Well, things have been happening in Portland and everywhere

I love, love, love this image.

It is not mine, but a screenshot from FB, with attribution to where it came from, and who made it.

dt sent mercenary stormtroopers to Portland Oregon, to attack and get rid of PEACEFUL Black Lives Matter protestors. They did attack, with many injuries. They committed the war crime of destroying medical supplies. They had no insignia, no identification. They kidnapped people in unmarked vans and disappeared them overnight. Veterans came out to protect the protestors. Dads came out with leaf-blowers. A Wall of Moms came out to protect the protestors. They got tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed, shot with rubber bullets.

Meanwhile, dt said he was sending more 'feds' to other Democratic cities. These weren't 'feds', they were private mercenaries run by betsy devos' brother. (The education secretary who wants all the kids back in school, so they and their families can catch the virus and die. Well over 200 kids 12 and over, and staff have tested positive for the virus from a Georgia summer camp at which all the participants were pre-tested, but kids weren't masked.)

The GDP is down 33%. In the 'great depression' it was only down 15%. 150,000 have died in the US, but that is an undercount. The numbers are still going up, because of states re-opening too soon, and trump-cultists and other idiots who have been holding mass events, unmasked. Even here, after being in Sacramento first. And some few restaurants here refuse to distance, clean, or wear masks. Their operating permits have been revoked. 

dt says he wants to delay the election. He cannot do that legally. He is trying to destroy the Post Office to prevent Voting by Mail, since as he said right out, with higher turnout from easy voting, repubs would never win again. He has filed a suit to eliminate ballot drop-boxes, so everyone would have to vote in person, in long lines. And risk getting the virus and dying.

Black Lives Matter protestors have thought their cause was enough to knowingly risk their lives, not just to the virus, but to police and other murderers. 

dt supporters, on the other hand, have been stupid enough to attend his rallies in crowded indoor locations, since they had drunk the dt koolaid and didn't believe the virus was that bad. Now many are sick from the rally in Tulsa Oklahoma, and at least one has died, dt's most prominent black supporter.

If the dt supporters, including our local anti-vaccers / anti-maskers /and extreme right-wingers were only going to kill themselves, I'd say "Great. Nominate them for a Darwin Award." (given for being stupid enough to wipe out the winner and all his potential/actual progeny). But of course they won't just be killing themselves and their families, but innocent neighbors, bystanders, grocery clerks.

So, the first question is, if dt tries to illegally delay the election and declare martial law, or if he loses the election and refuses to leave office, claiming fraud, will the real military support him? Maybe not; they swear to defend the Constitution.

And will the rest of the reality-based community be as brave and together as Portland has been.

The mercenary storm troopers have left. The nightly protests are completely peaceful again.

If Tina were still alive, I think she would have been out on those streets.

I don't have an illustration for this

There are local demonstrations; I am joining them.

If you are not, you are part of the problem.

If you push back against the phrase "Black Lives Matter", you are part of the problem.

We have all seen this too often.
And no one is held responsible. The killers are usually not even charged. If charged, not convicted.

My heart still hurts for Trayvon Martin. And I am still outraged that his stalker and killer wasn't charged for months, and was acquitted by a racist jury.

 While under the same racist prosecutor,  an abused woman who fired a warning shot into the wall,  to discourage her pursuer, was sent to jail for 30 years.

And Tamir Rice. 12 years old. Holding a TOY gun. In an OPEN CARRY state - in which it is perfectly legal to be showing a real gun. Shot to death within a few seconds of when the cops arrived. And his sister tackled and not allowed to go to him as he lay dying. And no medical assistance called or given. The first call his policeman-murderer made was to his union, to get their help in covering his ass. No punishment.

Hundreds have been murdered since then, mostly by cops. And now Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.

Some of the instigators of violence in the demonstrations, and those burning down black-owned businesses, are white supremacists.

If you are only seeing/hearing mainstream media, you are missing important things. If you are only watching/reading/listening to sources from one point of view, you are missing half your mind, like a Trump-cultist.

Statistically, probably not all white cops are racist scum murderers. But too many who may not think of themselves that way are protecting those who are. And their unions are fighting reforms.

This quote from historian Bruce Catton's speech, "The Meaning of the Civil War", given in 1961 near an anniversary of the war, should have been given more publicity, and taught in every school, since then.

"The Civil War was about something. It was fought for something. And— let us never for a moment forget it—it won something. 

Under everything else, the war was about Negro slavery. 

It was fought for freedom—and if ever anything was worth fighting a war for, freedom was and is the cause. The war won freedom—for the slaves, and for the people who owned the slaves, for all of the people in both sections who in one way or another had consented to slavery.

... The Civil War turned the Negro from a chattel slave into an American citizen, and it left us with the eternal and completely inescapable obligation to see to it that the citizenship is made good. There could be no greater absurdity than an attempt to commemorate any Civil War anniversary on a basis which would deprive Negro citizens of the right to attend. 

Unless the Negro can join freely and fully in all national centennial ceremonies, the ceremonies are not worth ten minutes of anybody’s time. 

And that is why the Civil War is worth remembering. 

It gave us a broader freedom, and it laid upon us the obligation to live up to that freedom and to make it unlimited, for everybody. Freedom is indivisible.

Winning it for the Negro, we won it also for all of the people who then were or ever would become Americans—for the man who has fled from oppression, misery and discrimination overseas as well as for the fugitive from the American slave pen and auction block. We can never have, permanently, a second-class citizenship in this country; because of the Civil War, we are no longer that kind of country.

We might just as well stop trying to find a comfortable middle ground between the ideas of Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler. There simply isn’t any such place."

Bruce Catton in The Meaning of the Civil War


The modern appearance of white supremacists, KKK, and swastika-bearing real neo-nazis, crawling out of hiding like cockroaches, emboldened, aided and encouraged by trump, is an embrace of the ideas of Hitler.

As is out-of-control police violence against peaceful protestors and reporters. And attacks on reporters by "police-associated white supremacists". (Fairdotorg June 9 2020)