George Floyd was a black man who was murdered by a cop while other cops stood and watched. He wasn't the first and he probably won't be the last, unless some crazy genius comes up with a system for screening new recruits so as to prevent dangerous nutcases joining the police force. Previous black persons murdered by cops have included the guy whose candy bar wrapper reflected the sunlight just like a handgun, the woman who was actually doing nothing in her own home when a cop who had the wrong address broke in and shot her, and millions of others whose personal details may be found on the internet if you want to have a look around. The factor common to these killing has been that the murderee has been either a black person or a person belonging to an easily distinguished ethnic group other than white. One might reasonably expect law enforcement officials to implement certain policy changes so as to reduce the occurrence of cops killing black people, but apparently they're not sure where to start or what to do.
Therefore, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, people have been gathering together in all of the major American cities to march, and today was San Antonio's turn. My wife and I went by mainly to have a look, just to see if anything was happening, but seeing as it was, we decided to stick around. We assembled in Travis Park, a small square close to the city centre, and there were already a lot of people. It seemed that a couple of streets had been closed off, with cops and even members of the National Guard stood around looking vigilant, doing the command presence thing. Everyone was masked, otherwise not much social distancing going on, but then Bexar County seems to have come through the worst of the coronavirus relatively unscathed - at least compared to most places - and it's not like anyone was going out of their way to get cuddly with strangers. There were a few speeches delivered from a stage, mostly obscured by news helicopters circling very much like vultures, and this being a part of the country where vultures regularly circle, the comparison is deliberate. The speeches mostly communicated the general idea that black lives matter, and I think most of us already understood that.
So we set off on a route of a couple of miles, winding through the city towards the police station. Mostly we were young and black or Hispanic - simply reflecting our city's ethnic composition - but plenty white, Asian, middle-aged or even old. I saw one Catholic priest fully robed as though about to perform mass and several Quakers, as identified by their t-shirts, somewhat refuting the protest demographic imagined by those who still maintain that the cops are simply doing their job and that you can't make an omelet without breaking an egg every once in a while. We're supposed to be dangerous bomb-throwing anarchists, looters who wish only to cause chaos, and Antifa footsoldiers, but we're just people who would rather not have our country turn into Germany in the thirties if that's quite all right with the rest of you. In fact a lot of us seem to be angry sixteen-year old girls with green hair, demographically speaking. We're Antifa only in so much as that none of us regard Fascism as having ever been a particularly good idea, and we're therefore against it. It really shouldn't need spelling out, but then we've found ourselves in opposition to people who can't actually manage a whole fucking sentence without invoking freedom as a concept, but only as a weirdly specific meaning of the word which somehow allows for the active suppression of information and the shooting of an occasional black person if it seems like the right thing to do. We're dealing with people who don't abide by logic and who are therefore impervious to whatever argument you might have, because - somewhat ironically - it's all about their feelings.
Having known several such persons, my theory is that at the heart of each one of those rightist fucknuggets we have a slightly dim child, a person who wasn't necessarily bad as a kid, but who may have been occasionally slow on the uptake and will inevitably recall one incident in which someone brighter, perhaps wearing glasses and holding a stack of books, made some unkind - if possibly well observed - remark about that person being a bit of a thick cunt; and everything since has been revenge piled up on a deeply ingrained sense of inadequacy. Anything that upsets a liberal, a brainiac, a speccy four-eyes book reader, anyone failing to show prowess on the sports team, failing to salute the flag with sufficient fervour, anyone a bit weird - anything that upsets these people must therefore be good and worthy of elevation, anything up to and including Adolf Hitler, because we're post-facts and it's all about how you feel. Whatever history books written by the sort of four-eyed weirdo egghead liberal braniacs who have the time to write a history book may say about Adolf Hitler, if you feel that he was a man with some very interesting ideas who simply went about things the wrong way, then who has the right to tell you that you're not allowed to feel that?
This is what we're up against in a country where the President wants to declare Antifa a terrorist organisation, despite it not actually being an organisation in any sense, presumably meaning that the alternative to Antifa, namely the Fa, is now something to be embraced.
We're also up against the mid-afternoon heat. Bess and I hadn't really intended to stay for the duration, so after marching for nearly an hour we head back to the car. The march has been peaceful but for the noise. I've barely noticed the cops, and I haven't seen any violence or vandalism, just lots of people marching and yelling and waving placards. Marches in other cities have given rise to smashed windows and looting here and there, leading to the inevitable social media backlash from persons who seem to have misunderstood the meaning of the word protest, flames doubtless stoked by the sort of reactionary forces who ask will no-one think of the millionaires or corporations or trickle down wealth creators? I personally believe that vandalism and looting provide the enemy - because they are the enemy - with an excuse to shut us down and should be discouraged, but to focus on the same is missing the point.
Today really brings it home that such violent action - at least without serious provocation - really is absolutely unnecessary. I've been on marches before, but never have I seen this many people moving in the same direction, so obviously pissed off, voices raised to deliver a single very clear message. It's a show of strength, which is really all it needs to be right now, because psychologically speaking, it's fucking terrifying. If I were on the other team I'd be quacking my pants; and I suspect they are quacking their pants, hence the virulence of responses given thus far.
My wife and I walk back along the length of the march to our car, and each time we think we've reached the tail, another swarm of protesters appears from around the next corner.
As we drive home through empty streets on the other side of the city, we pass a group of five or six men - all white but for one Hispanic carrying a massive flag, all in combat gear with assault rifles. I don't really care about what may or may not be permitted by state law regarding firearms, no-one walking around in the centre of a city with an assault rifle does so with honourable intentions.
Several hours later, we watch the evening news. The five or six men were apparently part of something which calls itself Freedom Force. There are now about twenty of them stood around the Alamo Cenotaph, having volunteered themselves to protect the defenceless granite edifice with their openly carried guns. Someone spray painted graffiti upon it the day before, something about it being a monument to white supremacy - which is probably a bit of an overreach - but the graffiti was removed and the culprit arrested. Freedom Force have turned up to make sure that it doesn't happen again, apparently believing that the two-hundred strong line of armed cops in riot gear isn't enough in the face of thousands of black teenagers and sixteen-year old girls with green hair; but of course, they're not really protecting anything. Even if they were, doubt is cast by how they're all wearing those cool mirror shades after the sun has gone down, just like the action movie bad asses they clearly wish they could have been in other lives. Can any of them even see the Alamo Cenotaph they claim to be protecting? Either their motives are absolutely genuine and no-one had realised how provocative they would appear as white guys turning up to a black lives matter march with assault rifles - which would mean that they're genuinely a bunch of morons - or there's something else going on here. What a puzzler it is!
Comic book readers may recall that Magneto once led a team of supervillains called the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants were eventually incarcerated by the Marvel universe version of the US Government, then pardoned and freed conditional to working for the same government agency as politically dubious super-espionage types, and as such they were renamed Freedom Force, which seems telling.
The protests continue on into the night, some smashed windows, some looting, and a shitload of graffiti - much of which is cleaned or repaired by volunteers from the march the next morning, which isn't as newsworthy for obvious reasons.
Normal service is resumed in San Antonio, at least within the limits of the prevailing state of lockdown, and the rest of the country apparently catches fire.
These are interesting times, I guess you could say.
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