Tomorrow evening:
On Sunday, May 31st at 8pmET, @donlemon will host a two-hour special taking a hard look at the violence and racism faced by black people in the United States today. pic.twitter.com/Ml8mNmWIoT
— CNN Communications (@CNNPR) May 29, 2020
Next month:
Let's turn our mourning into movement! Plan now to join us for June 20th Mass Poor People's Assembly & Moral March on Washington: Digital Justice Gathering. RSVP now & invite 20 friends to join you: https://t.co/QvSXvLXybx
— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@RevDrBarber) May 28, 2020
lamh36
Recognize a soon to be VP candidate???
ThresherK
I have said this at least a year ago: Don Lemon was nearly useless when Obama was the Prez, but has become useful now.
Should Biden win in November, which Don Lemon will show up next year?
Baud
@lamh36: No wonder Trump was cowering.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The Chief of the Atlanta PD went into the streets to meet with and talk with marchers. I hope between the two of them, they’re starting a trend
SiubhanDuinne
@ThresherK:
No offense in the slightest, but that is the absolute least of my worries.
SiubhanDuinne
@lamh36:
Good for her. And I hope you’re right. Biden-Harris would be a dream ticket.
debbie
Has anyone shared this photo of the Santa Cruz police chief taking a knee with protesters?
Brachiator
Posting on the fly. Don’t know if this has been posted already.
Searing commentary from Trevor Noah
https://youtu.be/v4amCfVbA_c
raven
The Atlanta news has a chopper flying over the Bass Pro Shop in Gwinnett area and there are a bunch of folks messing with traffic. My advice is to be cool around a big ass gun store in the Atlanta burbs,
Ivan X
I’m not the most empathetic person in the world, at the global scale — I tend to compartmentalize and not always feel my connection to what’s going on outside of me personally. Sometimes I feel like that’s because if I did, I would just be too sad and overwhelmed to live my life. I just started sobbing now, maybe because George Floyd’s death feels so savage and personal. I just keep imagining what it would feel like to simply be held helpless, terrified, suffocating, until you just…die. Actually die, forever gone. At the hands of someone whose job it is to protect you. It’s so horrifying.
PsiFighter37
Walked by Union Square this afternoon – pretty solid turnout for peaceful protests there. Just saw another round of protesters walking across 23rd Street for about 5-7 minutes. I hope that this is the kind of message that gets projected; the looting and burning of stuff has gotta stop…I know folks are frustrated, but frankly that is the kind of thing that will send iffy suburban white voters right back into the arms of Daddy Trump.
Frankensteinbeck
@PsiFighter37:
I have never seen this before, but the mainstream Narrative among whites seems to be “Police and other white people are doing the vandalism to turn peaceful protests into riots.” I swear that somehow Trump has managed to fuck up what should have been a huge gift to his re-election.
Old School
@PsiFighter37:
Anyone who would vote for Trump at this point will find an excuse with or without the looting.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
This story is on Reddit right now.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
It’s infuriating and really exposes the racist double standards of the police.
mrmoshpotato
@ThresherK:
Lemon damn well better call Dump a traitorous, white supremacist, white trash, Soviet shitpile mobster conman who sucks the Kremlin’s asshole.
MattF
@Frankensteinbeck: Trump obviously wants to see people get hurt, and it’s revolting. The narrative has shifted because he’s so awful.
satby
@debbie: family friend Justin Cummings is Mayor of Santa Cruz. He was there too.
Edit: First African American mayor of that city.
debbie
@Baud:
Well, well, well, won’t that just rumple BillyBarr’s britches?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Frankensteinbeck:
I’ve seen this too. It doesn’t help when police are caught live on the air shooting rubber bullets at news crews. This happened in Louisville, Kentucky
debbie
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
This also happened in Louisville. How nice to see actual good people!
Baud
Sometimes I think he reads this blog.
satby
Nice turnout for the march in South Bend today too. Pictures at the link.
Bruuuuce
Big rally in my neighborhood (Jackson Heights, NY) this afternoon. Started at Diversity Plaza ( :-) ) about two blocks from the house, and, highly unusually for here, I could actually here the No Justice, No Peace chants from my bedroom. (I knew about it, but being both at risk by age and diabetes, and dealing with an ongoing open foot wound, thought staying home was the better part of valor)
Local reportage says it was around 1,000 people, who marched peacefully up to the precinct (maybe a mile or so). Photos show a wide range of demographics among the marchers.
