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Protests in Florissant

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We’ve been watching a live telecast from Ferguson and Florissant where peaceful, very orderly and organized protests are taking place. Every 20 minutes, several very white policemen drag out a completely peaceful black man and take him away “for failure to disperse.” This is all televised in real time.

The policemen seem completely uninterested in how bad the whole thing looks. Their behavior is very obviously aimed at trying to provoke the protesters. The protesters are showing a surprising degree of self-control. I know I wouldn’t be able to be as responsible and reasonable in their place.

29 responses to “Protests in Florissant”

  1. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    They’re deliberately escalating things, hoping someone in the crowd reacts. That’ll give them their excuse to flatten the town. What is it they want to achieve?

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    1. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      I doubt it, if that were the agenda they’d plant some troublemakers to give them an excuse to act.

      Given the recent trend of militarizing the police they’re probably seeing this as a training exercise.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        By training exercise, the police want to draw this out as long as possible to obtain maximum data on crowd control and various police vs citizen tactics.

        This is the new model of the police in the USA – a militarized force to be used against citizens. Of course they’re going to roll out the model on unpopular minorities before going mainstream.

        I don’t like it any better than anyone else, but feel free to downvote the messenger.

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  2. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    OH NOEZ! Who will invest here now after the black thugs done destroyed the IMMIGRANT merchants’ property?? Oh wait..

    https://twitter.com/alexisgoldstein/status/501585342580154368

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  3. hkatz Avatar
    hkatz

    Today police also arrested a Getty photographer (not clear why – they later released him) and also some other people for apparently standing instead of moving (because that’s the rule their now – to protest, you need to keep walking). 90 year old Holocaust survivor arrested for loitering this afternoon (no joke). There are images of her all over Twitter now.

    Police pointing rifles at protestors and journalists. And last week, an Al Jazeera crew was tear gassed – and the Getty photographer arrested today was among those who captured images of them fleeing the gas and leaving camera equipment behind. Yesterday police fired tear gas with almost no warning and hours before curfew, so that kids were gassed (it was like 8:30 in the evening). Mainstream media reporters who showed up en masse today feel stunned at the overreaction of police. (This only happens in other countries right?)

    Tonight, CNN (and people on the ground) reporting white “anarchists” (not sure what group exactly – some also saying RCP) trying to incite violence, such as urging people to charge and trying to distribute Molotov cocktails. Protestors have been pushing them out of the crowd. Some of them have been arrested.

    And yes, the protestors – for the most part peaceful, persistent, and constantly provoked – have been keeping their cool. Looking at this on Twitter, I’ve been seeing many community leaders doing their best to keep younger people from being provoked to the point where they do something that will get them killed. You get the feeling that this is what the provocation from many of the police officers is building to.

    The one almost totally peaceful night they had in the past week was a night with no militarized police presence, no curfew, no national guard. It was a hopeful night.

    There are petitions being circulated to have police use cameras in their day to day work, in the hopes of greater transparency and accountability (and there’s some evidence from a few cities that have adopted it showing positive effects). But it can’t stop at cameras. All of this is in front of cameras.

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  4. hkatz Avatar
    hkatz

    Reporters from Fox News even saying now that police going too far…

    This is one thing mainstream media reporters are seeing, now that it’s affecting them, and they’re being shoved around too, tear gassed, having guns pointed at them, and threatened with arrest (with some arrested – though no major media figures). Maybe they get it now?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Yes, I’ve noticed a very profound surge of compassion towards the protesters from a reporter who was tear gassed.

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      1. hkatz Avatar
        hkatz

        As a group they could have put in more effort to understand what was happening even without being there. Even just by paying attention to social media posts.

        Social media a lot of times just produces a jumbled pile of crap – but Twitter and Instagram were important tools in this situation. When there was little mainstream coverage, people on the scene not only were coordinating with each other but also sharing videos, photos, and important info and updates. This includes residents, protestors and some journalists who have been there 24/7 (including two arrested for not leaving a McDonald’s quickly enough… but not charged with anything…)

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  5. musteryou Avatar
    musteryou

    Oh well. At least we are way beyond Colonialism — so no harm done.

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    1. hkatz Avatar
      hkatz

      A term thrown around here in the US after Obama was elected the first time was “post-racial America.”

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        I always wondered what could possess anybody to believe this strange myth.

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      2. musteryou Avatar
        musteryou

        I’ve been making the case, for a long time now, that the extreme hostility Westerners have toward the 19th century style of colonialism is designed to hide their own very strong racial and autocratic tendencies. But if you don’t like what I have to say (and who does) perhaps I will go away if you downvote me!

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      3. Shakti Avatar
        Shakti

        The ever-encroaching present washes away the past & future, baptizing oppressors in perpetual innocence. The same ever-encroaching present renders the oppressed perpetually guilty, because there is no past to react to and no future to think of.

