The net effect of people hearing "Black Lives Matter protesters clashed with police again last night" on the news for an entire summer is going to be a giant step backwards for whatever BLM is actually trying to achieve.
That is true whether or not the riots have actually been geographically widespread.
It's dragged on to the point that I fully expect support to start dropping precipitously. Especially as the protests have become continuously more destructive riots.
That usually means that the police used fairly extreme violence and chemical weapons on protesters and received maybe a handful of water bottles thrown at them after doing so.
Your news sources have an agenda and tend to get these things wrong. Go to a protest and see for yourself if you want to viscerally watch them lie in real time.
I'm an American and have only seen the police rioting. Defunding the police is the most reasonable option I have heard in my lifetime. Seems like the perfect solution, there is nothing bad to say about it, it's opponents are left to make up "widespread rioting".
> I'm an American and have only seen the police rioting
I'm an American. I can't believe you can say that with a straight face. As soon as you say that ONLY the police are doing something wrong means you have an understanding of the situation that no facts will fix.
I mean I was targeted. By personally I meant that I had that personal experience. It was as part of a group - the cops tend to use "collective punishment" when it comes to protests, after all.
The use of tear gas is the use of a chemical weapon and a war crime, but when you turn it against civilians in your own country we give it a pass.
So you weren't personally targeted. In what way were you targeted? Were you doing nothing to arouse police attention? I think most first world countries have a gas they can use for riot control. Are you insisting that most first world countries are regularly engaging in what you would call war crimes... that are worse than other countries?
You are misunderstanding what they meant by "personally." They don't mean they were singled out. They mean it was a first-hand experience. As in "I thanked him personally for the gift." This is the primary definition of personally
your own definition relies on a 1 to 1 communication between people. so you're wrong right? I don't personally thank Rotary International for all their hard work.
"I personally cursed the cop for pepper spraying me"
Just that one cop huh? They're literally saying all the cops targeted them.
My definition doesn't imply communication between people or any interaction at all. It just means literally physically present for something.
"After a long solo hike, the researcher was able to personally see the inside of a volcano." There is only one person in that story. No 1:1 communication. It just means the person was there for the thing. This is how personally was used in the comment.
"Personal in this sense clearly means 1:1." Why is that clear? The commenter said they meant the other definition. Wouldn't they know what they meant better than you do?
1. In the sense that I used the term, I had the personal experience of being targeted. Attempting to browbeat me with your misapprehension is not going to work.
2. You're now editorializing my experience of which you have no knowledge, calling it a mob. Oh my. Please refrain from using your imagination regarding my experiences.
I don't think you really understand the meaning of the words "I had the personal experience of being targeted." Mostly because you seem to ignore the words you use. Especially the word "targeted." Also because you could eliminate the word "personally" and you'd be more correct. But really, you can't just be in the middle of a protesting mob and then they get tear gassed and then say "HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN TO ME AND ONLY ME?!"
>2. You're now editorializing my experience of which you have no knowledge, calling it a mob. Oh my. Please refrain from using your imagination regarding my experiences.
I think that's a lesson you could learn from regarding other people as well. It seems like a right you reserve just for you.
How is that better? In what world is police officers dosing large groups of protestors acceptable?
Give it enough years, and people will talk about the brave protestors of 2020. But like all "brave protests" of the past, today they should be supported, and are not.
In the perfectly reasonable world where the protest was escalated by rioters, anarchists, and arsonists (you know, like every protest in portland, since ever) and the police issue a dispersal order as a response to buildings on fire and violent attacks. Then they issue 5 more. Then they announce it on twitter. There is NO other way to deal with a riot. The police are vastly outnumbered and have very few tools to do their job. Well there is another way, but it’s far worse.
Nothing about these “protests” after dark is brave. It’s shameful and cowardly. So is the response from politicians.
In SEA, that's not how it's worked. The police violence has come before the announcements. Before any serious property damage (not that property damage justifies collective punishment or chemical weapons).
Have you been to the protests in PDX? Seen the cops hurting people for standing in a protest?
Absolute nonsense. I was there, repeatedly. They shot first and either then made an announcement or never made one.
Example: they announced a curfew via text a few minutes before it went into effect. Many didn't get this because they didn't have their phones with them. Tear gas and flashbangs had already been deployed with zero warnings from police.
It is not helpful or okay to assert such falsehoods with confidence.
You were in both portland and seattle? have you considered your correlation to madness? Is it a 100% correlation? I'm sorry, but are you saying protesters didn't have their phones on them? As opposed to literally every other protester who is filming every unfortunate human interaction at every protest?