I’m proud of my nabe today.
Caphilldcne
I’m on Capitol Hill in DC. Long parade of cars supporting an end to police violence going down 8th St NE. All honking and waving and they’re so young! Love the kids! I assume they’re heading to the Capitol but I don’t really know. Not sure how to post a pic and theyre a bit blurry anyway. It’s been going at least 45 minutes. And I bet no coverage because it’s not 12 dudes with guns.
Jinchi
Bob Barr is telling us that they’re radical leftwing activists and anarchists.
Martin
@Jinchi: Well, Hitler was a socialist…
JaySinWA
@debbie: Barr and Trump have already tried to set the narrative as Antifa and left wing radicals. Given the post Mueller report buyin of the Barr whitewash by the press, and seeing no pushback yet on this, I have no confidence that this false narrative won’t hold for long enough to make it lost in new distractions.
lamh36
There are folks out there using the protest to start chaos that will be blamed on legit protesters!! Be careful!!!
Heres the entire thread:
https://twitter.com/YNB/status/1266856594806960128
debbie
@lamh36:
I hope people are taking pictures of crap like this.
cain
They are instituting curfew here in portland, but the mayor had a good statement – “”I cannot condone last night’s violence, I can’t stand by and watch our city be destroyed, buildings set aflame. I won’t. But nor will I stand silent as men like George Floyd are murdered by the very institutions that are supposed to protect and serve them,” Wheeler said. “Institutions fail and deny [black people] their basic rights and, all too often, even their very lives … the murder of George Floyd underscored the day to day experience of being black in America.”
But I think it’s time to declare – “enough is enough”
lamh36
The NFL has got some damn nerve!
https://twitter.com/jemelehill/status/1266857392806871041
cain
@lamh36:
Question is – will the media highlight this – I mean – they did such a bang up job during Katrina showing black folks looting and going to the fainting couches.
Let the evidence show that white people (white supremacists and criminals) co-opted a peaceful movement and turned it ugly because they want a race war.
Frankensteinbeck
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I live in a totebagger family. Hell, I live in a totebagger family *in Louisville*. I’m not hearing the ‘blacks are prone to riot’ thing here, and I’m only seeing it on the web among the hardcore right wing. All I hear and see is that the protestors have a very good point, and the violence is not the protestors’ fault. I’m hearing that from the most conservative and pro-cop people I can tolerate. I must repeat, I have never seen a reaction like this among whites. This stuff normally scares the shit out of the suburban whites, but not this time. Whether what I’m seeing reflects the actual nationwide trend I can’t say, but this time seems different to me.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@debbie:
I saw that yesterday. It was an amazing sight to behold
Baud
Martin
@debbie: They are. The guy who started the looting at the Auto Zone sure didn’t look like a protestor.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/05/30/who-is-umbrella-man-mystery-vandal-at-minneapolis-riot-spurs-conspiracies/#519b1a83236e
debbie
@lamh36:
randy
West steps of capitol in Denver was fabulous from noon onward. Five hundred doubled to a thousand, then I turned around to see a thousand more marching in from north Broadway. 80% white or non-black.
debbie
@Martin:
Good.
He should send the video to Barr and ask him what he thinks. //
cain
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think it’s not hard to see how one would feel to have a knee on someone’s neck while the man slowly dies.. the cop’s hands were casually in his pockets – like it was nothing. So yeah, one can easily see why that would anger a people who have metaphorically been treated this way by their country despite fighting and dying when the nation calls upon them for service.
Miss Bianca
@lamh36: Gods, I hope so!
So wanting Biden/Harris!
Miss Bianca
@Ivan X: Yeah, I get it. I can’t stop thinking about it either.
randy
@randy: I expected to see people from church or other friends at this protest in Denver; all masked, incognito, no recognize, yet I felt loved and welcomed by the anonymous crowd.
James E Powell
People on social media in nearly every city describe white people who are instigating or doing the property damage. Twitter is alive with arguments that it is MAGA maniacs! No, it’s Antifa!