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    2. Z Avatar
      Z

      Where is the evidence that we are beyond colonialism?

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      1. musteryou Avatar
        musteryou

        nowhere to be seen — hence the British tone of irony.

        Liked by 1 person

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      2. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        Even I (with a bunch of issues about those who want to use ‘colonialism is to blame’ as a get out of jail free card) am completely aware that colonialism hasn’t ended, at most it’s changed some of the outward details (and a classic colonial power struggle is sloooowwwly shaping up between Europe and China in Africa as the world is too bored/distracted to notice).

        I remember reading when some “independent” African country was in the midst of a famine (brought on at least partly by colonial economic cash crop ideology) it’s food _exports_ to Europe increased. And that’s one small example.

        Liked by 1 person

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  6. Stille (@aperfectbalance) Avatar
    Stille (@aperfectbalance)

    Amnesty International sent a team to Ferguson. First ever deployment in the US.

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    1. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      And probably not the last….

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  7. el Avatar
    el

    I thought you would like

    Inspiring Images Of Volunteers Cleaning Up After Violence In Ferguson
    http://www.buzzfeed.com/tasneemnashrulla/inspiring-images-of-volunteers-cleaning-up-after-violence-in

    On another topic, an interesting post in Russian :

    Многие из нас читали в детстве книгу Александры Бруштейн “Дорога уходит вдаль” (некоторые – не так давно читали ее детям). В книге отца Сашеньки зовут Яков Яновский, и семья выглядит очень ассимилированной. Недавно я узнал, как в действительности звали отца Александры Бруштейн. Его звали, как в книге, Яков Ефимович, но не Яновский, а Выгодский. Он был очень известным в Вильне человеком с четко выраженными еврейскими корнями и привязанностями.
    http://idelsong.livejournal.com/248411.html#comments

    I haven’t read this book in childhood, but recently found it near a local library. Probably I am too old to enjoy it now?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I think this book deserves to be read at any age. I highly recommend.

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      1. el Avatar
        el

        Thank you! I will give it a try.
        Does it deserve to be read because of depicting the times well, having deep interesting characters, else? You talked against YA lit and this is YA, so I am interested what makes YA good in your eyes.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          YA is an American genre which doesn’t exist anywhere else. I wouldn’t bring this terminology to different cultural environments.

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      2. Stille (@aperfectbalance) Avatar
        Stille (@aperfectbalance)

        Which book is it, and was it ever translated in English?

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          No, I don’t think there is a translation. It’s one of the favorite books of all Soviet children about a little Jewish girl growing up on the outskirts of Russian Empire.

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      3. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        I’m not to be so easily fobbed off. And this is just the kind of puzzle that I like early in the morning with no deadlines stomping on my head (well they are, but….)

        Anyhoo, the book by Alexandra Brushtein (seems to be the most common romanization in Engish though it’s a dog’s dinner of mixed German and English) has been translated into English as
        “The road leads to the horizon”
        But that’s as much as I could find as the rest of the details are behind a paywall/the fantastically unhelpful homepage of Russian Life (I guess they want to prepare anyone who pays for the crappy service they’ll get ahead of time).

        For Stille, it would be easier to find in Romanian.

        If you change Brushtein to Brustein and google “Drumul se pierde in departare” it’s not too hard to find old copies for sale (between 35 and 55 lei).

        like here (most of the way down the page)

        http://www.cartile.ro/?p=books&cat=Povestiri%20si%20Roman&limit=380,20&page=20

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Wow, that’s some impressive research! 🙂

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      4. Stille (@aperfectbalance) Avatar
        Stille (@aperfectbalance)

        Thanks!

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  8. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    “By training exercise, the police want to draw this out as long as possible to obtain maximum data on crowd control and various police vs citizen tactics. ”

    I like how you project this rag-tag bunch of racist hillbilly cops as some sort of sophisticated number-crunching war machine. I think the police have trapped themselves now and the only way out is to provoke a major riot so they can go ‘See what we have to deal with everyday in the line of duty?’.

    Having demonstrated that they’re utterly incompetent at everything they do, I’m sure they will fail at this task as well, but not without inflicting some real damage to the city and its citizenry.

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  9. N G Avatar
    N G

    Journalists of the German tabloid, Die Welt, Ansgar Graw and Frank Hermann were arrested.

    Graw stated:

    “This was a very new experience. I’ve been in several conflict zones: I was in the civil war regions in Georgia, the Gaza strip, illegally visited the Kaliningrad region when travel to the Soviet Union was still strictly prohibited for westerners, I’ve been in Iraq, Vietnam and in China, I’ve met Cuba dissidents. But to be arrested and yelled at and be rudely treated by police? For that I had to travel to Ferguson and St. Louis in the United States of America.”

    http://www.thelocal.de/20140819/german-journalists-held-in-ferguson-unrest

    “Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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