5cense The sage on Swann Street + a strawberry stem left on our stoop

post
752

2 June 2020> A few minutes after we posted #751 we heard a mass of people going down 15th street, presumably towards the white house. We went out on our stoop to show our support + watched as they got a ½ a block away + started to double back. They turned the corner + started to go down our street (Swann) but only got part way before doubling back again as it seemed cops were coming from the 14th street direction. By this time we went inside, if anything cuz we didn't have a facemask on + there were lots of people in close proximity. We went up on our roof where we had a better view + watched the standoff for a while. The protesters were holding up their hands + chanting "let us go home" but the cops had them trapped.

More + more cops showed up. The protesters not holding the front line were trying to find a way out, but there's no side alleys on our street. There's 1 side alley that dead ends into someone's backyard that they were trying to get thru + maybe 1 case where someone tried to break in or throw something at the house across the way before a bunch of protesters shouted at them not to be violent or destructive. We thought about whether to let any protesters in, but there was so many + then there's the whole COVID thing that seems everyone has forgotten about... here we were cooped up in our house in isolation for the last 2-3 month avoiding all people + then this unfolding on our doorstep! The cops started pushing forward + all mayhem broke loose. We were still up on our roof so couldn't open our door anyway, we figured the best thing to do at this point was film it.

They pushed them (violently) a few doors down + cops from the other direction pushed them until they had all the protesters trapped in a small area. Lots of yelling + screaming + a few people pepper-sprayed (as u can see in the video). Our neighbors had let some people in + they were in the backyard, but cops had filled our back alley too so they were trapped, 1 of them was the guy that got pepper-sprayed. Then it was just a long drawn out process of arresting everyone 1 by 1, van after van parked in front of our house carting them off.

The weird thing is that a crowd had gathered across 15th street, also yelling at the cops. But they weren't arresting them, only if u were in the original group now trapped in the middle of Swann St. It was pretty arbitrary, the only thing the protesters were doing wrong was violating the curfew so why not arrest all bystanders? The cops made no attempt to let the protesters disperse + go home, which would have been the easy thing to do. What a waste of resources, our tax money paying for cops that brutalize + kill black people + then arrest hundreds of innocent people. It took them hours to process everyone + meanwhile there was a lot of activity in our neighbor's backyard (outside our bedroom window). The cops said they were free to go but they didn't trust them + stayed, yelling at them over the fence. Needless to say we didn't get much sleep. People started bringing them pizzas + water, etc. Maybe by 3 or 4 a.m. the cops were gone... only to be replaced by a media circus. When we looked out the window in our underwear at 6 a.m. there were all these lights + cameras pointed at our house, or really the house 2 doors down where Rahul lives, the 1 who took in a ton of people. When we went outside to check on things (our neighbors on the other side were out of town so were texting us for updates) the only thing we noticed out of place is that someone had left an eaten strawberry stem on our stoop. All sorts of people showed up bringing food, offering rides, etc. Now it's sort of quieting down, just all the gawkers... speaking of the influence of Inurnet (the subject of our last post), sure it's all over social media, but we wouldn't know. Even how crowds congregate + organize in the real world is controlled by Inurnet, in real time, ½ the protesters holding up their phones as it's happening.
     Crazy times... from a global pandemic to this. The sad thing is this all plays into Trump's hands, like what happened w/ Nixon when he got re-elected, people get uneasy when there's such k-os + social unrest + won't want to switch leaders. COVID cases will likely start rising again, leading to a 2nd shutdown, only this 1 won't be as peaceful. There's a lot of angry, unemployed + scared people. As we said in the last post, we were never 1 to protest, especially we never saw the point of getting arrested, what that accomplishes. But at the same to sit + do nothing is hard, or to protest peacefully (even within non-curfew hours cops have been violently breaking up protests) hasn't accomplished much. The top-down order from Trump is to use violence against the protesters + completely disregard what they are angry about. And meanwhile we're still amidst a global pandemic. Think we'll try to get some sleep now...

751 <(current)> 753> Free will, whirlpools + Apache skiing while their eyes were watching the new physics (1993)
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