BLM Demonstrators Shut Down Minneapolis Interstate
95 replies, posted
[quote=CNN]Black Lives Matter protesters shut down a Minneapolis interstate Monday evening, a day after the police shooting of Jamar Clark, who later died, his family told CNN affiliate WCCO.
About 200 to 300 people took part in the protest, which closed traffic on Interstate 94 for about three hours Monday night, said Lt. Tiffany Schweigart, spokeswoman for the Minnesota State Police. Fifty-one people were arrested.
Protesters clashed not only with police, but with drivers, some who were angry enough to try to force their way through the crowd on the roadway, according to WCCO. When police arrived and started rerouting traffic off the interstate and onto secondary roads, protesters tried to block that action as well, forming a human chain across the detour.
Schweigart said police were able to clear the highway without force, but squad cars were damaged by rocks and bottles and one officer was slightly injured after being punched in the face by a protestor, who later fled the scene.
A group of protesters also demonstrated Sunday night outside a Minneapolis Police Department precinct, angry at the shooting of Clark early Sunday morning when police tried to arrest him.
Officers were responding to a call of a woman being assaulted by a man. While on the way to that call, police were told the suspect was interfering with paramedics. When police arrived, a struggle ensued and Clark was shot by an officer, said John Elder, public information officer for the Minneapolis Police Department.
Clark was taken to Hennepin County Medical Center, where he later died, his family told WCCO.
Police said Clark was not handcuffed when he was shot, but protestors dispute that.
Protestors also want officials to release all video of the shooting and the names of the officers involved. But that may not happen quickly. Investigators want to first talk to the two officers involved, said Mona Dohman, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. And neither officer was wearing a body camera.
At a news conference, Minneapolis Police Chief Janeé Harteau, citing the ongoing investigation, wouldn't answer questions about whether Clark was armed or how close the officers were when he was shot.[/quote]
[url=http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/17/us/minneapolis-jamar-clark-police-shooting/index.html]Source[/url]
" one officer was slightly injured after being punched in the face by a protestor, who later fled the scene."
Ballsy.
[QUOTE]one officer was slightly injured after being punched in the face by a protestor, who later fled the scene.[/QUOTE]
I'm questioning the intelligence of the person that decided the best course of action was to punch a cop in the face who was trying to redirect traffic with the rest so that people can go on with whatever business they needed to attend to.
[QUOTE]About 200 to 300 people took part in the protest, which closed traffic on Interstate 94 for about three hours [/QUOTE]
Again BLM? This doesn't make people support your cause.
Doesn't know how to protest without making themselves and their movement look like steaming piles of horse shit.
Good on them. There is a way to make everybody not take you seriously and they've found it.
Causing people's livelyhoods to be threatened by shutting down a freeway and possibly costing thousands if not tens of thousands in lost revenue, attacking police, and disrupting the peace of a public area without legally organizing a protest.
Fuck it, arrest them and organize a class action lawsuit through the City of Minneapolis for pure economic loss and causing hardships to families who needed to use the freeway to get to work and instead were forced to lose three hours of worktime.
[QUOTE=JoeSkylynx;49133262]Causing people's livelyhoods to be threatened by shutting down a freeway and possibly costing thousands if not tens of thousands in lost revenue, attacking police, and disrupting the peace of a public area without legally organizing a protest.
Fuck it, arrest them and organize a class action lawsuit through the City of Minneapolis for pure economic loss and causing hardships to families who needed to use the freeway to get to work and instead were forced to lose three hours of worktime.[/QUOTE]
Much of BLMs main activists are rich black and white kids that want to act oppressed.
:snip:
apparently I misquoted MLK on this issue. I really only meant to say something along the lines of "people tend to be less receptive if you piss them off".
[QUOTE=Snickerdoodle;49133374]I really wish they would go back to what MLK Jr said in his speech.
"In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred."[/QUOTE]
he was a serial adulterer, his good deeds don't matter to the bad things he did, because it's 2015 and we need to get past the oppressive cis white male.
