Thread by @jfrickuga

Remember that time that thousands of UGA undergrads came downtown to celebrate the natty, and police showed up with tear gas and riot gear because they were blocking streets? Wait, let me check my notes... (a necessary thread that will probably lose me a few followers)

I'm a huge sports fan, I've been on the faculty for 24 years now and I "bleed red and black" as they say. I LOVE UGA and its students. I'm the mom of a UGA sophomore who was downtown celebrating Monday night with many others. I cried and screamed when we won.

Of course no one was surprised at the throng of students who went downtown to celebrate. BUT. Thousands of students blocked major roads for... a long while. Government-owned property was stolen and destroyed. Typical football littering everywhere.

Let's contrast this to June 1, 2020, when a MUCH smaller, peaceful crowd gathered downtown to protest... checks notes... police brutality. Athens police arrived in riot gear, shot bean bag rounds, and used tear gas to disperse a crowd of... 100. redandblack.com/athensnews/pol…

Governor Kemp had sent National Guard troops who arrived in a battalion of armored cars. You would have thought we were under nuclear attack.

athenspoliticsnerd.com/accpd-gas-peac…

Strong caution about the violence in this video (from the police, not the protesters), but listen to this 2min @GradyNewsource video with sound on. It's chilling. And this was at the SAME time of night that the UGA crowd was blocking Broad on Monday.

I support celebrations, as well as political protests. I do NOT support double standards. If our community will tolerate drunk college kids stealing property and blocking roads, we sure as hell need to support peaceful political protests that do the same.

I'm not the first or only person to make these observations. Also, this post is about Athens GA so if your reply is "yeah but what about such and such city", I'll ignore you. I'd like to see acknowledgement from @accgov , @accpolice , and @universityofga of the contrast here.

Thank you to @MariahforAthens and others for making this point. And if you want to learn more about how this type of double standard is the rule and not the exception, follow @michaelharriot .

Oh and HEY here’s some exciting new developments to understand our increasingly militarized police force. Thank you @NerdAthens for this reporting. ACC police budget has gone up year after year. Worth a read in full.

https://twitter.com/nerdathens/status/1481678051201138689