Thread by @thrasherxy

Often hear, "But why did they burn a gas station/Target/CVS that hurt nobody? It will harm their community!"

Agree with it, disagree with it, but the goal of taking & burning a police precinct is clear. Clear goal, related to the murder, attempting to create a different order.

These protesters are speaking back to the American police state in its own language—up to and including their use of celebratory fireworks to mark a battle victory.

Curious if the taking of a police station—something that hasn't happened in my decade of reporting on uprisings —will bolster or suppress what I've found to be a fair amount of anti-police support in Minneapolis. The mayor & university have been surprisingly supportive thus far.

But I fear the state will be vicious in responding. It's gonna be a long, HOT semi-quarantine summer. Ppl are getting evicted. Tens of millions out of work, slogging towards hunger. The state is terrified of food riots & mass unrest.

I fear it'll move in like the MOVE bombing.

We are seeing the result not just of a decade of Occupy, Black Lives Matter & anti-fascist organizing amped up by the pandemic, but a pandemic CAUSED by the same forces (Wall St, policing, racism, fascism) which CREATED the needs for Occupy, BLM, etc.

Policing maintains a racial & necropolitical stranglehold on Black lives. This isn't new knowledge; it has known within mainstream US media since 2014 (Ferguson).

What IS new in the zeitgeist is that policing maintains the misery *most* Americans are experiencing under COVID.

Will tonight lead to

—more concentrated immiseration for Black ppl?

—the beginning of a mass, cross-racial, cross-class rebellion against the police state?

—the state trying to clamp down HARD on the above, and winning? Or failing?

—or...?

Think about & really sit with how the first national connecting event coming out of COVID lockdown is mass protest against racism & police violence.

The conditions before, during & after the lockdown are part of a continuum of America—a miserable nation maintained by policing.

Minneapolis spends more than $1 out of every $3 of its city budget on policing!

What kind of city could MSP be if it spent a third of its $ on safe housing, healthcare, education—and not on beating folks, killing Black ppl & suppressing dissent?

Source:forbes.com/sites/niallmcc…

Obama did jackshit about policing, but pretended like he did something.

Obama's DHS DID clamp down on Occupy, but w/o much (any?) direct deaths.

I am terrified Trump will reign down w holy terror & death to suppress this uprising & the predictable pandemic hunger rebellions.

Keeping thinking many things during the "before time" would be days, week or months long stories (Larry Kramer, Richard Hake, Ahmad Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Chris & Amy Cooper).

But now, they're blips during the pandemic.

Makes it hard to process.

One last thought:

We are living in a God damn Boots Riley movie.

Goodnight.

PS—The president saying he will order the military to shoot to kill to protect property is as American as both apple pie and the MOVE bombing.