Conflict erupts at Minneapolis, L.A. protests over George Floyd death

[Gaid]

Every time they use tear gas that would be a war crime if used in combat. I keep checking this thread and it gets more and more depressing. Maybe the US will have their own version of the Tianamen Square tank guy photo before long.

NYPD has already driven a car into a crowd. On video. Not quite Tank Man. And the road it was on is not quite Lafayette Park if you want the symbolism of Tiananmen Square.

Granted that was closer to the beginning of the protests and since then pretty much every major city's PD and people have found a balance.

You joking? That roundup and beatdown I linked two posts up was last night. NOLA saw regime forces kettle protestors on a peaceful march onto a bridge and unleash tear gas onto them. Seattle and Portland had violent repressions of peaceful protests the night before.

The regime and the people have not 'found a balance'. The regime is continuing to shoot, beat, and gas peaceful protestors en masse.

Well I'm more talking about this. And I wouldn't contest that. But nor would I say that days after NYPD had to practically put down pockets of rioting, the daytime was peaceful protesting, while night time was limited to getting people to cooperate with curfew and deal with asshat looters trying to take advantage of it all. Meanwhile places like Seattle that had their own issues were able to end curfew after a day with which their largest crowd was actually their most peaceful.

But of course, you want to point at America as a whole, our federal law enforcement is sort of being abused in DC as a sort of paramilitary force right now. You want to go city by city you've got about a few hundred different sets of policies and rules for this and the mayors and chiefs are reacting to how its going. Some are going to be asshats. Like New Orleans.

Ten days of this going on, if they can't find a balance with the protesters this shit will riot and burn. Try to convince me otherwise.

[loomer]

The NYPD's night-time activities are not limited to 'getting people to cooperate with curfew and deal[ing] with asshat{s]'. Again, just last night they were attacking people trying to get home, unprovoked, and unlawfully seizing private property. Seattle's protest ended peacefully last night but the night before it was met with unprovoked violence. This is not what a balance with protestors looks like. If Seattle stays peaceful, maybe we'll have an example of actual balance, but I'm not going to count that chicken until it hatches.

[loomer]

Like, just so it's clear where I'm coming from: So long as the regime is deploying hundreds of armed and armoured paramilitaries (and even actual military!) to respond to peaceful protests, there is no balance. The existence of these paramilitaries is a threat of violence in and of itself, and their deployment on the streets a tactic to remind protestors that the state possesses a lawful monopoly on the use of force that renders any and all demonstrations against it inherently unbalanced unless the state refrains from deploying paramilitaries and outright military forces equipped with severely injurious weapons and armoured vehicles.

[Gaid]

Police prepped for crowd control are always going to look like that just for sheer number differentials. There's plenty of rumors of some people wanting to sow chaos for the sake of sowing chaos. Hell, there's one FBI result I'm not sure anyone on this forum will complain of. Three in Vegas wanted to bring Molotovs to the protests for lack of violence and and the JTTF had their own issues with that. But it sometimes doesn't take the police to turn a crowd from peaceful demonstration to chaos. Picture the above molotovs on a misread by the police, and yet having to be handled by police severely outnumbered by the crowd.

[Jub]

Police prepped for crowd control are always going to look like that just for sheer number differentials. There's plenty of rumors of some people wanting to sow chaos for the sake of sowing chaos. Hell, there's one FBI result I'm not sure anyone on this forum will complain of. Three in Vegas wanted to bring Molotovs to the protests for lack of violence and and the JTTF had their own issues with that. But it sometimes doesn't take the police to turn a crowd from peaceful demonstration to chaos. Picture the above molotovs on a misread by the police, and yet having to be handled by police severely outnumbered by the crowd.

Why shouldn't protestors arm themselves if only to push back on the police once the police start inflicting violence upon the amassed protestors? Coming from somebody who's very strongly anti-gun the current state of things in the US is exactly why there is a right to bear arms enshrined in the constitution. The issue the police are having is that currently 'the wrong people' are the ones exercising their rights. The white, wife-beater, beer gut, AR-15 brigades aren't having any issues with the cops.

