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143 ppl arrested (inc. journalists) in 19th straight day of St. Louis BLM protests.

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TheVampire

Banned
EdibleKnife said:
If someone wants to run me over because they have road rage, that's their prerogative. They can go to jail. I'm willing to risk an angry driver to bring attention to a national tragedy. I'm willing to get run over to actually gain civil rights. A better question is what's wrong with our government and society that it has to come to a point where people are more than willing to put their lives in danger just to be listened to? Just to not only make people acknowledge a problem but actually take steps to fix it?
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Your one of those protestors out there aren’t you
 
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TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
rudger said:
Safety is a legitimate concern. I also just don’t think it is a compelling image as it has been done a lot and will just lose meaning the more it is used. Just look at posters here who had no idea this was still happening.

That being said, I wonder why they have never considered not protesting by standing in the street, but by parking in the street. Wrangling 100+ cars would be far more of a logistical nightmare, would be unique imagery, and would be imagery more directly related to a lot of these murders as many take place during traffic stops. Like a bulkier sit in.
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Blocking the road with cars means they can't easily and quickly move aside for anyone.
 
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supermarioworldE

Banned
This bullshit opinion that blocking highways is going too far when simply taking a knee is seen as obstructive infuriates me. Naturally the cops couldn't give a fuck about the message of the protests and used excessive measures while also arresting the witnesses and journalists that could talk about it.
 
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leroidys

Member
How the hell have I not heard about this? I mean the news has been crazy the past two weeks but still. And I consider myself a news junkie. I need to get some better sources.

Anyone know if they have any sort of donation page or anything? These people out there risking their own safety to keep this protest going are the true moral authority here.
 
D

Drek

Member
TheVampire said:
Why do American protestors block traffic ?

Its so stupid its just asking for someone to get run over.
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I'm going to try and explain this from my viewpoint, as a white man who lived in and around St. Louis for about a decade. This might be depressing as fuck.

This is the St. Louis metro area:
SLFP-MetroMap_07.jpg


See Interstate 64/40 cutting through the middle? If you live north of that, south of St. Charles Rock road, and east of Skinker (the east/west boundary of city v. county) you either live within the immediate vicinity of Forest Park or you're black. Most of what's north of the Rock Road but south of 70 is black too, but there are a few pockets of white walled gardens spotted around. At that point no one in St. Louis gives a shit about you. Unless they need to evict you in order to build another stadium for the Cardinals, Blues, or because some white dude with friends in state government wants to.

See the area across the river named "East St. Louis"? Same thing, only the black people there have basically nothing worth taking, so the basic public infrastructure isn't even being maintained (that's in Illinois by the way).

See the areas on the middle "spoke" of the St. Louis County/City buffer? Crestwood, Webster Groves, Brentwood, Clayton, etc.? Basically all white.

The buffer between 64/40 and 44 is a "transitional" neighborhood, i.e. mid-gentrification. The areas south of 44 have seen a substantial amount of gentrification already, especially along the major roads and attractions (Grand Blvd. and surrounding the Botanical Garden as two examples).

The entire metro area experienced massive white flight in response to the civil rights movement. Now white people are moving back in but in a way that basically repossesses district after district, not being truly "nice" until almost all the black residents have been driven out.

Simultaneously Missouri is a voucher state when a school fails no child left behind, but the parents are more or less responsible for getting their kid to the other school. As a result it's basically an assumption that if you're poor and black you'll keep going to the failing school while if you are middle class and white you'll transfer out to one of the middle spoke school systems, who will then hand a bill back to your in-district school equal to their per-student rate, which based on property tax differences can be as much as double what the losing school district actually has for per-student funding. Making the school even poorer, and even more likely to fail.

When you go house shopping in St. Louis all of this is clearly spelled out to you. If you are white you buy in one of the gentrified or mid-gentrification neighborhoods. Even beyond that there is another layer of ethnic walled gardens going on. The Italian community, referred to as The Hill, largely avoided white flight (located in the area between 44 and Kingshighway). When my wife and I were house shopping we got the full court press from real estate agents to move there because we were "the right kind of people". My wife is 100% NYC Italian and we were both raised Catholic. So yeah, "right kind" for sure.

What best summarizes this is the quintessential St. Louis question: where did you go to high school? My wife once asked me why people kept asking her that. This included one time when her response of not being a native led to the follow up of "well, where do you think you would have gone if you were?"

The answer? St. Louis is segregated to the point where your high school tells a person your most likely ethnicity, religion, economic status, and political views. It is a one or two word answer that effectively summarizes your entire existence.

That's St. Louis. So when black people protest in the parts of the metro area they live in no one notices, just like they don't notice all the policy brutality that was happening for years prior to Mike Brown being killed. Just like they've ignored the decay of social services throughout those areas including basic road maintenance and working septic. Just like they've ignored everything else about being black in St. Louis. The only interaction white St. Louis has with black St. Louis is when they drive on the highway from point A to point B and happen to pass through the black neighborhoods where they make sure to have no need to get off the highway for fuel in "those parts of town".

It's fucked up. It's a big reason why I left. My wife and I had our first kid and I simply couldn't see a non-violent future for her there.
 
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Shauni

Member
You guys serious about not knowing this was going on? Thought it was common knowledge this was an ongoing protest. Guess it has fallen off the major networks though after the Puerto Rico disaster and the Russia stuff coming back to the forefront.
 
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