June 2020 Monthly Running Challenge

So, I spent most of last night watching live feed from various sources from our local protests, which were 100% peaceful - although they attempted to walk to the bridge which the police did not want them to do - until police in riot gear started firing tear gas at peaceful protesters. All of the TV reporters present got a snootful, except the Fox News people who apparently were forewarned and were above the crowd looking down. After that, a single individual broke a single window, and was immediately reprimanded and chased away by everyone else. This is being reported as if there were huge riots. Shortly afterwards massive National Guard presence rolled up in a bunch of humvees. Who asked for them? They weren’t needed, and they made everyone there instantly hostile.

Previously I had been warned by a friend that a local mall was going to get hit. She claimed she had heard this from police. I did some poking around on reddit and everyone had the same rumor. It was completely unfounded and no one seemed to be able to say where it had come from.

The suggestion has been made that there are outside agitators involved. Well... the crowd split into two, before the protests, with the past organizer of the peaceful protests being followed around by a guy with a siren who set it off every time he attempted to speak, led chants saying the peaceful organizer was a cop (which is absurd) then took over the megaphone and said that he wasn’t going to go where the police wanted him to go, he was goin across the bridge. The peaceful guy then said he wasn’t going to burn his own city down and anyone who wanted a peaceful protest needed to leave with him now. He left, with about half the crowd at that time. Later more people arrived without having any idea the protest had been hijacked.

Unfortunately Memphis can’t blame this on “outside agitators” because I know the second guy and he is a 100% home grown doofus with a history of protesting trivial things such as parking at the zoo and provoking police into arresting him. He is white, by the way, he’s an all purpose doofus who will protest anything. Later in the evening the megaphone was taken by a black guy, and I know him too, he’s been active in the past as an activist demanding MORE police presence at the basketball courts near the East precinct, since people were getting into fistfights over games right in front of the police station. He’s not exactly homegrown, since he lives in Olive Branch, Mississippi, but he’s not exactly an outsider. I guess he doesn’t see the contradiction between demanding that police referee basketball games and demanding that they leave everyone alone.

Ugh, very annoyed at everyone right now. But I am mostly annoyed that someone felt it was necessary to call in National Guard when the local police were already causing trouble by being too heavy handed. If they had just allowed everyone to walk across the bridge to Arkansas, there would have been no trouble whatsoever. There are no businesses on the bridge and nothing to be set on fire, and traffic was already stopped.