[Eulogy]

Police prepped for crowd control are always going to look like that just for sheer number differentials. There's plenty of rumors of some people wanting to sow chaos for the sake of sowing chaos. Hell, there's one FBI result I'm not sure anyone on this forum will complain of. Three in Vegas wanted to bring Molotovs to the protests for lack of violence and and the JTTF had their own issues with that. But it sometimes doesn't take the police to turn a crowd from peaceful demonstration to chaos. Picture the above molotovs on a misread by the police, and yet having to be handled by police severely outnumbered by the crowd.

So imma gonna give you the straight dope here: trying to tirelessly defend the pigs and demonize the protestors isn't going to work. You know why? Because we have video evidence out the ass of the pigs behaving like Stupid Evil violent bandits to innocent people. As in, people who are innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever, who aren't even out there doing any protesting. When the police start acting like bandits, they're not police, yeah?

That's not even mentioning that the death of George Floyd was the straw that broke the camel's back. The protestors didn't just get up one day and decide to take to the streets for no reason; this was a powder keg of injustice and state-sponsored terrorism and misery perpetuated by the pigs just waiting to go off. If George hadn't died that day then it was only a matter of time before the next spark came.

We have evidence that it's the corrupt pigs that are escalating shit, that are letting the looters go off and steal shit, that are hurting people and committing crimes against humanity, that are hostis humani generis because they just won't stop beating and gassing and shooting and needlessly antagonizing people. It's all over Twitter, it's all over the news sites, and you bet your ass that Youtube's got plenty of videos showcasing the police brutality going on.

So unless you can prove that all those videos and news stories of the pigs assaulting medics and journalists and goddamn children and people not even doing any protesting are somehow fake, I suggest you stop trying to portray the pigs as the victims here. Because they sure as fuck are not.

[Gaid]

Police prepped for crowd control are always going to look like that just for sheer number differentials. There's plenty of rumors of some people wanting to sow chaos for the sake of sowing chaos. Hell, there's one FBI result I'm not sure anyone on this forum will complain of. Three in Vegas wanted to bring Molotovs to the protests for lack of violence and and the JTTF had their own issues with that. But it sometimes doesn't take the police to turn a crowd from peaceful demonstration to chaos. Picture the above molotovs on a misread by the police, and yet having to be handled by police severely outnumbered by the crowd.

Why shouldn't protestors arm themselves if only to push back on the police once the police start inflicting violence upon the amassed protestors? Coming from somebody who's very strongly anti-gun the current state of things in the US is exactly why there is a right to bear arms enshrined in the constitution. The issue the police are having is that currently 'the wrong people' are the ones exercising their rights. The white, wife-beater, beer gut, AR-15 brigades aren't having any issues with the cops.

I literally have no problems with protesters arming themselves. Why should idiots be able to bring molotovs to protests planning to throw them because they want to sow chaos because they're literally bored with the lack of chaos?

[Jub]

I literally have no problems with protesters arming themselves. Why should idiots be able to bring molotovs to protests planning to throw them because they want to sow chaos because they're literally bored with the lack of chaos?

I don't think that the police should be policing these protests at all. The pigs should stay home, the protestors should police their groups, and widely distributed surveillance should track the smaller packs of idiots causing unprovoked damages.

[The Romulan Republic]

Police prepped for crowd control are always going to look like that just for sheer number differentials. There's plenty of rumors of some people wanting to sow chaos for the sake of sowing chaos. Hell, there's one FBI result I'm not sure anyone on this forum will complain of. Three in Vegas wanted to bring Molotovs to the protests for lack of violence and and the JTTF had their own issues with that. But it sometimes doesn't take the police to turn a crowd from peaceful demonstration to chaos. Picture the above molotovs on a misread by the police, and yet having to be handled by police severely outnumbered by the crowd.

So imma gonna give you the straight dope here: trying to tirelessly defend the pigs and demonize the protestors isn't going to work. You know why? Because we have video evidence out the ass of the pigs behaving like Stupid Evil violent bandits to innocent people. As in, people who are innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever, who aren't even out there doing any protesting. When the police start acting like bandits, they're not police, yeah?

