney King video came out, but after the officers were acquitted, after justice was denied.
Riots are about restoring social order by inverting social norms. Its about people out of power forcing themselves into power, in part by tearing down those elements of institutional power – which is why commercial property is attacked. They aren’t attacking homes. They aren’t burning residential assets but assets of the state they feel are oppressing them – police cars, etc. That reaction only happens because the state has robbed them of what they offer to others.
This is all preventable if the state is actually accountable to the public, and doesn’t just pretend to be (or worse, admit that they have no intention of doing)
NotoriousJRT
@Laura Too: There are many things (parking / construction barricades, trash cans, saw two people with a long 4X6). Some came well prepared.
Laura Too
@NotoriousJRT: The barricades from the bridges were up because they closed off a lane for bikers and walkers to have extra room on a lot of our streets. The trash cans, at least Friday night, came from our yards. We had community meetings and email notices to take ours in. Not sure on the 4×6 except to say we all have extra time these days and with the stimulus check some have extra cash to do side projects so it could have come from someone’s yard..
Nancy
@Patricia Kayden:
Not so controversial. Simple justice–not so often seen.
Obdurodon
@ziggy: The problem is that there really do seem to be two kinds of cops. I have friends and family who are cops. They’re literally some of the best people I know, working a hard job to protect and serve. Unfortunately, in many places it seems that the cops really have turned into a fascist paramilitary. Once the bad cops in a precinct or department outnumber the good ones, the good ones leave and the evil intensifies. And don’t get me started on how the “thin blue line” stuff is an essential part of that process.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Elizabelle: I hope so as well, but I remember Charlottesville where the police were not active in identifying anyone other than James Field, even with videos showing the faces of those assaulting the peaceful protestors, such as DeAndre Harris being beaten by a white supremacist group. Social Media citizens identified many of the white supremacist criminals and forwarded the information to the authorities. We may well need these volunteer efforts again.
Ol'Froth
@geg6: I was watching live video shot by a Post-gazette reporter. Spotted many anarchists in the crowd when things started going bad, also spotted a possible boogaloo boi.
J R in WV
At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, 1968… that was a police riot, ordered up by RWNJ “Democrat” Mayor Daley – I was a freshman in college, we watched that unroll on national TV in the “lounge” in our dorm. Pretty much universal disgust at the police activity, it was a liberal arts school, in general anti war.
Later on after I was about to be drafted, I joined the USN and spent the summer of 1970 at Great Lakes, and most weekends when we had enough money went to Chicago for Rock and Roll shows. There was a free blues show at Grant Park by the lake all Saturday afternoon. When the show ended around 6 pm, most folks left right away. We were naive and strolled away, only to look back and see a crowd of folks throwing stuff at the Chicago cops. They turned several cruisers over and set them on fire. Evidently back then once it was upside down gas would run out, which made them easy to set on fire.
The objects appeared to be thrown in unison toward the cops, who responded in unison by firing tear gas grenades back at the crowd. We stepped up our departure. That was more of a Rock and Roll riot, not started by the cops like the ’68 police riot was.
To me it appears that any given peaceful demonstration that runs until dark is in huge danger of being set upon by Black Block, white supremacists and cops firing rubber bullets and tear gas, defeating the purpose of the peaceful demonstration. Everyone in the security biz knows to cause a riot just send the cops into a peaceful demonstration, at which point peaceful is over because of the violent police response to any sign of restive behavior from the “civilians” the cops are sworn to protect.
HaHaHa!!yeah, right! Protect and Serve, right?!!! With tear gas, pepper spray and armored vehicles.
I am pretty much enraged at the 3%ers, white supremacists, so-called anarchists, All Lives Matter assholes causing violence in order to help “society” put down peaceful demonstrations by actual liberal society trying to end police violence. To the point where I expect the rage is harming my health. I try to stick to reading fiction… but wife is an old reporter who can’t help but watch continuous news reports, which I hear, since she’s watching TV on her laptop some 15 feet away from me, commenting here on my laptop.
You all try to stay safe, wear your masks, don’t go into town unless you can get back home well before dark sets in. Keep in touch with your family an local friends, and with the Jackals who worry about our Balloon Juice friends when shit is hitting the fan everywhere. Still only
56 certified Corona-19 cases in our county, but since no one is testing, who knows what the real count is? No real shopping in rural home county but for a feed store…The county where I shop has 215 confirmed cases and 18 deaths, again, who knows how big the undercount is there.