Fight for What's Right: The Protest Thread

[Mongrel]

[Mongrel]

The real Seattle PD actually gassed the Mayor Wheeler last night (at precisely 9:31).



Parody SPD account is actually better than the real SPD.

[Mazian]

The real Seattle PD

um

[Upthorn]

Yeah, but other than geographical location, Portland and Seattle are indistinguishable.
I mean, they're both big cities
capitals of their states
in the rainy-forest pacific northwest of the US.
Totally interchangeable, right?

[Mongrel]

lol whoops.

Funny part is I know exactly why I made the mistake.

I was reading about the Seattle Kraken (lol hockey) whose logo is a giant S (actually it's a pretty fuckin' cool logo), and then Star made the joke I posted in the quote thread, so I was mentally inserting 'S' into everything for a short while.

[KingRoyal]

Portland and Seattle are not the capitals of their respective states. That would be Salem and Olympia

[Cait]

That might've been part of the joke.

[Friday]

Cops just opening fire for no reason

[Mongrel]

[JD]

[Thad]

Court Blocks Federal Officers From Attacking, Arresting Reporters Covering Protests In Portland

Notably:

Because the Court considers any willful violation of this Order, or any express direction by a supervisor or commander to disregard or violate this Order, to be a violation of a clearly established constitutional right and thus not subject to qualified immunity in any action brought against any individual employee, officer, or agent of the Federal Defendants under Bivens v. Six Unknown Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), notice of this Order must be widely disseminated.

[mharr]

Oh hey, can we just keep declaring things 'not subject to qualified immunity' until it functionally ceases to exist?

[Thad]

Not exactly. QI relies on officers claiming they didn't know what they were doing was illegal. This is a judge saying "You are hereby notified that this is illegal, so you can no longer claim that you didn't know that." So it applies going forward but not necessarily going back to the violations that have already occurred.

[Brantly B.]

<Oblivion Voice> Have you heard of the Bill of Rights?

[Mongrel]

Speaking of masks coming off, the "All Lives Matter" crowd are going full bore...

[Friday]

Jesus fucking christ

[Friday]

Hey.

There's been a lot of "we're all fucked" posting in this community. Which is absolutely and perfectly understandable. Our leaders are horrible, people are dying, covid, cops, climate. A million other things.

I'm not saying your feelings are wrong or invalid. You have an absolute right to feel this way. What I am trying to do, in this post, is show you hard fucking data as to why you should not give up hope.







Look at that. Look at what MLK had to fight against.

And he won.

Not just him, but the people who followed him.

They fought, they bled, they died. But in the end, they won. Against a force just as entrenched, just as vile, just as sadistic, just as racist and shitty as today. Both in the government and the white population.

I don't mean to jerk you off or diminish what you're going through. These are dark times. The fight ahead of us is going to be harder than anything any of us have ever experienced.

I'm going to say that again.

The fight ahead of us, regardless of whether each of us individually marches and protests or not, is going to be harder than anything any of us have experienced.

The fight to stay sane. To stay mentally healthy.

The fight to stay determined and not give into despair.

Self-care is important. Put your phone down and go outside. (Away from other people, natch.) Take walks. Get sunshine. Eat cookies. Talk to us, or your friends. Get therapy. Do what it takes.

And keep in mind what MLK had to fight against. What all people like him have had to fight against. Think about what he would say, what he would tell you, if you came to him and said "It's impossible. We can't win. People are too stupid, too cruel, and too apathetic."

Would he agree with you? Would John Lewis? Would all the other great people who fought and bled and died for the rights we enjoy today?

In the future, people will look back at these times. They will look back and they will say "That generation fought for the healthcare we enjoy today. They fought for the end of police brutality and murder that we enjoy today."

I believe this because I believe in all of you. Not in myself. But in you. This community is an example of excellence, of compassion, of righteousness and empathy. A for-real, no bullshit love of justice and a desire to see it reign. And we are not alone. Every day as Trump tightens his fist, more and more people are swayed to this side, to this cause.

We will win. It will not be easy. People will bleed. People will die. But we will win.

Do not forget that. Do not forget those who have come before us.

[Mongrel]

To echo that, I think a lot of things right now are pointing us towards a victory.

If nothing else there's the simple demographics of making absolutely everyone live in grinding poverty and working at soul-crushing jobs even if they have them. There's the progressively more absurd and out-of-touch ruling class who - and this is the important part - are increasingly out-of-touch to the point where they've made their own reality, one which does not conform to unpleasant things like facts or consequences. But facts and consequences conform to them whether they want it to or not. You can only alienate so many, and I'm pretty sure we are in fact well PAST the point of alienation destroying the ruling classes' hold on power.

Colin Spacetwinks was pretty on-point about that recently:



But this isn't automatic. Ya still gotta fight, and more importantly, the side with all the money and the power, and all the resources in the world isn't going to give up easily. They're going to fight to the last tooth, nail, claw, and nickel.

And that's going to hurt a lot. We're going to lose things, and lose people along the way. The 60's saw just about every major progressive leader assassinated in the US and that's not even an exaggeration. That's a lot of murder. That's a lot of cointelpro, of redlining, of clawing and scraping back those nickels and dimes they could still steal and are still stealing today. So yeah, we're in for some shit. We've BEEN in for some shit since pretty much the turn of the millennium, or, if you're black, you've been in for some shit for twenty-five times as long, so it's absolutely understandable to be fatigued, to ask how long this is going to go on and if things will ever be right.

But things can be put right. As spotty and fucked up as things have been at times, the general record over the past couple centuries has been one of overall improvement. I don't believe that the arc of the universe naturally bends towards justice, but you can twist its arm if you put in the effort.

[Romosome]

I know everyone doesn't want to feel like a fool, and that 2016 had a lot of soothsaying that turned out to be bullshit. I went around telling people "it's fine there aren't enough old white voters to elect Trump".

But this is a very different scenario from 2016 and the data is bearing it out. We can be sure Trump's support is eroding because we can see him actually eroding it in real time.

“Trump Could Not Be More on the Wrong Side”: New Poll Shows Trump’s Black Lives Matter Protest Response Could Cost Him 2020

This is still a pretty small sample and we can't draw the big clickbaity conclusions from it that the article does. Even if it was completely accurate, we can't just sit on our hands. But the fact is that the wind is in our favor.

[Mongrel]

Yeah, whatever side of 40%-50% the white support for BLM is, it's WAY higher than the 10% or so you see on the graphs in Friday's posts.

40% of a majority demographic is A LOT of angry people who want change. IIRC, historically, societies generally change to adapt once more than just 10% of people agree something is unjust (might be 15%, but it's still surprisingly low).

the wind is in our favor.

Especially if you bring a leafblower to the protest (god, that shit is genius).