That's not even mentioning that the death of George Floyd was the straw that broke the camel's back. The protestors didn't just get up one day and decide to take to the streets for no reason; this was a powder keg of injustice and state-sponsored terrorism and misery perpetuated by the pigs just waiting to go off. If George hadn't died that day then it was only a matter of time before the next spark came.

We have evidence that it's the corrupt pigs that are escalating shit, that are letting the looters go off and steal shit, that are hurting people and committing crimes against humanity, that are hostis humani generis because they just won't stop beating and gassing and shooting and needlessly antagonizing people. It's all over Twitter, it's all over the news sites, and you bet your ass that Youtube's got plenty of videos showcasing the police brutality going on.

So unless you can prove that all those videos and news stories of the pigs assaulting medics and journalists and goddamn children and people not even doing any protesting are somehow fake, I suggest you stop trying to portray the pigs as the victims here. Because they sure as fuck are not.

I am always reluctant to engage in collective condemnation of a group of people, and that includes assuming that every single police officer is a brutal monster who is implicitly fair game to be attacked or even killed. Nor do I get the impression that most protesters want unrestrained violence against police. Certainly we have seen many instances of peaceful protests, or of protesters only engaging in violence when attacked, and the bulk of the "violence" has been toward property, not people.

While there are certainly some people who will use these things to attack and condemn the protests, it should be possible to acknowledge that there are outside agitators and extremists taking advantage of the protests. That does not mean that I or anyone else is defending the police, or that we are condemning the protesters. That kind of thinking, that no criticism can be permitted- that any and all actions must be supported and that any criticism puts you on the side of the enemy, is how revolutions turn into reigns of terror.

To be clear: I am not suggesting that all or most protesters are violent, or that violence automatically makes them illegitimate, or that most or all of the protesters are outside agitators, or that the protests originated from outside agitators. I am well aware that none of those things are the case. Anyone who attributes any of those views to me is deliberately misrepresenting my views on the matter.

But I am not going to adopt the view that The Revolution Can Do No Wrong. That has always, always lead to bad places.

I will defend the right of any protester who comes under violent attack by the police to respond and defend themselves with violence.

On a related note, here's a petition to ban the use of tear gas in America:

https://change.org/p/donald-j-trump-usa ... a447d4deb6

[The Romulan Republic]

Defunding police is gaining support from local politicians:

https://forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2 ... 238411ba36

TOPLINE On Wednesday, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced he is throwing out plans for a massive police budget hike as support for slashing police department funds grows among activists in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
America Protests Los Angeles

As protests continue across the country, some activists are calling to “defund police” and redirect those funds to other areas such as education and health care, arguing police reform is not enough.

Black Lives Matter and a coalition of more than 100 other black rights organizations launched an open letter this week calling on citizens to sign a petition to demand local officials decrease funding for police departments and redirect funds to “spending on health care, education and community programs.”

Some politicians are listening: the Los Angeles Police Department was set to receive a large increase in its annual budget from $1.189 billion last year to $1.86 billion (most of the budget increases were for new police bonuses) for 2020-2021 before Garcetti axed that move Wednesday, cutting $100-$150 million — only after activists rallied outside of his home.

In New York, more than 40 city council candidates are calling for a $1 billion cut to the NYPD's $6 billion budget over four years to help fund other programs such as the city's summer youth employment program.In cities such as Minneapolis, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Nashville, similar movements are gaining traction.

Still, most lawmakers have remained hesitant to the proposal: "For folks who say defund the police, I would say that is not the way forward," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said, indicating that the department needs money for community policing and reaching out to young New Yorkers."

No, I don't believe that we should defund police departments," Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus said during a press conference Wednesday.

TANGENT
State and local budgets have been squeezed by the coronavirus pandemic, as tax revenue has plummeted and spending has increased. The shortfall could make decreasing police budgets more tenable, some activists argue.

