Friday night after watching a movie, I was ready to go to bed, but I thought I'd tune into CNN to see what was going on in the world and there were riots in Minneapolis and Georgia so I stepped out onto the balcony to see what was going on here and holy shit.
The cops were being driven back south on State Street from Kinzie by the demonstrators. They weren't doing much damage at this point but they were all in the cops' faces. Very ugly.
Then some more came from the south crossing the State Street bridge. The cops eventually shoved them back on both fronts. I watched for about an hour and then I went to bed.
Saturday morning there was a little debris, but things were peaceful. I went out to get a sandwich and tuned into CNN where they were launching that stoopid rocket, and settled into my lazy boy for a nap, drifting off just after it had broken the surly bonds of Earth.
When I woke up they were talking about what was going on in Chicago, and I stepped out onto my balcony and holy shit again. What a mob. There was a group of them on Kinzie, in that plaza in front of the IBM building, and coming down Wacker and turning north on State Street. It was a huge confrontation on several shifting fronts. The rioters were uglier, more in the cops' face and throwing what mostly looked like water bottles.
Eventually they were driven back and I went back in and watched a movie. An hour and a half later I stepped back out and there were a couple cars on fire just south of State and Lake. The confrontation was even uglier. Eventually they were driven back and they raised the bridges to keep them away from their target which was Trump Tower and after that there wasn't much going on that I could see from the balcony, but I watched it on CNN, WGN and the local Fox affiliate until ten at which time it appeared to be mostly opportunistic looting. The bridges are still up Sunday afternoon and likely they won't go back down again until Monday morning.
From what I could see the protesters are about 80 percent between 20 and 30 and roughly half white and half black. I tried to look for antifa guys, people dressed in black (actually most all of them are dressed in black, being between 20 and 30 years old) and kind of organized but I didn't see many like that. Some of them seemed to be like peacemakers, sometimes forming a line between the more rabid demonstrators and the cops, and some of them were, well, rabid.
I didn't like these guys, but I felt uneasy about that, it seemed a little right wing. Didn't we demonstrate, or at any rate support the demonstrators, back in the days of the unpopular war and didn't that end it? I used to think that, but anymore I am not so sure . It helped elect Nixon and that guaranteed at leas four more years of the war.
Then my sister send me an email of her cat tearing up her rug and made a little joke about how the cat was doing it in sympathy with the demonstrators, and that struck me. Of course her cat was not doing anything to stop police brutality, but how did these demonstrators think that setting cop cars on fire and looting was doing anything to stop it?
Wow, very up close and personal! I guess you felt safe, or you wouldn't have gone to bed.
ReplyDeleteI have never been a fan of riots, but I am a fan of peaceful demonstrations and civil disobedience. I try to be understanding - I get that the rage is real, at least for many. Others are just taking advantage of the situation to have a little destructive fun and steal other people's stuff. I think you can totally support the cause while recognizing that not everyone out there is behaving in a way that will aide it (because they really don't care about it). I think that looting is stealing, pure and simple. Okay, I will get off my soapbox now.
I participated in moratoriums and went on marches in the 60's, but avoided situations that looked like they could escalate into violence or vandalism. When we were in Boston, and all hell was breaking loose in the spring of 1970, I stayed home but Nancy Parker went out and got involved in some destructive shit. I remember her coming home with a bandana around her mouth for the tear gas. Crazy times!
I just read where they used tear gas and flash grenades to break up a peaceful crowd near the White House so the moron could get a photo op at a church. Makes me understand the naked rage. It really does!
This is Tuesday and the bridges are still up. My Target and Walgreens are both busted and shut down. What is happening here since Saturday is that there are some peaceful marches and some looting without the premise of a march going on.
ReplyDeleteI was unsure of the theory that it was good guys marching in the daytime and the bad guys at sunset. I thought there was some overlap, and maybe there was, but also maybe the good guys were naive in standing shoulder to shoulder with folks who were no good.
We had a bunch of Black Lives Matter marches pver Laquan McDonad a year and a half ago, and I thought even then that they were taunting the cops too much, but they went on for two or three days and there was no vandalism.