What is Antifa? How many people are we talking about? The MAGAs talk about it like it’s a huge organization, a force to be reckoned with. I never seen more than fifty people and they’ve always been counter-protestors at a nazi rally.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): this has got to be One of a dozen things I find astounding about the events of the last few days. The police used to at least pretend to be following “procedure” for the cameras at least(the ever present Stop Resisting shouts when the person is not actually resisting for example) but they have gotten even more brazen and are now attacking anyone who records there actions to including the press. That’s some fascist shit…
columbusqueen
Well, Columbus has turned totally fubar. Today, while leading a peaceful protest, three AA elected officials-US House Rep. Joyce Beatty, Columbus City Council Pres. Shannon Hardin, & Franklin County Commissioner Kevin Boyce-were pepper sprayed by CPD goons. We’re now under a 10 pm curfew, the National Guard is called out, & the major freeways are closed. This after two nights of running battles downtown between CPD & protesters, where looting only started AFTER the cops attacked peaceful protesters with no warning or provocation.
I am not a happy girl right now.
Cameron
I’ve seen some pics from Philly and it looks like the violence is coming from white people dressed in black. I’m assuming Black Bloc, since that’s their thing – find a demonstration, turn it into a riot. A buddy of mine up there who was involved in organizing the demonstrations said everybody was getting weird messages from groups they had never heard of. Of course, Our Liberal Media will be all over this, right? Right?
Sab
@Frankensteinbeck: I am hearing the same thing from actual cops with cop kids, who are terrified that some really bad cops in other cities are going to get their cop kids killed.
I have never seen anything like this.
Other side, a Columbus Congresscritter Deborah Joyce, and a distinguished lawyer and former State Supreme Court candidate (Kevin O’Brien) got pepper sprayed today at peaceful Columbus protest.
Frankensteinbeck
@James E Powell:
I do not know. I have personally known one left-leaning anarchist way back when who talked about going to the WTO protests specifically to turn them into riots. He spoke as if he had compatriots. So, this type of left-leaning troublemaker does exist. Do they really count as anything other than thrill-seeking assholes? I couldn’t say. But it’s not all right winger agent provocateurs.
debbie
@Sab:
Actually, the Congresscritter was Joyce Beatty, and I think you’re referring to Kevin Boyce. He ran against a real dick of a GOPer named Josh Mandel who insisted Boyce was a Mooslum. Never apologized about it either.
Ruckus
Ohio Mom
Bruuuuce @24: You live in a great neighborhood!
My favorite aunt and uncle lived on Northern Boulevard across from the White Castle when I was born, then bought a house on 85th Street in 1965, so Jackson Heights has been part of my entire life. I have so many memories attached to that neighborhood. I envy you living there.
Take good care of your foot!
Ruckus
@debbie:
I seem to recall from when I lived in the Columbus area that Josh Mandel is a real fucking sweetheart.
satby
@debbie : Actually, when I looked at the picture, that tall black guy next to the police chief on the right is Mayor Cummings.
Ohio Mom
We lefties always knew our protests were infiltrated by cops and other bad actors but one thing I never expected to see was a police chief (Minneapolis) announcing the majority of the arrests for violent actions were out-of-towners — he didn’t come right out and say it, but right-wingers with fantasies of a Civil War do-over.
Another shocker was seeing the video of the white man clad in black, wearing a gas mask, carrying an umbrella, swinging a hammer and calmly smashing in store windows like it was an everyday, completely routine chore.
I am so thankful for cellphone video cameras.
Sloane Ranger
When I was an active Trades Unionist here in the UK we always had to be aware that radical anti-capitalist or anarchist groups might try to hijack a demo. These people weren’t interested in the reason for the demo. They actually seemed to think that breaking windows or trashing businesses were somehow going to bring about the Revolution.
I’m quite prepared to believe that the troublemakers consist of both right wing white supremacists and anti-capitalist groups each with their own agenda.
columbusqueen
@debbie: Yeah, Mandel is a complete dick. The race was for State Treasurer.
debbie
@columbusqueen:
Pretty sweet though when he lost to Sherrod.
debbie
@satby:
It was great that the mayor was there, actually.