KEY BACKGROUND
Despite using the “defund police phrase,” most activists don’t want to reduce appropriations to police departments to zero dollars, which is impractical. Instead, supporters of the movement hope to reduce the responsibilities we ask of police and redirect funds to other social programs. "For hundreds of years, black communities have lived under state terror — be it police or vigilante violence," Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, told the Hollywood Reporter. "An abolitionist believes in a world where police and prisons are no longer weaponized as a tool for public safety."

Still, there’s no evidence that defunding departments will work to reduce police brutality. "We are still in the advocacy stage," David Kennedy, director of the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College for Criminal Justice in New York, told Axios.

SURPRISING FACT
According to the non-partisan Urban Institute, spending as a percentage of direct general expenditures by state and local government, police spending has remained consistently at just under 4% from 1977-2017. The national average annual salary of a police officer is $67,600, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, the salary of a police officer can vary widely depending on the state.

CRUCIAL QUOTE
Garcetti called the Floyd protests "a movement to change who we are in America when it comes to black America and our criminal justice system” during a daily news briefing this week.

FURTHER READING
Tensions cool between Cuomo and NYC, police and protesters (Politico)

Amid Protests Against Police Violence LA Mayor Eric Garcetti Announces Cuts To LAPD (NPR)

Some call for fewer police, even as streets erupt (Axios)

Growing calls to “defund the police,” explained (Vox)

The answer to police violence is not 'reform'. It's defunding. Here's why (The Guardian) (opinion)

Philly plans to increase police funding while cutting city services. Critics say that’s a mistake. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website. Send me a secure tip.

Garcia is to me particularly significant, as he is on Joe Biden's VP vetting committee, and presumably has the ear of the Democratic nominee.

[Ace Pace]

I don't think that the police should be policing these protests at all. The pigs should stay home, the protestors should police their groups, and widely distributed surveillance should track the smaller packs of idiots causing unprovoked damages.

What is widely distributed surveillance?

[ray245]

I do wonder if the Republicans are going to exploit a spike in covid-19 cases that rises in part due to the protests to discredit the movement. Blaming the protesters for a 2nd wave is what they are going to use to gain back votes, and if the second wave is deadlier than the first, the election results might not be as optimistic as people might have hoped.

[The Romulan Republic]

I do wonder if the Republicans are going to exploit a spike in covid-19 cases that rises in part due to the protests to discredit the movement. Blaming the protesters for a 2nd wave is what they are going to use to gain back votes, and if the second wave is deadlier than the first, the election results might not be as optimistic as people might have hoped.

That does worry me, but its going to be a hard sell, I think, for three reasons. The first is that there was at least some awareness before this started that a second wave was likely. The second is that incumbent Presidents tend to get the blame for disaster, and the second wave will certainly be that, on top of the ongoing recession the first wave caused. Also, people are going to remember Trump promising that the situation was under control, and even if they blame the protesters for a second wave, Trump's failure to get the protests under control will make him look weak and ineffectual as a "law and order" candidate as well. So he'll be visibly failing on all three of his signature issues: the economy, "law and order", and (implicitly) asserting white male dominance in America/keeping the minorities in line.

The third reason is that while his support has been remarkably stable, its virtually never risen above fifty percent in his Presidency. Given how stable those numbers are, I have a hard time believing that the thing that's going to push him over the top into positive approval is a second wave of coronavirus. At worst, it'll be an evenly-split country, with the outcome being determined by who has the more motivated voting base.

More concerning to me is how a second wave may reduce turnout and enable voter suppression.

[The Romulan Republic]

Now habeus corpus is being violated:

NYPD are reportedly detaining protesters and others arrested past the legal 24 hour deadline, in crowded cells without access to medical care, soap, or face masks (thus practically guaranteeing a spike in coronavirus cases among protesters and officers alike). Officers reportedly refused to wear face masks, claiming they are immune to coronavirus (apparently they don't realize that legal immunity does not translate to immunity from an infectious disease).

A New York judge denied a writ of habeus corpus, allowing people to be detained over 24 hours in violation of the law.

https://gothamist.com/news/roughed-and- ... g-pandemic

New Yorkers protesting police brutality are getting arrested and detained in harsh conditions overnight, with hundreds being held for more than 24 hours before arraignment, in violation of the law, amid fears of a potential uptick in coronavirus cases in New York City.

