A thread to discuss the police killing of George Floyd and the protests that have arisen in the wake of his death. No trolls.
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The Killing of George Floyd: Open Thread
We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
The 8+ km was the round trip. It’s around 4 one-way. The Service Canada is actually about three and a half, but disability would be handled by Service Ontario, and that’s also about three and a half (but not in the same direction).
I heard the murderer was arrested yesterday – finally.
My boyfriend wondered if the police might try to claim this was a by-the-book restraint method. I’m glad at least people here are saying it’s not. But they’ll come up with some bullshit defense or other.
The news was talking about “brutality” but in a way it’s worse that it wasn’t so “brutal” – I mean, it’s not like beating someone with a blunt object. The fact that it happened so “calmly” showed clear intent, if not to murder, at least to harm. That man was fine with slowly suffocating someone – think about that.
(Note: I didn’t see the video all the way through, just the part shown on the local news Thursday. The cop had his knee on Floyd’s neck and seemed calm. I don’t know why but that makes it seem so much worse.)
@Surplus: Ah, OK then sorry, misread. Still a bummer.
Sooo my place of employment was set on fire last night during the protests. Some people who support the protests are blaming out-of-towners but I think that’s too simplistic. We have no information yet as to how much of our office was destroyed. We have irreplaceable paper files so hopefully the fire suppression was contained to outside the area where they are stored.
@PoM
Sorry to hear about your office.
@Policy of Madness
Sorry to hear that mate. 🙁
@Policy of Madness,
Sorry to hear about your office.
It does seem to me like this unrest – however you want to refer to it – is being co-opted on a considerable scale by organized groups with their own agendas. Some people are saying white supremacists and/or drug cartels are involved, others are accusing antifa or other radical left-wing cells. (Of course, it could be both, to varying degrees.) Not good.
Thanks, everyone.
Word is that only the first floor was damaged. I work on 3 so all my stuff and my computer and our files should be OK. The sprinklers only went off on 1.
I don’t think it’s anything more complicated than unrest attracting bad actors. I don’t think it was “protesters” per se, but I don’t see any reason to think they were from out of town. The protesters seem to have been pretty peaceful, but then you have the jerks who see any organized gathering as a excuse to commit violence.
The cops were caught on camera last night shooting pepperballs at a news crew while they were on the air. WTF.
My racist neoliberal uncle just posted to Facebook a meme in *support* of Floyd and calling for justice.
If you got him on board there’s not many left supporting the cops.
(Unfortunately, the cops are pretty powerful on their own.)
@Paieron:
Or, these days, shoot themselves in the balls: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/30/us-gun-owners-meme-feud
Oh, and look at this:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/30/trump-justice-department-fbi-lawyer-dana-boente-flynn-case-nbc-news
Not that Trump is a petty mobster and Barr his happy consigliere or anything.
Surplus:
This is how it’s been for 20+ years of electronic billing. I haven’t had paper bills in ages, but I haven’t had any trouble sending in proof of residency etc.
Are they modern enough to have the option to submit PDFs? Then you don’t need to print anything.
@Rabid Rabbit
I saw that meme. I’m not sure what the point is, seeing as I don’t think most people on the left really care if some random conservative blows their dick off. If anything I just saw a lot of people laughing at it and mocking it. And a few people joking that it was a very bad form of bottom surgery.
There are some damn weird white people spotted in Minneapolis. These guys are holding a Boogalo flag. The arrows are pointing to green paint that they’ve used to obscure tattoos.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZO2anhXkAA-356?format=jpg&name=small
There was also a small group holding what looked like semiautomatics.
Upon further review I’ve become a skeptical of outside white nationalists/drug cartels/antifa cells/etc taking control of the unrest. There’s a lot of claims flying around and it’s one of those things where it’s just impossible to ascertain the truth. I’m inclined to avoid drawing big conclusions about what’s going on.
If you can extrapolate from people arrested and charged (and presumably if anything that would be an over sampling of the more active protesters) then most of the addresses seem to be local to their respective areas.
My city, Columbus OH, is under curfew right now after police maced protestors including City Council President Shannon Hardin, Franklin County Commissioner Kevin Boyce, and Congresswoman Joyce Beatty.
Let me repeat that last part.
THE POLICE MACED A MEMBER OF CONGRESS.
A 70-year-old grandmother, at that.
Oh, now the police chief guy is saying people are from out of state.
@numerobis:
Where is this?
The last time they audited me, they weren’t. Everything was done via paper mail. That was most of 10 years ago, though, so I suppose all bets are off. Still, the general rule is that bureaucracy has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the present, or even the recent past. They’re probably still using minicomputers running COBOL programs in their back office, if they’re like most big institutional bureaucracies, and planning a big New Years bash for Jan. 1, 1980 that will finally happen once they can manage to agree what color to paint the fireworks storage shed.
@Allandrel, others:
:O
What the hell is going on in your country?! Curfews, cops and elected officials physically fighting each other … I’m now wondering if “10-20 years” was a laughably optimistic estimate for how long you have before the big breakup/civil war/whatever form of implosion. 🙁
Photographer/reporter Linda Tirado (she wrote Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America) has been shot and blinded in one eye by police while covering the event. Her twitter is Linda Tirado @ Killer Martinis, fyi.
There’s a clip on her twitter of an interview by Sergio Olmos with a black protestor, who is asked if he feels safe. He replies: “Well, being black in America, you’re already born dead. So do I feel safe? No, not really.”
Anonymous is back with a Jigsaw sounding video and they’ve already shut down the MPD website and messed up the Chicago police radio
https://twitter.com/YourAnonCentral/status/1266947376482095105?s=20
I’ve been wondering what took their asses so long.
@Alan Robertshaw : while I think that declaration is to be taken with a grain of salt, I would expect the bungaloo crowd (the 4chanists that try to ignite another civil war) to come from all over the USA to seed troubles. So having a lot of out of state looter can make sense.
I do still think a lot of looting have to do with opportunity to do so. Especially for protesters who already get beaten up and pepper sprayed regardless of if they protest pacifically, violently, or are robbers in addition to protesters.
Who’d have thought the sequel to Bleeding Kansas would turn out to be Bleeding Minnesota?
@Epitome of incomprehensibility
He was fine with it because he murdered 4 other people before then. Hardened serial killer.
I read the charge sheet: I’m morally certain that his defense will be, “Dude was flopping on the ground already when we went to arrest him, trying to resist arrest by not cooperating, and he was already saying at that time that he couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know my knee on his neck would totally kill him like that, it wouldn’t have killed a regular person, it was medical issues that we failed to pay attention to before that REALLY killed him, that’s what we’re actually guilty of, is just ignoring the medical issues of someone in custody and then he died from medical issues. It totally wasn’t really 100% my fault intentionally.”
Albeit probably more professionally argued.
“Some of those protesting are from out of town” always gets said about local protests, in an attempt to delegitimise. Though I’m not sure why showing solidarity is supposed to be a bad thing.