Been following some of the hundreds and thousands of daily/nightly/constant protests around the world with a focus on Portland, Oregon. I want to see whether any of this is going to amount to anything good. So far, I can't say.
What I can say from what I've been seeing on the various livestreams is that there are far too many police, and most of them are doing nothing useful at all. Their primary task in Portland and many other places is protection of their fortresses. That's it. Nothing else. Night after night, day after day, the police assemble in multitudes while the public assembles their on their own account, and then they do battle in the streets. Or not. All to protect and defend the police and (in)justice offices, courts, jails, headquarters, fortresses.
They march. They run. They pant. They brutalize. They run. They halt and catch their breaths. They run and brutalize. They tumble and fall over people running away from them. They halt. They pant. They yell. They thwack people who don't run fast enough. They confiscate bicycles, umbrellas, back packs, water. They pop the tires of the Snack Van, over and over and over again. They run. They pant. They yell.
This is Portland, but it's also hundreds of cities and countries around the world. Minsk. Paris. Beirut. Bolivia. Thailand. Hong Kong. Chicago. Baltimore. Washington, DC. Seattle. Los Angeles. On and on.
The protest movement is like water. Everywhere. Nowhere. All at once. Intermittent.
The issues: Dignity. Justice. Community. Peace. The issues: corruption, injustice, racism, no-future. Increasing suffering. Hunger. Homelessness. Debt. Illness and death.
And most police do nothing useful at all. They are emblems, symbols of a useless, death-dealing ruling class, united against the people they fear and despise.
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