The Legal Aid Society filed an emergency writ of habeas corpus to free the detainees— at least 328 people were awaiting arraignment as of Thursday morning citywide—but a judge denied that request on Thursday afternoon, Legal Aid confirmed. The public defender group is ready to appeal if necessary, adding "the NYPD is fully responsible for the hundreds of New Yorkers who are currently languishing in cages, deprived of their due process rights and at an increased risk of contracting COVID-19."

BREAKING: Justice Burke DENIES @LegalAidNYC writ to free hundreds arrested in NYC protests against police brutality @Law360

— Frank G. Runyeon (@frankrunyeon) June 4, 2020
More than 2,000 people have been arrested during protests in the city after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Arrested protesters Gothamist spoke with were jailed for blocking traffic, alleged disorderly conduct, or obstructing governmental administration—charges that normally do not require detention and could be addressed with summonses.

The NYPD did not immediately respond to comment on arrested protesters’ experiences or why they are choosing to arrest and detain protesters during a global pandemic, instead of issuing summonses. “We are working as fast and safely as we can," the department said in a statement on Wednesday. The Law Department's Chief of the Special Federal Litigation Patricia Miller said they're "pleased" that a judge "recognized that the NYPD is doing the best it can do under very challenging circumstances to safely process arrests stemming from the riots during this pandemic."

“I didn’t agitate, I didn’t provoke, I just was attacked,” said Mell, who was protesting Saturday night in Flatbush and requested that we only use her first name.

She was beaten and maced six times, and suffered bruises on her hip and a scraped knee from being tackled, she said.

“I just happened to be up front. I think, honestly, they were just grabbing anybody they could that was around,” she said. The 25-year-old Brooklyn resident was arrested for “disorderly conduct,” her desk appearance ticket said.

Mell stated that she was processed with other arrestees by 2:30 a.m at 1 Police Plaza., where they were held in a holding cell without water, medical attention, soap, or face masks.

“I was freezing and stinging at the same time because pepper spray doesn’t go away. It just stings randomly as you sweat,” she said. She wasn’t released from the cell until 11:30 a.m. the next day—nearly 14 hours after her she was taken into custody.

Bed-Stuy resident Leila Bordreuil was also arrested after protesting. She was held handcuffed in a police van and a transit cop precinct at a subway station in Lower Manhattan for 10 hours before being taken to a cell for processing after cops snatched her off the street as she was biking in the street near a van, according to Bordreuil and a video posted on social media.

“They were pretty violent in their arrest—kept telling me contradictory things like stand up, go to the ground, give me your bag, as they handcuffed my bag [to my wrists]. It was complete chaos,” she said. Cops called her a “bitch” repeatedly and accused her of trying to hijack the van after placing her there in the first place, she said. They allowed her to go to the bathroom and gave her a new mask eventually—but officers she was in close quarters with did not wear masks at all, claiming they were immune from the coronavirus.


“I’m just sore all over,” said Bordreuil, who got a criminal court appearance ticket for disorderly conduct and obstructing governmental administration. “It’s hard to really know because you’re in such shock two days later. I’m still hurting everywhere.”

She went 36 hours without her epilepsy medication and suffered bruising and swelling on her wrists—which made her particularly worried because she’s a professional cellist.

A 29-year-old Ridgewood resident Jared Rodriguez was also arrested at the Manhattan Bridge Saturday night where dozens of bike cops chased after protesters once they got into Manhattan. He was cuffed after taking bike handlebars to the chin and having his mask ripped off his face on the Lower East Side, he said.

“Within the first two minutes of having my hands cuffed, I couldn’t feel them anymore. They had gone completely numb,” he said. Cops ended up having to cut them off after his hands swelled.

No one was wearing masks, and they were transported from a van to a cell at 1 Police Plaza with some 50 people in a cell.

