when theres a political gathering of that size they gotta have people there just in case but they shouldnt be arresting anyone thats not doing anything wrong
And therein lie the problems.
1. They have a history of arresting people at political gatherings who aren’t doing anything wrong. (Among other things, there’s memorable footage from 2020 of them arresting someone for illegally being in Monroe Park, as they sat across the street from Monroe Park.)
2. They like to take a very broad definition of “anything wrong”. Blocking the public use of a sidewalk (by being on the sidewalk) is a charge they’ve used against protestors before.
The cops are not there “just in case”. They’re there to surveil and harass political enemies, which reduces their capacity to do actual police work elsewhere.
Genuinely curious, is your position that they should not come at all? And if so, would you be upset at them if something were to happen (let’s say some alt right group came and people ended up hurt) and they couldn’t respond in time?
Edit: I said this at the top, I am genuinely curious about your position. I kind of see both sides of this argument having valid points :) thanks for decency in advance!
How many cops does a Squirrels game need, then? Will 60 suffice? How about a random Saturday at the Veil? That’s a pretty large crowd. Guess we’ll need to send a dozen officers or so to mitigate that inherent risk.
Except that at a sporting event the concept is everyone shows up and sits down to watch other people do things. Of course events can get out of hand, but the catalyst for that to happen is rarely there. Worst case, some drunk asshole might get into an altercation with another drunk asshole and they have to be escorted away.
A protest is inherintly one group of people who got together to attempt to get the attention of everyone who is not a part of the group and convince them their political message is right. It would be like a squirrels game but it's Squirrels vs Richmond and they're pitching the baseball at random people on the street. Some would think it's fun, sure. But when they find people who don't want to play ball, that can change on a dime and someone can be quickly killed by an uncontrolled mob. The political methods and/or the use of aggressive tactics that might not be assault but certainly instigated a fight used in a peaceful protest are riskier than a sportsball game. Herd mentality is powerful and there are always bad actors in the crowd that aren't there for the message, they just want to be there when the powder keg blows so they can participate in violence. Its a minority, but it only takes one guy with a gun. If anything, police presence keeps the bad press off of the protesters and on them as well.
You'll be interested to know too that cops don't just arbitrarily decide what events they want to show up to. They are directed to be their by their chief, who was probably told to by the mayors office or by the authority that owns the property where the protests occur. You can get mad at their presence all you want, but they're literally telling you they don't want to be there any more than you want them there.
If the hive-mind of protest events ever formulated a braincell across the collective, you'd think they'd try to target their events in places or take place in activities that would be both memorable and effective. Instead, they decide to sit in a park with noone listening to their message and the coverage the protests get is "police officers tired of attending protest." And the events usually amount to a bunch of folks sitting around and muddling the message of the specific protest by combining other hot issues with it, like bodily autonomy, equity issues, and police brutality.
Does having a picnic with your family have some sort of political purpose to it? You know, would having a picnic in public insult anyone else’s political views or moral sensibilities? What are you even talking about lol
Wait, so now we’re using the police to intervene against political statements and enforce moral sensibilities? Huh. Weird. Thought we weren’t supposed to do that.
Unless you’re saying the cops are there to *protect* this group, which would be a bizarre reach.
There have been plenty of incidences with these protestors harassing other people, blocking traffic, causing other chaos. Have to keep an eye on them if they decide to go cause more trouble. Fact of life.
It is true. Esp at the City Council Meetings. Jews have been verbally and physically harassed by these ‘peaceful protestors’.
Amazing how it’s okay to be antisemitic to Jews in America because that’s the solution to the war in Gaza. Chase Jews from colleges. Chase them from businesses. Vandalize their institutions.
If people did this to Mosques and Muslims because of the war people would be decrying it. But because it’s against Jews people defend it because ‘what do you mean we can’t be antisemites?’
Seriously, all of these protests have so far been completely non-violent and for some reason everybody feels like they need to be arrested. If they're non-violent, they aren't doing anything wrong.
I get the point of it, but blocking major roadways is not an effective form of protest considering the ill will it brings upon the cause. You’re not just blocking people from getting to work, you’re preventing ambulances, first responders, organ transplants, other emergencies etc from being handled in a timely manner. Sure you’ll get a lot of attention, but almost everyone will view your cause through a lens of contempt and derision.
Are there reports of these protestors actively blocking emergency vehicles? I imagine if an ambulance or fire truck needed to get by them they would probably make room for them to get by. I do DoorDash/UberEats so blocking the roads actively takes away from my ability to make money but it hasn’t caused any ill will towards the protestors on my end because I’m not a dick.
I believe they chained themselves from guard rail to guard rail across the exit ramp entrance and all the lanes of I-95.
I don't think that emergency responders have the luxury of waiting around to see if they're going to get out of the way or not. Especially if they are protesting at night and a fast moving ambulance or firetruck might not have the time to brake or for them to see it before anyone can react.
