OK, so it might be time to take anything from corporate media with a hefty grain of salt, maybe a grain of morphine. I'm an old fart and am attending a few of the *many* protests going on while I also live my life which is busy with things I gotta do right now. In other words, I'm somewhat connected to organizers and am helping but am on the periphery of things.
As I said previously, many protests are not reported on at all and the crowd size for them is routinely under estimated. Trump hates protests and the corporate media favors Trump. They want a nice tax cut, of course. I could cite many examples of misinformation, but a particularly troubling one just happened.
There was just a rapid response protest to ICE in a rural county to the north. A high school kid who had lived his life here was snatched up by ICE. The community was rallying around him and others who had been grabbed. A lot of the grass roots support was his classmates. Them and a lot of the support was vanilla and white. The rapid response thing Sunday had at least 500 people. I did not attend but know many who did and saw many videos they took on their phones.
So, the news media ran an article saying there had been a disturbance and some arrests. The cops said, "A person was blocking traffic. An arrest was attempted and a young lady interfered with the arrest.".
When I talked to a group attending, I got the truth. The protest had a permit and was marching in the street, as they normally do. Officers were at corners and directing the crowd and everything was going smoothly. Suddenly, as a corner was turned, the cops started yelling for everyone to get onto the sidewalk. Remember, this was a large crowd.
I saw two videos from different angles. The crowd was mainly on the sidewalk, but there were a few stragglers in the street. A cop suddenly ran 20 feet up to one, grabbed him around the body, and threw him to the ground. A bunch of people ran over and started asking the cop what was going on and cops started pushing them out of the way. It was a melee at that point, but I didn't see any protesters attacking anyone, just running up, standing there talking and being roughly pushed away. It was over in 5-10 seconds and it was a reaction on the crowds part to seeing that guy get attacked.
When a cop arrests someone, especially for something like being in the street, isn't the procedure to walk up and say, "You're under arrest?". It's not to run up from 20 feet away and tackle someone to the ground. People reacted wanting to protect the guy and they reacted by running over and questioning the cop as to his actions.
People here are pretty freaked by a shit show like this. People are angry and younger folks are fired up. It's a recipe for trouble and, just like LA, we need to remember how things started.
The "No Kings" protest nationwide this Saturday will be one I will attend downtown. I figure that things will be a little better as to the police since it's downtown, the crowd will be bigger, and since there will likely be reporters there. Hopefully, none of them gets a rubber bullet in the leg.
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