“It was packed,” he said. “There was no water in there. I wasn’t expecting them to greet us with water but people were asking, literally begging for water. It was about four hours before they changed out the jug. There were people drinking out of the sink in the cell.”

At 6 a.m., he was released with a criminal court appearance ticket for low-level charges: walking on the roadway and not dispersing.

Cramped conditions inside vans and cells for hours or days on end could compound already precarious circumstances protesters are marching under as the COVID-19 crisis continues. Close contact with police, who often don’t wear masks at protests, can exacerbate these conditions.

“We’ve heard about activities such as kettling, which involves sort of condensing the crowd into a particular area, and that can promote transmission because now people are not able to maintain that physical distance that they need to,” Boston University epidemiologist Ellie Murray said. “Also, things like putting a large group of arrested individuals into a bus or other shared transport, crowding them into shared jail cells—these are things that are all going to be potential transmission spaces.”

“If it were up to me, those kinds of activities would not be happening, police would be limiting the amount of people they’re arresting just because those are really important transmission sites,” Murray added.

Days after her arrest, Bordreuil joined marches at Stonewall in Manhattan and the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Tuesday night, telling Gothamist, “We’re not done.”

She’ll start taking more precautions, but she’s not afraid to be arrested again.

“I don’t just wanna feel good about myself by playing a part in social justice,” she said. “This is becoming a fascist police state. It’s a civil war. What am I going to do? Just sip my latte at home? Hell no.”

With Chloe K. Li.

This article has been updated with comments from the Legal Aid Society and the Law Department.

[ray245]

I do wonder if the Republicans are going to exploit a spike in covid-19 cases that rises in part due to the protests to discredit the movement. Blaming the protesters for a 2nd wave is what they are going to use to gain back votes, and if the second wave is deadlier than the first, the election results might not be as optimistic as people might have hoped.

That does worry me, but its going to be a hard sell, I think, for three reasons. The first is that there was at least some awareness before this started that a second wave was likely. The second is that incumbent Presidents tend to get the blame for disaster, and the second wave will certainly be that, on top of the ongoing recession the first wave caused. Also, people are going to remember Trump promising that the situation was under control, and even if they blame the protesters for a second wave, Trump's failure to get the protests under control will make him look weak and ineffectual as a "law and order" candidate as well. So he'll be visibly failing on all three of his signature issues: the economy, "law and order", and (implicitly) asserting white male dominance in America/keeping the minorities in line.

The third reason is that while his support has been remarkably stable, its virtually never risen above fifty percent in his Presidency. Given how stable those numbers are, I have a hard time believing that the thing that's going to push him over the top into positive approval is a second wave of coronavirus. At worst, it'll be an evenly-split country, with the outcome being determined by who has the more motivated voting base.

More concerning to me is how a second wave may reduce turnout and enable voter suppression.

The issue is the blue states were the ones being hit the hardest during the first wave, with the red states and some purple states managing to avoid the worse of it due to geographical reasons. However, there are strong indication that the virus is now moving into the more rural states because they tend to be the ones in a rush to re-open.

So the people happily denying the coronavirus is not as bad as the "liberals" are making it out to be will experience a harsh reality of the virus hitting their communities hard...right around the time the pandemic happens. I don't have much faith in the American electorate to actually remember what happened mere weeks ago as well as they should. The narrative of "liberals spreading virus to kill us" is a very enticing view that people will buy into, especially when they are scared shitless because they realise they are in the vulnerable category.

[The Romulan Republic]

Its an enticing view that Trumpers will buy into. His base will accept anything he says. Fewer Independents, and even fewer Democrats, are going to be swayed.

It might have some effect in Midwestern swing states, for example... but they were getting hit pretty bad in the first wave, at least Wisconsin and Michigan were, and in the Southern and Southwestern states Democrats hope to flip, the key is going to be turning out the minority vote, more than the white centrist vote that might be swayed by such a narrative.

It could have a negative effect, and every little bit matters. But I doubt it will have as big an effect as the negative economy, covid, and unrest under Trump's watch, much less that there will be any kind of widespread consensus that protesters are to blame for a second wave.