I'm kidding but it's funny that back in the day people were worried about him being a catholic and the pope would take over the US, the KKK showed their hate for Catholics because they weren't wasps.
You guys act as if 1960's Civil Right marches on streets didn't give people inconvenience as well, yet you cite Martin Luther King
How did they manage to shut it down in the first place? Was it just a low traffic area or did they just go full frogger and hope that no one got splattered?
[QUOTE=Aldawolf;49133451]You guys act as if 1960's Civil Right marches on streets didn't give people inconvenience as well, yet you cite Martin Luther King[/QUOTE]
MLK also demanded, not asked for, [I]demanded[/I] peaceful civil disobedience, inter-racial dialogue and organization that displayed the nobility of the cause.
As I may remind you that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King said,
[B]And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last![/B]
BLM, although noble in wanting to defeat such evils as police brutality, has no central authority demanding any civility, no equal dialogue, no parallelism. In fact it is [I]black[/I] lives matter, which is an ethnocentric slogan, and attempts by outsiders to try and reform the movement in to "All Lives Matter" have been repeatedly and largely rebuffed.
There is something [I]wrong[/I] with the movement.
[QUOTE=capgun;49133524]How did they manage to shut it down in the first place? Was it just a low traffic area or did they just go full frogger and hope that no one got splattered?[/QUOTE]
When they did it on a small highway when I was going to class they just laid on the road and hoped we wouldn't run them over.
[QUOTE=Aldawolf;49133451]You guys act as if 1960's Civil Right marches on streets didn't give people inconvenience as well, yet you cite Martin Luther King[/QUOTE]
Is there something wrong with that advice?
[QUOTE=Crazy Ivan;49133529]MLK also demanded, not asked for, [I]demanded[/I] peaceful civil disobedience, inter-racial dialogue and organization that displayed the nobility of the cause.
As I may remind you that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King said,
[B]And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last![/B]
BLM, although noble in wanting to defeat such evils as police brutality, has no central authority demanding any civility, no equal dialogue, no parallelism. In fact it is [I]black[/I] lives matter, which is an ethnocentric slogan, and attempts by outsiders to try and reform the movement in to "All Lives Matter" have been repeatedly and largely rebuffed.
There is something [I]wrong[/I] with the movement.[/QUOTE]
There is no reason to force them to expand to all lives matter when it's the very fact class is racialized in this country that establishes blacks at the forefront of police marginalization, and therefore any political response to it.
That's why anyone who says 'all lives matter' misses the point.
[QUOTE=Aldawolf;49133451]You guys act as if 1960's Civil Right marches on streets didn't give people inconvenience as well, yet you cite Martin Luther King[/QUOTE]
This. It's like nobody knows he died supporting a workers' strike.
Also the thing about MLK and Gandhi, they worked to the background of radical nationalists threatening violence and linking up with foreign powers. The black panthers were influenced by socialism and considered a top threat, while Subhas Chandra Bose, Indian nationalism, and it's flirtation with the Japanese scared the British.
[QUOTE=Aldawolf;49133451]You guys act as if 1960's Civil Right marches on streets didn't give people inconvenience as well, yet you cite Martin Luther King[/QUOTE]
At least MLK didn't assault police officers or vandalize their vehicles.
[QUOTE=Snickerdoodle;49133374]I really wish they would go back to what MLK Jr said in his speech.[/QUOTE]
It [I]blows my mind[/I] that people actually, seriously say that BLM activists should 'listen to MLK Jr' in the context of blocking highways.
Martin Luther King Jr. helped organize the [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches"]Selma to Montgomery marches[/URL]. Those were marches along a stretch of highway from Selma to Montgomery, and the police response was [URL="http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015/03/06/Obama-Selma-to-mark-50th-anniversary-of-historic-civil-rights-march/8311425489759/#ixzz3TdEYoKxa"]explicitly intended[/URL] to prevent the marchers from disrupting traffic.