No, it's not. I did a search for the string "lawnchair_larry" on this, the second page (i.e. the low-quality page) of comments on this story. It shows up 15 times. Then I went to the third page (i.e. the really low-quality page), opened all the hidden "[more]" subthreads, searched again, and found the string another 10 times. (Nothing showed up on the first page!) You have a lot to say. I read quite a few of these excretions, and found nothing but prejudice, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and unwarranted fear. You should better educate yourself about the situation in this nation and you should be a better person. The fact that you feel more empathy for abusive white cops than for their minority victims is a fact about you, not about the world.
Ok, I’ll bite. It’s racist, by the way, to point out the cops race. So that tells us a little about you.
I challenge you to show me a single example of:
1) A conspiracy theory
2) Prejudice
3) Misinformation
4) Racism
5) Feeling more empathy for abusive cops (of any race) than their victims (of any race).
All my info is either from primary sources, actual data, documentation, or first hand knowledge, not news or blogs, so no need to get cute with the snark. Try to have an adult discussion?
No one relevant agrees with your tired attempt to redefine the word "racist". By the way like 90% of all the white Americans I've ever met I certainly have done and said racist things. It isn't the end of the world, to admit that. Apologize and move on. Don't persist in error.
I can't believe you've trolled me into this. Twenty minutes of my life, down the drain:
I think I've clarified what I meant. I was targeted. I can't specify the exact degree to which anyone was skipped over to get to me.
> In what way were you targeted?
First time, it was indiscriminate use of teargas. Second time, indiscriminate use of teargas and a flashbang shot at my feet.
> Were you doing nothing to arouse police attention?
I was standing in a protest.
> I think most first world countries have a gas they can use for riot control. Are you insisting that most first world countries are regularly engaging in what you would call war crimes... that are worse than other countries?
It would be a war crime if it were a foreign military force using it against the exact same crowd, but not if it's cops. War crimes have a way of being selectively (un)enforced when it comes to those in power, in any case.
Police are fairly atrocious in most countries, so I don't think there's much point in trying to figure out exactly where I'd rank the police in the US. It wouldn't make it right if it were average or not.
You've done it poorly. You can't specify the degree to which you think you were personally selected. And you've given two examples of them shooting indiscriminately. So no, they didn't personally target you.
The other commenter seemed to understand well enough. Maybe instead of playing a blame game you could accept my clarification and move on?
> You can't specify the degree to which you think you were personally selected.
And I never claimed to.
> And you've given two examples of them shooting indiscriminately. So no, they didn't personally target you.
The second example was closer to me than anyone else and I was at the rear of the crowd.
I don't know how productive it is for me to keep telling you what I mean by saying I was personally targeted. But okay, I'll try again with the same substitution: I had a first-hand experience being targeted by police with chemical and explosive weapons.
I'm really still missing your clarification... I'm not really sure what game blame you think I'm playing?
> You can't specify the degree to which you think you were personally selected.
> And I never claimed to.
AND YET 2 SENTENCES LATER......
>I don't know how productive it is for me to keep telling you what I mean by saying I was personally targeted. But okay, I'll try again with the same substitution: I had a first-hand experience being targeted by police with chemical and explosive weapons.
The scare words really kill your credibility. It’s tear gas and pepper spray, not mustard gas. Stop trying to manufacture an oppressed victim narrative. We can call a water cannon a chemical weapon too.
> The scare words really kill your credibility. It’s tear gas and pepper spray, not mustard gas.
If it were a foreign military doing the exact same action to the exact same people, it would be a war crime. There are serious impacts from using tear gas, including poorly-understood hormonal impacts to women, particularly pregnant women.
> Stop trying to manufacture an oppressed victim narrative.
I haven't manufactured anything, these are things that have been happening for three months via aggressive, proactive police action. You can go see it for yourself by attending a protest at a major city. Or you can review the countless videos. Or you can listen to people (like me) who were there.
> We can call a water cannon a chemical weapon too.
No we can't. Water cannons are also unacceptable in these situations, however. People like to act like these weapons are relatively harmless, but people have been disabled, nearly killed, or straight-up killed with them.
That list includes deaths caused by law enforcement and death of rioters killed by people trying to protect themselves from the rioters as well.
There are some additional deaths by the rioters that are not in the list though but that does provide a decent synopsis of some of the deaths.
I'm just trying to put GP's dubious numbers in their proper context. Of those 1000, how many would you estimate are killed without reasonable cause? Could it be 30? 300? 970? We shouldn't turn off our brains just because somebody said someone died. USA society is fine with the carnage on the highway and throughout the Middle East; I think we can deal with a tiny amount of carnage in order to improve.