Widely-circulating stories such as the one I posted above, where police without masks cram protesters into crowded cells without masks or soap and people drink from communal fountains, could also help blunt that narrative, by showing that it is in fact the police who are most facilitating the spread of covid.

[Gaid]

I do wonder if the Republicans are going to exploit a spike in covid-19 cases that rises in part due to the protests to discredit the movement. Blaming the protesters for a 2nd wave is what they are going to use to gain back votes, and if the second wave is deadlier than the first, the election results might not be as optimistic as people might have hoped.

That does worry me, but its going to be a hard sell, I think, for three reasons. The first is that there was at least some awareness before this started that a second wave was likely. The second is that incumbent Presidents tend to get the blame for disaster, and the second wave will certainly be that, on top of the ongoing recession the first wave caused. Also, people are going to remember Trump promising that the situation was under control, and even if they blame the protesters for a second wave, Trump's failure to get the protests under control will make him look weak and ineffectual as a "law and order" candidate as well. So he'll be visibly failing on all three of his signature issues: the economy, "law and order", and (implicitly) asserting white male dominance in America/keeping the minorities in line.

The third reason is that while his support has been remarkably stable, its virtually never risen above fifty percent in his Presidency. Given how stable those numbers are, I have a hard time believing that the thing that's going to push him over the top into positive approval is a second wave of coronavirus. At worst, it'll be an evenly-split country, with the outcome being determined by who has the more motivated voting base.

More concerning to me is how a second wave may reduce turnout and enable voter suppression.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases-50-states

A lot might get what we've been calling a second wave. But if you look at the curves of say, Massachusetts and Utah, you might just blow up the initial curve that hasn't quite completely flattened out. It's also hard to see states in phase 1 go back to lockdown as well. One of the big things was to get people to adapt to new habits and behavior and dealing with the new virus. And once states started shifting to reopening, they wouldn't accept another lockdown short of making the streets much more interesting.

[loomer]

Leaving aside the issue of whether protestors should arm themselves, something has gone unnoticed in the discussion of police militarism. Turning up to manage a protest in riot gear leaves you zero tactical room for escalation beyond 'and now we have to shoot you', whereas turning up in uniform with the riot team held back is a way of saying 'okay, so, if this gets out of hand we'll act accordingly, but we trust you not to start shit'. The threat of violence is still there, but the difference is that it becomes conditional (even if this is a lie, which it often is). But turning up in riot gear also, paradoxically, increases the risk of escalation.

Dehumanization cuts both ways, and when your enemy is Constable Clarence with a human face and a clearly displayed name, you're going to be less inclined to smash his head in with a brick than when it's an Imperial Stormtrooper (and as it goes, the protestors have actually been remarkably restrained given they're facing down a legion of faceless goons preparing to beat, gas, and detain them. There have been very few shootings of the police, virtually no beatings of isolated police, most thrown projectiles have been water - just water! - or empty bottles) because he's human too. But in addition to this, it's a sign that he has some degree of faith in you not to beat him to death.

When he turns up dressed like a ninja turtle ready to shoot you in the face with a 40mm rubber bullet, there is no faith displayed on his part. So why should you display faith that he'll respect your rights? His very presence shifts from 'well, someone has to direct things and keep the protest safe from violence and from the shitstirrers' into the violence being protested, which radicalizes members of the crowd who would otherwise be peaceful. Turning up to manage a protest in riot gear is inciting the riot because it says 'fuck you, we're going to smash your faces in anyway, so you might as well get a few good shots off'.

Now add that the riot gear equipped cop is wearing armour and weaponry meant for combat, not for civil policing, and as such will be more inclined to do shit like say, shove a protestor, or spray mace without just cause because hey, this is a riot, right? Both sides are now more likely to escalate to violence accidentally as well as deliberately because there's less room for peaceful escalations and the language of the protest response has been coded explicitly in state-on-civilian violence, rather than implicitly as it would be if uniformed police were simply attempting to 'keep order'.