Facepunchers are seriously arguing that blocking highway traffic is wrong and the activists should try to be more like a civil rights movement icon known for, amongst other things, organizing a march that blocked highway traffic. Not to mention all the smaller scale protests that involved shutting down city streets and otherwise inconveniencing honest people just trying to get to work. That's generally how protests go.
I don't particularly care for BLM but if the people complaining in these threads had any perspective they'd know that they are repeating [I]word-for-word[/I] the justifications used in the 60s to oppose the protests of the civil rights movement.
MLK was trying to end racial discrimination against all peoples. BLM has turned police-brutality into a racial issue against black people when it really affects all people of all backgrounds.
Also, the way this movement is structured is racist. During the Baltimore riots BLM defended black shop owners. They did jack shit about white/asian/arab shop owners. They didn't do anything about the 2 black officers that shot the white autistic child either.
[url]http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database[/url]
Police brutality is not a Race thing, it's a policing issue. Yes I agree something needs to be done. Yes I agree sometimes there are bad apples. But police using lethal force is 98% of the time (roughly) justified. Just because they were your neighbor or your friend does not mean they are innocent and didn't put themselves in a position to be shot by police.
But how about the gun crimes in the United States.
[url]http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/[/url]
I think the BLM movement and any other movement that is mad about police brutality should look into their own community for the source of the problems instead of trying to "find" all of these cases of Black Youth and others being gunned down. More White people have been killed in the United States by Police just this year as the first source indicates, so is this just a black problem? Or is this a problem for everyone? OR... Is this people, acting in such a manner, that puts high strung police officers in situations where they need to defend themselves?
I am fine with peaceful protests of ideas and although ,like I just explained, I do not agree with their limited views I think that as soon as your movement has to turn to violence and other methods, as they have done, I think your movement has lost volatility.
Shutting down highways will not get you what you want. Having a centralized voice and speaking with the community directly, along with political leaders will affect change. Until they can do that, they are just people who have lost direction.
That is just my two cents though.
The biggest problem of the Black Lives Matter movement isn't what they are protesting, or how they are doing it (blocking streets, having protests etc.). It's that they are not even attempting to get permission to do it before they arbitrarily show up in a place and cause a disruption. The reason the march on Montgomery was so effective was the buildup and controversy surrounding the event itself. They tried to get permission, were denied, and did it anyway -but here's the crucial part- after advertising and organizing themselves behind a banner with a stated goal of non-violence and a charismatic leader that demonstrated those qualities.
These BLM events are unstructured, leaderless, and seem to pop up around the nation at random times and for random things that happen. Protest police brutality, but do it as a [I]protest against police brutality in all things[/I], not just isolated events that are representative of the larger problem (like the murder of a single black man).
[QUOTE=catbarf;49133624]It [I]blows my mind[/I] that people actually, seriously say that BLM activists should 'listen to MLK Jr' in the context of blocking highways.
Martin Luther King Jr. helped organize the [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches"]Selma to Montgomery marches[/URL]. Those were marches along a stretch of highway from Selma to Montgomery, and the police response was [URL="http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015/03/06/Obama-Selma-to-mark-50th-anniversary-of-historic-civil-rights-march/8311425489759/#ixzz3TdEYoKxa"]explicitly intended[/URL] to prevent the marchers from disrupting traffic.
Facepunchers are seriously arguing that blocking highway traffic is wrong and the activists should try to be more like a civil rights movement icon known for, amongst other things, organizing a march that blocked highway traffic. Not to mention all the smaller scale protests that involved shutting down city streets and otherwise inconveniencing honest people just trying to get to work. That's generally how protests go.
I don't particularly care for BLM but if the people complaining in these threads had any perspective they'd know that they are repeating [I]word-for-word[/I] the justifications used in the 60s to oppose the protests of the civil rights movement.[/QUOTE]
So the better way to protest is to piss people off?
