Paul CantrellJun 8, 2025

Repeat it like a broken record, tell your friends and neighbors who are not Extremely Online and are not getting these firsthand reports:

The only people who were violent were ICE and the police.

The only people who were violent were ICE and the police.

The only people who were violent were ICE and the police.

Show threadPaul CantrellJun 8, 2025

The protesters were angry. The protesters were loud. But the protesters were not really violent.

That tear gas you see? Police.
Those explosions? Police.
The flashes and bangs? Police.

Show threadPaul CantrellJun 8, 2025
Trump complaining about the violence in LA is basically somebody punching themselves in the face and then saying they’re going to start punching everyone if the punching doesn’t stop.
Show threadPaul CantrellJun 8, 2025

When I say that the protesters were angry but not violent, I guess I should also say this:

In the sick imagination of white supremacy, for a Black or brown person to be angry •is• for them to be violent, by definition.

So when you hear people saying “they were violent,” those people are flat wrong — but they may also be describing something that is in fact completely real and completely consistent in their mind.

Show threadsecretsloth
@inthehands I saw this one article saying (with implied pearl clutching) that people were saying they didn't want ICE there and that they were yelling at cops. Um... yeah? That's what you do at protests? My dudes and non dudes. When I was in my protesting days, we stood in front of the white house and shouted "shame on you," among other things. We yelled at the Capitol police. We yelled at counter protesters and woooooo did they yell at us. I even got called (gasp) a dirty hippie.
Jun 9, 2025 at 10:23amWeb
Show threadsecretslothJun 9, 2025
@inthehands protest is ABOUT DISSENT. So many of these takes seem genuinely shocked that the *protests* *express dissent* *using words.* The right genuinely cannot stand to be disagreed with, at all, even to be told "we don't like it when our neighbors are disappeared, never to return. We don't like that you're pepper spraying and tear gassing our legal, peaceful demonstration." It's really baffling to watch.