Tales from the Front Lines — episode 7
Channel: InMyOwnWorld
Date: 2020-06-06

Copied and pasted:

We were attacked last night not by protesters, not by random people of color who set fire to black owned businesses. Oh no, we were attacked by organized white supremacists intent on wreaking havoc and blaming it on legitimate protesters.

The following words I did not write but they are TRUE. The state of emergency is here now.

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It’s time to stop using the word “protesters” when assigning blame to the arson and attacks on black businesses and post offices and homes being committed overnight. It is now being widely reported by demonstrators, KARE 11 reporters, as well as state authorities that white supremacists, white 2nd amendment extremists, white anti-government extremists and other outside groups are infiltrating the demonstrations. 

They are white men wearing masks. They’re arriving in pickups with out of state plates. Some with white power symbols They are wearing tactical vests and boots. They are starting fires efficiently and ranging widely. When asked “why” they give ambiguous answers, like “to take a stand” without indicating what stand they’re taking, for what, or for whom. They use code phrases developed online, such as “86ing” a place when they mean to burn it down. They target black businesses, set very dangerous, life-threatening fires in dumpsters in the allies and streets of predominantly black residential neighborhoods, and other targets with symbolic meaning to their extremist causes, like post offices. 

Activity on their online channels indicates these are premeditated, organized, coordinated attacks. They’ve been arriving for days. We’ve all seen the first attack on property back on Tuesday was a white masked man in black with a black umbrella who systematically smashed Autozone windows. When confronted by black protesters, he gave vague answers before leaving the scene.

All of this fits. Only one collection of groups has been openly advocating, arming, training, and agitating for violent conflict both with government and non-white Americans: rightwing extremists. 

They may exist on different points of an ideological spectrum, but they all have one aim in common: eliminate the experience and distinctive voices of black Americans. Either purge black Americans from equal participation in American life altogether, or subsume black people’s unique experience of police and other violence and oppression into a larger false story that government oppression hurts white people equally.

Those who are fighting police brutality and anti-black violence and oppression have different behaviors and targets. They fall into three rough groups: 1) the law-abiding nonviolent, 2) the nonviolent willing to break minor laws and commit incidental minor property damage in order to take control over their own streets and disrupt “business as usual,” and 3) those willing to commit significant targeted property damage against institutions that are responsible for their political and economic oppression: police stations, redlining banks, etc. 

All three “groups” (because much of this is spontaneous self-organization of people based on their personal approach, gravitating to other like-minded people, rather than conventional formal organizations) show pronounced conscientiousness toward and take affirmative steps to protect small businesses, local businesses, black and POC and woman-owned businesses, folks’ homes, etc. They are self-governed and disciplined. They set rules democratically on the fly, to protect others while enabling free expression, and they follow them. They are everything America aspires to be.

In this mix are criminal opportunists of various kinds, races, genders, “philosophies.” They don’t set fires. They grab and go.

So we must NOT ascribe all the overnight violence and damage being done overnight to the “protesters.” The conflict has reached a totally new and very dangerous stage. It is complex, fluid.

The operating assumption, for our safety, for the pursuit of justice for those living in fear and suffering the destruction of their livelihoods is that attacks on black and small businesses, on residential neighborhoods, on government buildings not part of the criminal justice system, on sources of food, medicine, and water for black and poor residents and civilians, and even on law enforcement themselves in order to provoke reaction, are being carried out, not by protesters, but by the white groups who have been openly advocating, organizing and training for civil war.”