My name is Ben and this is my gift to humanity.
I make no guarantees to consistency here. It is merely one person's selection of opinions and discoveries.
THEY DIDNT FUCKING TELL THE JURORS THEY COULD CHARGE THE OFFICERS WITH MURDER. THIS IS A FUCKING KANGAROO COURT.
This is exactly what Grand Juries are for. In the most benign formulation, they are there to basically give the prosecution one free crack at their ability to show that someone is “probably guilty if you only hear our versions of events”.
Remember that Grand in this case just means “big” rather than anything else. The prosecution presents their case, examines some witnesses (the defense does not get to participate in any of this! Also there is NO JUDGE!) While the grand jury has a lot of power, the prosecution uses every tool at their disposal to shape the narrative, presenting the argument in the most specific way so that, unless they are grossly incompetent, the grand jury will vote in their favor.
The real wrinkle here is when they are prosecuting a police officer, because the police and district attorney are, in general, “on the same side” of law enforcement, they immediately work to discredit any kind of narrative that could incriminate the police, and in particular that could make the department itself look bad. They’re relatively okay punishing individual cops (though usually not too harshly), but when it becomes a potential risk for the police as an organization, it gets clamped down.
Two bite brownies?? Don’t tell me how many bites to take per brownie, Trader Joe’s, okay for me, they’re zero bite brownies. I suck those things down like a BURMESE PYTHON
Brilliant guerrilla move. The heavily armed and armored men of the security forces confronted with a naked women. She was extremely vulnerable to there weapons, so much so that any attack against her would make the police look bad. It might be fun to beat people or shoot at them, but it becomes so blatantly disproportionate when a dozen armed riot troops attack one naked woman that they can’t do it.
Part of the effectiveness of this performance was doubtless it’s novelty. The next time security forces will have discussed and developed a tactic of handling a similar scenario. One simple tactic would be to have a few troopers rush the woman and cover her with a blanket (or something) and then detain her.
Absolutely marvelous. The best tactics are outside the comfort zone of the adversary.
Bollocks, the police were already packing up and leaving and this white woman decided to make a spectacle of herself. Lilith Sinclair, who was at the protests puts it far better than anyone else probably could. Earlier that evening there was the real protest being done by Black and femme and queer people and it largely got IGNORED by this bit of ‘agitprop’ that signified nothing. White people really have to do better and celebrate the victories FOR people rather than their own abundant privilage, even in the face of fascism.
“A bunch of white independent journalists posted and then shared this image of a naked woman completely aligned w/ whiteness without sharing any context or story as to wtf led up to that. Now her ass is the top story instead of BLACK VOICES. Y’all got me all the way fucked up.“
“This bitch got naked & stood in front of a line of already de-escalated riot cops and shit. She sat her ass on tear gassed ground. With no messaging & no point. & y’all white people are turning her into a hero and would be martyr. Fuck @DonovanFarley [note: he originally posted the video and still has it pinned] for being irresponsible tbh.”
“Y’all out here posting inaccessible videos. Not putting ANY fucking work into making sure that post production youre getting your live-tweets captioned, interpreted or translated, & putting the focus on white people not doing shit that’s actually tangible or even with a point.“
“A bunch of Black women and femmes, who the state would LOVE TO NEUTRALIZE, talked to you about actionable steps, gave you community education, read demands, explained state suppression to y’all. Aired out our fucking trauma. And y’all have already forgot. For some white ass.“
“Today, this liberal, performative, white feminist, new age, self-centered, reckless bullshit is being broadcast to the nation fucking proudly. As if cops hadn’t already stopped firing. As if the night wasn’t already slowly wrapping up. As if she had A FUCKING POINT.“
“Simultaneously, the videos of the press conference (where we actual Black, Brown, and Indigenous ORGANIZERS went and STOOD ON FEDERAL PROPERTY while the feds are LITERALLY TRYING TO SNATCH US UP) are going viral in alt right spaces. We’re getting death threats.“
“#PDX#PDXprotest#PortlandUnderSiege#PortlandProtests ALL OF YALL NEED TO STEP IT THE FUCK UP. STOP AMPLIFYING WHITENESS. Stop telling national reporters they should intereview white people in PDX. Stop centering liberal reformist mayoral candidate Sarah fucking whatever.“