Also, it's come to my attention that the video of police firing on medics carrying the man shot in the skull in Houston, Justin Howell, was from Sunday's uprising and not later, so my description of it was inaccurate, with the delay in his family issuing a statement coupled with less than rigorous date checking leading me to believe it was from a more recent protest. Mea culpa.

[loomer]

The Minneapolis uprising has so far caused around $55 million in damages.

Not coincidentally, Minneapolis city councillors are considering police abolition, charges against Chauvin were raised and charges against his accomplices were put in place, multiple Minneapolis agencies are cancelling their contracts with the police and the Minneapolis Police Department is facing down a major civil rights investigation. The language of the unheard consists of transforming a silenced grievance into a form that polite society finds impossible to ignore - property damage - after repeated pleas in plain language are ignored or downplayed. Here, it seems like it's gotten some results, though it must be noted that these all - with the exception of the abolitionist councillors - have the telltale marks of managed concessions intended largely to minimize further unrest.

Likewise, it bears consideration that the LAPD's 'massive' budget cuts of 100-150 million only amount to 6-8% of their total budget. This isn't sufficient to cause real change. It's stage management, the same as the kneeling police stunt - a way of saying 'yeah we hear you go back inside stop bothering us, have some token reforms that we'll largely ignore'. You may also have seen the simple eight proposals that can reduce police fatalities by 72% - sounds great, right?

Well, that 72% is only if all 8 reforms are adopted and weren't already present. And in most cities, the big ones are already present with the exception of the requirement to use all other options of force, rigorous reporting requirements, and deescalation before shooting (would that help George Floyd? I doubt it. It wasn't bullets that knelt on his windpipe) and chokehold bans, and even those aren't unheard of. Police compliance with these rules is often lacking, and they're really a bandaid for a broader issue of legitimized state violence against domestic subaltern populations. So, you know, 8 Can't Wait is great (I'd have gone with Easy 8 myself, but I'm a WW2 tank nut) but it won't fix the problem. It won't even stop the bleeding - it'll just slow it down. But it's being readily accepted as part of stage managing the protest, to make it appear meaningful change is being offered and accepted, and to subdue the justified rage of the people.

EDIT:
Let's consider Minneapolis, actually. Well, it already satisfies 4 of the 8 - it requires intervention to prevent unnecessary violence by police (yeah, that worked out great), requires de-escalation, requires warning before shooting, and has a use of force policy that allows flexible escalation. What about NYC? It also meets 4 - the same 4, except it requires no warning before shooting and bans shooting at moving vehicles. These are not 8 reforms that no one's ever tried, and the actual impact of adopting the 8 Can't Wait reforms will be lower than 72% in most cities precisely because they already have half of them in place.

[Jub]

I don't think that the police should be policing these protests at all. The pigs should stay home, the protestors should police their groups, and widely distributed surveillance should track the smaller packs of idiots causing unprovoked damages.

What is widely distributed surveillance?

Many urban centres have cameras watching them, most shops have cameras, civilians will take video of anything remarkable, especially if it's flashy and destructive. It's easy to determine who's causing trouble, and what percentage of the overall protest is just in it for chaos once you take the provocation of police out of the equation.

[Gaid]

I think you've been watching Person of Interest a little too much if you think that's really going to help in a situation like this in any timely manner.

[Jub]

I think you've been watching Person of Interest a little too much if you think that's really going to help in a situation like this in any timely manner.

The real fantasy is getting the police to stay home and let people protest in peace.

[Gaid]

More stay at the station and analyze a few hours of video footage. And then go out and get more video footage to follow them to another zone as they disperse or continue to another zone. And then get another few hours to analyze as they disperse. And then get another few hours to maybe finally follow them home. And then you just might have an id of who caused the damage.

Or. You know. You were on the line when they pillaged the store or caused destruction.

[loomer]

The embattled Trump regime is claiming that foreign journalists assaulted in Lafayette Park by regime forces 'may have fallen'. Footage of their no doubt accidental 'fall' exists.

Of course, it was a 7NEWS crew so, y'know. It's hard to be on their side even when they're clearly not in the wrong.

[loomer]

NSW Police are attempting to prevent the mass solidarity protest in Sydney on public health grounds.