The group heads back over to Sixth Street—we're going in circles—but this time the cops are prepared. A fleet of 10 police cars is lined up. When the protesters appear, the cars turn on their sirens. The whine ricochets off the buildings on either side. I plug my ears. It reminds me of the "Mosquito"—the high-pitched noise-maker store owners use to keep teenagers from loitering.
Now everyone's running up Sixth, away from the shrieking sirens. I hear a crash. I look to my right and see a ground-level window in Macy's shattering. Bits of glass scatter across the sidewalk. A kid wearing a black bandana across his face is walking away. He's holding a hammer. He walks up to an empty cop car and sends the hammer through the driver's window. Another guy is yanking off the license plate. Farther up the street, I see someone slashing the tires of a parked Ford sedan. A giant TV camera is filming him as he does it.
Everyone starts to panic a little. "We're gonna get fucked up, man," says one guy. They all swarm into a nearby parking lot. It's full of cars, which I guess gives them cover. At the back of the lot, I see the "medics" huddling around the guy who was carrying the hammer a moment ago. His scarf is gone. Blood is streaming down his wrist and pooling on the pavement. I ask how it happened. "I'm asking you to please leave," one of them says. "Did he smash a window?" I ask. "We don't want media here," she says. "You wanted media five minutes ago," I say. "We don't want it now," she says.
You know...there is always the chance that some of these brainiacs are students of mine. I've had one or two who fancied themselves "anarchists" or even "Marxists". And, God knows, events like the RNC attract scores of the young and the clueless...but I think it would be a mistake to write this off as "youthful high spirits" and any other nonsense. When you consider the murder attempt on Alabama Supreme Court justice Terry Butts (and, yes, throwing a rock through the window of a moving vehicle is attempted murder...and it was attempted against other delegates as well) there is little doubt we are dealing with an element that has nothing in common with American democracy.
They are nothing but new Brownshirts, who attempted to intimidate through acts of violence those they disagree with politically. That is unacceptable, and no one should back off on charging these adults. (And they are decidedly not "kids". If they were black 20-somethings rioting they wouldn't get off the hook for being "kids." Only white college students are deemed "kids.")
The total lack of intellectual ability in these people is summed up by the following exchange:
I ask Goodner if the goal is to provoke the police. "No," he says, "we just want a seat at the table."
What a load. If you wanted a "seat at the table" at the RNC you would have to be active in Republican politics. The only thing that keeps anyone from playing an active role in Republican (or Democratic) politics is their personal inclination to not get involved. The only thing these dimwits are doing is attempting to keep other people from exercising their First Amendment right to assemble peaceably.
However, the larger truth here is that these morons do not have the intellectual wherewithal to actually go out and organize for a positive political purpose of their own. All they can do is attempt to beat the crap out of people they disagree with, and that is the political recipe for Nazis, Bolsheviks and any other group that relied on thuggery because their idea were crap.
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