Let me ask you a question. Do you carry a weapon? If you do, why? I'm willing to bet that you just said, "yes I do and I carry it for protection". Don't you think that was the same reason Jacob Blake had a knife? For protection?
Another question. Have you ever heard your children scream in fear? Not crying, but screaming in terror? Did you ignore it? Or did you move heaven and earth to get to your children to comfort them? Did any one or any thing get in your way? And if you indignantly protest, "well I would have stopped for the cop telling me to," I'm going to call **bullshit** on you. I'm betting you wouldn't hear anything more than the screams of your children. In fact, I know it. Parents hone in on that child and nothing else penetrates. Don't you think that, at that moment, the only thing in Jacob Blake's head was his children? Watch that video. You can hear them, clear as day.
For those condemning the protestors, understand that none of us condones violence and destruction of property. But we do understand the anger that is promoting it--imagine trying to talk to people that ignore you, ignore your concerns. Ignore your lives. Ignore your pain. You'd be angry too about it.
And as you condemn peaceful protestors, remember that this country was founded on protest. Our ancestors standing up against an unjust oppression. Protesting taxation without representation. Protesting the right to govern themselves. Or have you forgotten the aptly named "Boston Tea Party". The "Declaration of Independence". The Revolution we fought FOR that independence. The Founding Fathers and all those who suffered here were intensely angry and did more than their share of violence. It's called growing pains. It's called fighting for your rights.
Right now, as we stand on the precipice of a new age, people of color have been persecuted and murdered over the last 250+ years. Their ancestors were dragged kicking and screaming to a land that was not their home and then tortured, beaten, and worse, to do things that they did not want to do and weren't allowed to complain about. They have suffered their rights being trampled. They've been accused of so much with lies and deceit to make them look the ones in the wrong. Crimes invented to justify murder, intimidation. And no one has done anything. In fact, it's gotten worse.
So. Stand there in your ivory tower and tell me why Jacob Blake deserved to be shot SEVEN TIMES in the back. Tell me why, he deserves to be paralyzed from the waist down. Tell my why his children deserved to be terrorized. Tell me why any person of color should be treated like the lowest form of humanity. Tell me why any black parent has to tell their black children to make sure they do what the white cops say so they don't get shot. And then, they get shot anyway.
And then get ready for the war that's coming. And remember that, today was your chance to stop it.
