Most of Monday was pretty calm downtown. As I looked down 27 floors from my office onto the main pedestrian mall the foot traffic looked pretty normal with a few people holding signs and handing stuff out. Seems most regular downtown workers decided not to commute in and were replaced with activists and media leaving the streets relatively bearable to navigate.
The big excitement yesterday was an un-permitted protest march around 7pm. Not five minutes after Drake and I caught a cab home (after 30 min. wait for bus) a huge protester-police uproar broke out just two blocks from where we were standing! I can't believe we missed it! Our cab patiently waited as a fleet of cops, armored cars, and riot gear-wearing police holding themselves on the outside of an SUV, roared passed us to the scene. Police used pepper spray and force to contain the rock-holding mob and about a third of the 300 protesters were arrested. Activist groups are screaming mistreatment and brutality of course. I'm all for the freedom of speech, but these are groups that have preemptively said they plan to get arrested and use violence. Some of their signs even say "Riot 4 Peace". So, I'm tending to lean to the side of the police. Without knowing the whole story, I think these groups are looking for a fight and are purposely causing chaos to gain media attention.
We should really focus on the real momentous events occurring.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment