@Knowsstuff I believe @TatinG was referring to the person who would be driving cross country to pick up her elderly parents.
Just too many to mention. Maybe you were not in Detroit during their basketball championships or even day before Halloween… Car on fire and many destructive things like looting. This I never understand.
@Knowsstuff - my son goes to college in Chicago and even before this he used to joke that the students and professors are the only ones in the area that aren’t armed. Given what’s going on, I’m glad he’s home rather than at college right now. Although I’m sure he’d be fine, as a parent, I’d see the pictures and worry.
@TatinG… Sorry just noticed you were replying to someone else.
To start the healing my synagogue is participating with these other religious leaders and having a peaceful March tomorrow in Chicago to start the healing https://brightstarchurchchicago.com/black-lives-matter-demonstration/
Someone posted people gathering at Wrigley Field. Hope that stays Peaceful.
As a parent I can tell you that is really not a true statement. Lol. But I get it. Over the last few years you have to be more aware in Chicago and even in the “good” areas. Common sense stuff mostly like any big city
What were seeing now has been building up at least in Chicago. It was palpable. But it’s a great city and raising kids here is awesome. But as a parent I truly understand.
Your point being?
The fact that they feel the need to do this, despite the danger, should tell you something about what it is like for Black and Hispanic people in the USA in 2020.
Most of the looters had nothing to do with the protesters. They were simply taking advantage of the fact that the police were occupied. You can see that many were organized, drove in with covered license plates, broke in, loaded the vehicle, and drove out.
Blaming the protesters for the looting is like blaming the protesters for the weather.
As for violence, there are increasing numbers of videos of masked white people starting the violence. Since White nationalists have already said that they would try and get things to escalate, I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t instigate a lot of the violence
In Columbus, the police started the violence every day. They started by teargassing protesters early on. There is plenty of footage out there, which is not shown of those media outlets whose income is based on demonizing Black people.
The anti-shutdown protesters were mobbing the government workers, storming the capitol building, etc, while the police stood by. The people protesting racial injustice were
People who grow up in a middle class White neighborhood are usually used to the police stopping by kids who are making noise and being obnoxious late at night to tell them to go home, and who will rarely arrest kids even when they catch drinking of smoking pot, and will never arrest or detain kids just walking outside at night. People in these neighborhoods are used to calling the police, and having the police arrive, be polite, listen to them, treat them with respect.
People like this are often under the impression that police treat Blacks and Latinos the same way. They are under the impression that police act the same way in poor neighborhoods, especially ones which are majority Black or Hispanic.
They don’t.
These kids are subject to being stopped and detained, arrested and harassed, simply because the officers though that, perhaps, maybe, they had done something that was possibly, perhaps, not entirely legal. If the you Black or Hispanic youth is too slow in complying, or has not, in the officer’s opinion, demonstrated enough deference, the Black or Hispanic kid may find themselves face down, on the ground, with a foot on their head or neck.
We have seen the footage.
Yet, despite having absolutely never actually spent any time in areas in which the majority is Black or Hispanic, despite never having been present or up close when police stop or detain a Black or Brown person, some White Middle class people will categorically deny the reality in which many minorities exist every day.
It is the same thing, again and again, the same willful blindness to what minorities experience “I didn’t see it, therefore it doesn’t happen”, or, “As a White person, I never experienced this, ergo, Black people are just making it up”.
I have heard first hand from kids who went through this, and I have seen enough footage to believe it.
It doesn’t matter whether “all police are like this”. What matters is that the officers like the murderer from Minneapolis were not behaving in this manner for the first time. What matters is that officers who behave like this aren’t disciplined or charged until there are videos of this behavior posted for the public to see.
What matters is that this isn’t new, but, until the phone videos of this behavior started to emerge, almost no police officer was charged when unarmed minority kids were shot by police.
What matters is that, despite this evidence from multiple cases, White middle class and wealthy people are still denying that it happens. Every time a new case emerges, it is always “it was only this one time”. When do multiple “only this one case” become "oh, it’s a pattern?
Evidently, when the cases involve the murder of unarmed Black and Hispanic men by the police, for some people the answer is “never”.
Last I heard, protesting is not an offence which is punishable by the death penalty. Have you heard of any new laws?
We also do not need the federal government making the problem worse by repeating slogans made by infamous segregationists.
I am on several neighborhood Facebook groups. Fear and rage are the dominant emotions directed at the looters. Everyone is sick of days and days of protesting and looting. Local stores are being hit. The national guard is ringing the mall. The police are doing a good job rounding up the looters.
So I am out of town but in my area there was posts about being on the look out for gasoline cans in our alleys and garbage cans since the plan is to burn down houses in an affluent area. Nice…
I know our local target store was sorta hit but people arrested like right away. It was all over our Next Door app about seeing cars at the Target and people calling the police.
Peaceful Protests in Chicago neighborhoods on north side of the city like 5,000 but peaceful.
But reports of sporadic looting.
Nice report of an black women voicing her concerns to a police officer then after listening she hugged him for just listening.
OK well maybe the fun stopped. A shootout with arrests in one neighborhood/Irving and Jansen and a large fire at Belmont and Wolcott. Be safe out there.
These looters are jumping into nicer, newer cars than mine.
And in Philly. Look at footage online of National guard response to protesters on I-676.
Anyone who knows Philly and Philly history knows Fishtown’s history with racism. “Old time Fishtowners” is a very telling phrase. Nobody needs a bunch of prejudiced, white dudes plying vigilantes walking around with shovels, bats, and hammers, ignoring curfews, harassing and swearing at peaceful protesters including using the N word, ripping up BLM signs. Sorry, I’d don’t view that as “defending one’s property” at all.
Police are letting several pitchfork vigilante racist gangs traverse the neighborhood and it reflects poorly on them.
I’m sure police and many residents would have a very large problem with groups of darker skinned people walking around town flipping bats like they just want to hit something or someone or standing on rooftops with assault rifles.
And there are reports some beat up a WHYY producer for filming them and shoved his girlfriend.
I’ve spent my entire life in, or within a literal stone’s throw, of such areas. LOL
The overarching anti-white rhetoric works against any practical reforms. We already have altruistic “anti-racism” policies that excuse violent behavior by black kids in schools because it would skew the racial discipline data. What’s next?
But you can stay inside when the curfew starts. We have a curfew and 2 hours later there are still people marching by the Capitol and neighborhoods surrounding it. If those people went home, the cops could concentrate on those breaking windows and looting. They’ve had all day to protest, they should just go home and follow the law. Those still marching after curfew are assisting the looters and vandals, even if they aren’t personally looting stores.
Haven’t read the thread and I don’t pretend I have. Giving my observations and then heading out again.
When I went to Michigan State, couch burning and what would be labeled riots were common after huge wins.
Weirdly, I’ve never seen anyone suggest martial law to control those. Hell, I barely saw cops bothering to break up the parties.
University of Michigan isn’t much better.
But hey when it’s mostly white folks, no need for batons and rubber bullets.
The town I border had gunmen on the roofs watching a protest of about 20 people. To give context: there literally hasn’t been a murder in this town for years, and yet for some reason they’re still a hyper militarized police force.
Peaceful protesters are being shot with tear gas and bullets.
Homes in DC are having pepper spray sprayed INTO the homes where people have taken shelter.
Reporters are being attacked and arrested on camera.
White supremacists are posing as “antifa” (an organization that literally does not exist) online in order to incite the right. They are literally creating a problem to be angry about.
There is decent evidence that at least one fire was started by cops.
Genesee County sheriff asked what the protesters in Flint wanted. They said “march with us.” So the cops put down their batons and riot gear and marched. Remarkably (I say sarcastically), no incidents.
And me? I’m staying in because of the virus but meanwhile I see white suburban kids flocking to Detroit after they’ve finally flattened the curve. Detroit has asked suburbanites to protest in Ann Arbor and elsewhere, but not to come down to Detroit. They of course haven’t listened and I fear a resurgence of a disease that has already decimated Detroit.
No one has to take my word on any of this. It’s all in HD video on Twitter if you bother to look.
This is the police scanner people in my area are using. Never really listened to one. Well… Please do. Especially if your in an area with activity. Then I think we all will have a different appreciation of the police, ems and firefighters. Think the ones expressing hate (not here) towards them should listen also.
I am coming back to Chicago
Seems like activity around the blocks from my house and my duty in Detroit is done. I will feel better being at home. I hear where I get dog food a block away and some stores were looted. A liquor store a few blocks away, out target they attempted and so on . My wife/kids were on our back deck listening to sirens, last night. To close to home.
That’s your problem. That’s all of our problem.
You’ve constructed a reality based on anecdotal evidence you’ve found on the internet. But the internet is so full of information you can construct or subvert any narrative you want.
There are over a million uniformed police officers in America. Nearly all of them are being video taped constantly. If just 1/10 of 1% do something terrible each year, that will make 20 videos a week of cops behaving badly. You can construct a narrative around those videos that “prove” cops are generally racist thugs, routinely abusing their power.
But that narrative is no more accurate than the narrative that all black people are uneducated violent criminals. Because there are millions of black people in the U.S. too, and if someone sits around watching an internet highlight reel of them behaving badly, black people also look terrible. Watching those video will cause one to become profoundly racist in the same way watching the police videos without context will cause one to become profoundly anti-police.
Trust me when I tell you that there are people watching videos of police and african americans right now, forming opinions on anecdotal evidence, receding deeper and deeper into their bigotry, ignorant of how the law of large numbers will effect the numbers of incidents we should expect.
There is enough information on the internet that you can create a narrative that police are thugs or black people are animals if those are the videos you selectively choose to watch… You can find data points that convince you of just about anything either way. If you rely on twitter videos for your depiction of what life is like in America you are going to get a profoundly warped view of reality.
Based on your twitter feed, you apparently believe the country is filled with white supremacist, and it is them, not Antifa that are causing the violence (like shooting the federal officer.) In your mind, Antifa doesn’t even exist. But there is whole group of other people that cite Jussie Smolet and others for pretending to be victims of white supremacist in order to make white supremacy to seem like a problem that it just isn’t. According to them, the left routinely false flags racism to overstate the problem, just as you are accusing the right of doing here.
Anyway, I’ve rambled to long. My only real point here is that you shouldn’t rely to heavily on your twitter feed to provide you with an accurate view of what is occuring in America. Because other people also have a twitter feed, and there’s are proving just the opposite.
I spent the first few decades of my life in a majority black and Hispanic area. One of the highest poverty counties in the United States, with a level of violence and mayhem in the 1970s-1980s quite a lot higher than ANY city today (on a per capita basis). Baltimore city and South Side Chicago today have nothing on what I saw growing up. I have had police draw guns on me twice in my life, both times multiple officers. More than once bullets flew in my direction (though not intended for me). The ignorance of the privileged middle class posters on this board on matters of race and crime and police dynamics is breathtaking (see the full post to which @OhiBro responded), and is probably one of the main reasons why no progress will be made on easing black-white racial tensions in most states. None. Sorry to say, but it is impossible.
On a happier note, Hispanics are integrating well into the larger society, tensions have been continually easing, and in large states like Texas and Florida (as opposed to many northern states), the natural inclination and desire of people to get along are encouraging. Black-white dynamics also seem to be better in both those states (among others) but the mix of politicians, race racketeers, and suburban virtue signalers is a witches’ brew that always threatens the progress that people would make on their own. There is certainly more that unites us than divides us, but division is the path to political power and goodfeelz for those who think they are morally superior beings.
What’s up with Birkin bags? Does anyone truly find them attractive? To me, it is almost depressing, a bit like ghetto donning gold chains. Moneyed ghetto donning Birkin bags.
Did anyone read Tim Cook’s letter to Apple employees. He can talk!