Protest chat

What a unique time, while we grapple with the idea that every one of our elected officials throughout the political spectrum have agreed that our lives are less important than the stock market, we also get to watch a large part of the country learn what nearly every non white minority needs to know from childhood: That the organizations responsible for our safety are completely uninterested in serving the public, in fact the very idea is antithetical to their real purpose.

There was rumor this week that with the various federal agencies in Portland operating there might be the intention of allowing their agents to go weapons free on the protests, by which I mean using live ammo on protesters. I was dubious about it, currently there is enough support for the protests and the ideas behind them that I thought it was unlikely that orders would come from on high to execute people in the streets, but I watched the livestreams last night anyway just to be sure, mostly I checked to make sure they were on at all, because when the streams go down is when bodies will too.

PPB is being it's usual self, and I was encouraged by the restraint I saw from the feds too. Don't misunderstand me when I say that, I don't mean they were nice or anything, I also don't mean to imply that they should even be in the state in the role they are in, I meant that I saw a very heavy element of coordination on the other side of the fence that was specifically intended to keep their side from escalating. When forces came out of the building they did their usual shit with the CS gas and so on, the crowd did their retaliatory tossing the gas back, insults, laser pointers, and fireworks. But when things got really heavy the officers would pull back inside. I saw a lot of rotation, no officer was kept in the same position on the line for very long, which probably had a number of reasons but one would be that they couldn't start any relationships with people across the line. They got to spend a few minutes at a time getting insulted by one section of the crowd, but where moved before they could get a chance to really deeply hate someone enough to break orders. There was constant communication, no officer was left alone for long, I know they all have radios but there were people coming out and talking to each other in person, using physical contact as well. This is another way to make someone feel like they are not alone surrounded by enemies, which also makes you less likely to start firing into the crowd out of fear.

All of this suggests that at least for now and at least in Portland, the plan isn't for an intentional atrocity.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that is universal though, Portland has the dubious advantage of being extremely white, and the law enforcement massacre of a crowd of white people will play very differently than if they were black or brown. At all costs they need white people to believe they won't be treated like minorities otherwise the illusion will collapse and we'll see that to those in power we are all scum.

I think in general the "best" place for an incident like that would be Portland, if the term has any meaning at all. For just the reasons I described. Any use of force by the government is almost certain to escalate protests all across the country, but killing a bunch of white kids would probably be the best way to get the most people looking up how to make firebombs.

I know there is a lot of discussion in progressive groups about how the lack of minority leadership and representation in Portland protests is hurting, and I don't disagree, but there may be ways to use that as an advantage too, like it or not the image of people clad in military gear surrounded by a sea of enraged people is perceived differently depending on the color of that sea, and a great many people will dismiss the problem entirely if that color is black. When it's white it shifts the narrative a bit.

Changing topics a hair, I hate that every person who defends the protests has to first go through the tiresome process of defining them as peaceful and saying the police, feds, whatever, acted first. Who even gives a shit anymore? Last night the inciting incident that started CS gas was a beach ball landing on the other side of the fence. They'll find an excuse anyway. No one paid attention to the protests until shit started to get broken and people got hurt. No one ever changes things until the protesters decide to get serious and throw tea in the harbor, or blow up mining offices, or any number of other events in even the last hundred years in the USA. Things change when the pockets of people in power start to hurt, so the most powerful tools are to strike, or to break stuff, that hasn't changed.