One of my friends is very proud to have been arrested during a BLM riot. Flash bangs, tear gas, all that. Now he brings it up as some sort of arguing point: "YEA WELL WHERE WERE YOU?"

So they all got arrested and had to stay outside all night while being held. Today im talking to him and he claims they changed alot. He brought up "all those convictions" but only one cop was convicted last year while over 200 were killed. Then he mentioned Aubery who was murdered in Alabama, but they were private citizens not cops, and there was literally video of the murder. Naturally he didn't seem to take that fact well.

Defunding didnt happen much either. Is this just a liberal brain trying to convince themselves theyve done something useful? Because nothing really changed after they dragged Bernie away either.

if it helps, they also think only red fascism has existed and theres never been a successful communist country.

  • Ho_Chi_Chungus [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    No, the protests were good. They might not have done something, but at minimum they demonstrated that the American left exists. That’s huge, from a tactical sense.

    Hell, replace "American left" with "Queer people" and the exact same thing could have been said about the Stonewall riots. In the immediate effect, all that really happened is some cops got a bit beat up and a gay bar got fucking trashed, but the lasting impact was immense. And now in 2020, it's been shown that a community can come together to torch a police station and they can use that in order to attain justice

    • TreadOnMe [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      That is not the narrative going around Minneapolis though. We have lost that fight as well. Imo, the current narrative believed by the majority of the community is that the police pulled away from the police station on purpose to allow bad actors to burn it down and collect insurance payments.

      Is this true? Idk. I wasn't at that particular section of protests. I certainly saw an absolute metric shitton of weird and destructive stuff those evenings. What was clear to me is that the police had decided that where they could not crack down and kettle they would abandon, and these areas are where the fires started. Who started them and why is, again, something I don't know, but the narrative is either white antifa or white supremacists, depending on who you talk to in the community.

      There are few narratives of community solidarity and violence at this point in time (I.e. the small police free zone and George Floyd Square, good work is still being done there). But perhaps I am too on the outside to be privy to those conversations (it wouldn't be the first time someone mistook me for a cop), which is what I hope for, but at the moment it looks like the narrative battle is lost around BLM.

      We will see what it is in another year or two when stuff inevitably pops off again.

      • Ho_Chi_Chungus [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Of course, the long term effects of this won't be visible only 18 months later

        • TreadOnMe [none/use name]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I think the biggest thing is a bunch of people got alot more experience protesting. I think the real pop off will occur once the larger organizers and medics are released from jail in a couple of years here. Who knows though, I certainly didn't see this particular BLM movement coming after the local police took down the last one and killed the organizers in Ferguson.