RIP America
There are some problems with the movement but acting as if Civil Inconvenience as a form of protest is only a recent thing and has never been done in the history of any rightful movement such as Civil Rights in the past is just kind of silly to think. Is it only a problem now and not then because it effects people today? Was it not a problem to people in the past too? But we look past that because overall what the movement wanted was a justified goal that we can see from our perspective today. A Civil Rights protestor resisting arrest and marching down a street is seen as noble today, but a BlackLivesMatter protesting police brutality is seen with contempt. It's fairly obvious there was people who felt the same way about the Civil Rights movement.
That's exactly why I don't think doing shit to piss off the general public will get your message across very well. You're getting their contempt first, and expecting them to actually listen to you afterwords.
This blocking of traffic is a good move. Attacking the police however is not.
Forcing people to be inconvenienced will annoy them and they'll either go after the source of inconvenience or the source causing the inconvenience.
What won't get you sympathy is breaking into a library and screaming in everyone's faces, shoving and the like.
[QUOTE=Aldawolf;49133742]There are some problems with the movement but acting as if Civil Inconvenience as a form of protest is only a recent thing and has never been done in the history of any rightful movement such as Civil Rights in the past is just kind of silly to think. Is it only a problem now and not then because it effects people today? Was it not a problem to people in the past too? But we look past that because overall what the movement wanted was a justified goal that we can see from our perspective today. A Civil Rights protestor resisting arrest and marching down a street is seen as noble today, but a BlackLivesMatter protesting police brutality is seen with contempt. It's fairly obvious there was people who felt the same way about the Civil Rights movement.[/QUOTE]
I agree with the idea that we need equal rights for all people, but sometimes their presentation makes it seem a little one-sided, in that blacks specifically deserve some historical/cosmic justice that puts them above whites or any other race/ethnicity. That's the part that I don't agree with. It trumps your argument to demand equal rights when you claim that I'm a piece of shit and can't understand any of your plight because I was born white. It becomes less about the ideology of being equal with your fellow man as a species and more about how wrong whites are inherently because they're white.
Also, many stories popping up lately have large numbers of their demonstrators resorting to violence to anyone who is against them (historically this is not uncommon but it's not the right move) and even to those who are neutral or who don't immediately jump up and boast their solidarity with their cause, giving off an, "if you're not with us you're against us," vibe, which again isn't necessarily the best way to swing people to share your ideas. You can't just hit people and scream/curse at them and expect them to go, "oh, I see, this is what equality means!"
[QUOTE=Snickerdoodle;49133687]So the better way to protest is to piss people off?[/QUOTE]
Criticize the protesters for interfering with lawful commerce if you want, but don't criticize the protestors for 'pissing people off' and then say they should try to be more like a historical figure who advocated the [i]exact same methods[/i] you're criticizing.
Just realize that if you're saying a protest shouldn't interfere with ordinary peoples' livelihoods, you're disagreeing with MLK's methods. There's nothing wrong with that, MLK was a person with opinions like anyone else that you're free to disagree with, but if you criticize MLK's methods and then tell people they should try to emulate MLK you sure look like you have no idea what the hell you're talking about.
[QUOTE=Swilly;49133767]This blocking of traffic is a good move. Attacking the police however is not.
Forcing people to be inconvenienced will annoy them and they'll either go after the source of inconvenience or the source causing the inconvenience.
What won't get you sympathy is breaking into a library and screaming in everyone's faces, shoving and the like.[/QUOTE]
Yes, basically this. Yelling at people in a library is just dumb(Especially at a college, that's just preaching to the choir) , but blocking traffic and the entrance to civic offices are forms of protest that have been used for decades to see results because it's one of the best ways to make sure your voice is heard.
So how long until someone decides that this bullshit is.. well, bullshit, and keeps driving when these fucknuts are blocking the interstate?
[QUOTE=ZakkShock;49133807]So how long until someone decides that this bullshit is.. well, bullshit, and keeps driving when these fucknuts are blocking the interstate?[/QUOTE]
Many of them are being fucknuts, but intentionally hurting them is only going to create more martyrs and fuel the fire, and their passions are going to trump logic more often, and we have a bigger problem.
Not to mention that running people over is kind of a dick move unless they're Hitler or like ISIS insurgents or something.
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