Dave The Web Guy
From the Ground at Buffalo's George Floyd Protest
06/21/2020
I'm sort of a pragmatist when it comes to the Black Lives Matter movement. I'm not energized about participating in it, yet, am far from dismissing its premise or dissuading protests as they happen to erupt.
To paint the picture of where I seem to stand on all of this:
In the interest of cost control we have an unnecessarily violent police response to just about everything. Violence keeps things moving and violence keeps police budgets manageable. Who tastes that violence does seem to be a matter of society's marginalized. "Police as the hammer for everything" is a reality that needs fixing through more reliance on technology and an investment in other social areas that stop putting people on a collision course with law enforcement in the first place.
On the other hand, I too readily understand the technique of hyperbole (the mainstream media promotes racial division because it is profitable), personal responsibility, and statistics. I also fundamentally disbelieve police roam their ranks looking for people to deliberately kill and doubt anyone actually believes that they do; the noise of those who claim that they do believe, is by those willfully attempting to contribute to the hyperbole. Whenever these things happen I am more quick to suspect an accident, the culpability of the individual's behavior, or some misunderstanding, however tragic the outcome.
The end result here is that both sides have cause to hate me, so I won't soapbox too much, let alone rally. But, one I thing I can't resist is the drama of a protest, so off I went to be where the action was.
That's what I did here in Buffalo when a series of peaceful protests, which turned aggressive, which then turned into national news, took place. As a journalist tourist I hit the grounds and Periscoped during a relatively tame stage of one night's events. It wasn't until after I turned off the camera and headed home that things got ugly.
Here is the full Periscope of my time there if you care to see it as I did, in crappy pixelated form. However, at the top of this post is a condensed version available on YouTube. The police scanner audio is not synchronous to the activity.
By Dave for Personal Blog.
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