I’m not sure where else to put this, so I thought I’d include it here. I’m sorry, I’m not up on the current flow of the thread.
I attended a protest last night at the police station in my little Maine college town. Some thoughts -
I’m not sure how impromptu or not it was. I learned about it as I was lying on my couch watching the TeeVee when I heard chanting. I took a peek out the window and saw the crowd that had gathered across the street from the police station. The lot where they had gathered is corner to corner with my lot, so it was kind of hard to miss. I grabbed my mask and phone and I headed over. There was a black man speaking, seemingly off the cuff, about racial injustice - he was emotional at times but I was getting the feeling that this was about the hundredth time he’s made this speech and he was struggling to keep a flow. The crowd was very vocal - there were chants of “George Floyd, George Floyd” and “No justice, No peace” and call outs to the dozen so names of other black people who have been killed in the last few years. It was stirring and touching, but then there were a few poison pills in the crowd.
There was this one young guy was just desperate to get a billy club across the bean. “Kneel you fucking pigs! What? Are you gonna shoot me? Fuck you!” He was right at that level of being irritating but not dangerous and he really wasn’t making any friends on any side of the argument. Fellow compatriots kept shushing him and asking him to calm down.
There were three police cruisers in the lot, another across the street, and of course the entire police department across the other street. Six officers, wearing masks, stood in a line like they were protecting their vehicles, the wall to which the protesters were protesting. The big issue seemed to be getting the officers to kneel with the rest of the crowd. They wouldn’t. They took several genial pictures with people, hands held high, look at what buddies we are, type of things but no kneeling. The one officer that I was close to for a few minutes seemed reasonable; he was having a conversation with a protester about why they didn’t have body cameras and it turned into a budget conversation, but when she asked him why he wouldn’t kneel, he clammed up and turned away.
After about an hour, the officers got in their cruisers and took off - a pathetic parade fifty feet back to the station. In the meantime one guy in a suit stayed back and it turned out he was the chief of police - also masked up, I’d like to add. I found out he was the chief of police when the aforementioned irritant piped up, “hey everybody, this guy is the chief of fucking police.” I was a little concerned for a moment. It was now one presumably unarmed cop amongst a crowd of about 200. A protester was asking why he wouldn’t let his officers kneel and he said, “I just don’t believe in it.” Uh oh. I thought it was going to go bad then. He was asked if he would join in a chant of “Black Lives Matter” and he agreed, but he wouldn’t start it. I think he was just faking it under his mask.
There were a few instances of counter-protesting in the form of a truck stopping by and pronouncing, “God bless the police!” and another guy way back in the lot who piped up with an “All Lives Matter.” The responses to them were appropriate from where I stood - someone would shout, “shut the fuck up,” everybody would laugh and we’d go back to what we were doing.
I felt the need to write this up because I’ve spent a good part of today seeing cops kicking the snot out of a lot of people in this country and I don’t know - there but for the grace and all that shit. I’ve never really felt this uncertain about shit in this country before.
Some photojournalism:
Protest 1
Protest 2
Protest 3
Protest 4
Protest 5
And as I was writing this I just heard President Dumbfuck come on talk absolute shit about dominating antifa or some fucking nonsense.
I’m sorry folks - the pleasant protest experience above notwithstanding … we’re fucked.