#race riots
Burn out The Darkess Bring in the Light! This is one of the Most beautiful photos that I’ve ever seen.❤️❤️ I stand with each and every one of my people that has had their life ripped away from them because of the color of their skin, .
Remember
‘Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”
James Baldwin
“When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates,Nonviolence as Compliance, April 27, 2015
Hi all, this is my first post in a while as this blog is very much inactive these days - due to personal reasons. However I wanted to take the time to address what’s been going on.
George Floyd’s death at the hands of Derek Chauvin, a police office trusted to protect and serve, was terrible and completely unacceptable and inexcusable. For this reason, and the unlawful deaths under police custody that have been plaguing the country for many, many years, I will say this: I stand by the peaceful protestors and those who choose to stand up to police brutality as it is a very real thing and something we should all condemn.
However, I don’t believe how the situation has been escalating will help the cause at all. Protests turning into riots, which turn into looting and burning buildings, flags, and attempting to burn police as some have done. Do not bring children to these protests, do not bring elderly, do not subject your children to violence and hate and anything you are tasked with protecting them from. Do not take your children into a situation where rubber bullets, tear gas, tasers, batons, horses and flash bangs are used for crowd dispersal. Do not take children.
Do not burn buildings, do not burn police vehicles and precincts, do not cause more harm because enough harm has been done. Not very long ago a group of protestors swarmed the streets in front of the White House, burned the guard house and the historical church nearby, as well as forcing President Trump into the bunker. This is a clear threat to the president, who had no part in George Floyd’s murder as plenty of African-American men and women have been killed under police custody and under police hands for years before President Trump was elected.
This is chaos, civil unrest and part of it is completely and totally justified - however it is getting out of hand.
The police are using sometimes completely unjustified force because one or two people in an otherwise peaceful protest decide to throw something at an officer, or yell an insult. Keep in mind the police’s job here is to disperse a crowd in which would otherwise turn more violent. The actions of some officers are not justified, however what happened in LA a few days ago where the ‘peaceful protest’ turned violent because of police presence, the police were called in because protestors were surrounding a bus and the bus driver was scared so he called the police.
There are two sides to everything. There are people protesting with peaceful intent and people protesting with violent intent. There are people who are using the chaos as an excuse to loot and get free stuff, and there are people looting as a form of protest - both are illegal, protesting is not. There are police who are following orders and police who are using their position for an abuse of power. There are police who are marching with the protestors.
Stay safe. I’ll maybe start making GTM more active in the future.
-Fletch