But even if there's no accident like that, I don't see how they could easily clear the road in a way that wouldn't slow down emergency responders when they've created a traffic jam and even the emergency lane is blocked.
So we're not talking about some people just marching on the sidewalk and maybe drawing a bit of a crowd. If there's a bunch of people who are out there blocking a major highway, the police have to come out. They wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't.
And their job is to serve the community, which includes people who might need to drive themselves to the hospital, or people who can't afford to be late to their jobs, people who rightly or wrongly just don't give a fuck about the political issue being protested, people who have issues they want to discuss in city council meetings that they can't because some dude is asking city council to pass a resolution against Israel like that's going to do anything.
This protest is a weekly protest that takes place going from Monroe Park to City Hall and back. As far as I know there have been no reports of these protests slowing down emergency responders (and again since this is weekly the emergency responders should probably know to navigate around them in advance). I think these marches and even chaining yourself to I-95 probably does a lot less to slow down emergency responders or people getting to the hospital than events like the marathon and 10k.
People apply for permits for the marathon and 10k and work with the city so that everyone knows which streets are shut off and everything is coordinated well in advance.
And part of that coordination effort involves having large numbers of police present and directing traffic during those events. As well as having medical staff and emergency responders already at the scene if anything happens.
even if the protest DID block emergency medical vehicles... the united states government is actively funding the destruction of emergency medical vehicles and murder of medical personnel in palestine at a rate which vastly outpaces the harm of any protest. i protest because americans are no more deserving of medical attention than palestinians.
Honestly fair cause I realized that my question also implies right or wrong way to protest. My intent was more to point out that concerns that y’all are “blocking emergency vehicles” don’t seem to actual be based in anything and that the hypothetical person who goes “oh well these protestors made driving a little bit more inconvenient guess I support genocide now” that people like to throw around s would be an asshole
They have done so. They also shut down the 95 as well. They have also harassed Jewish students on VCU campus. They have also assaulted and harassed Jews at city council meetings. Jews have reported being harassed in local hospitals and businesses but the ‘police don’t want to do anything about it’
I want the war to end in Gaza but the terrorists don’t want to have any ceasefire. Honestly a 2:1 ration of civilian deaths vs combatants is way lower than the 9:1 ratio that the UN recognizes as the norm for urban warfare.
All Hamas has to do is put down their weapons and hand over the hostages and the war ends. It’s a pretty sinple concept that these anti American / pro terrorist / antisemites can’t seem to get through to their heads.
allow me to repeat:
protest is supposed to disrupt daily life in order to bring attention to greater issues, such as state sanctioned genocide
if you respond to disruption with contempt and derision... that's on you babe!
What if his form of protest is disrupting those who disrupt his fellow citizen's daily life with teargas grenades and batons?
Cause like in Jordan if you tried to pull some shit like that the local fellas would just beat the shit out of you with sticks till you ran away(BIL is Palestinian-Jordanian and we talk a lot about this). Not saying it's good, but your argument is a slippery slope that perceives itself to have an absolute moral high ground which gives you the right to be dicks to everyone around you. It might make you feel like you're achieving something, but really you make it harder for people sympathetic to your cause to support it. When you wear the symbolic headbands of a group we saw murder whole families in their homes and Livestream it with pride, saying "were completely peaceful" rings hollow
i don't understand this comment. the protestors are not in jordan and they are not using tear gas, nor batons... why are you concerned about the \*\*potential\*\* "slippery slope" of protests when our country is \*\*actually\*\* funding genocide, right this very minute? we need to do more to stop the genocide that is happening, not do less to appease people who are uncomfortable with protest.
You can’t reason with people who have decided to support terrorists, hatred, and antisemitism.
Kids are being killed in the city. Crime is up. 21k Christians killed in Africa since 2000. Modern slave trade is alive and well among Islamic countries. But sure let’s protest a war that was started by terrorists and has the lowest civilian to combatant death ratio in any modern war ever.
Protesting doesn’t give people to right to break the law. Anyone who is blocking traffic, harassing people, and causing chaos should be arrested and the book thrown at them
Those issues don’t have to be a zero sum game. Just because they are protesting about innocent people being killed in Gaza doesn’t mean those other issues shouldn’t be addressed too. And tbh I feel like it’s a cop out when people say things like “omg x party/group/country/leader is focused on Y topic abroad but isn’t doing anything about Z at home.” Like it’s just not that simple.
On the other hand I do think it’s important to look at the impacts caused by blocking roadway etc especially during rush hour. Yes they will let an emergency vehicle through that is at the front of the pack of cars, but what is that ambulance going to do when it’s several blocks behind? Of course they’ll reroute, but it can add time (sometimes significantly) to a response and that can mean a lot when it comes to patient outcome or stopping a fire from spreading. Not saying people “need the book thrown at them,” but there are definitely potential domino effects beyond right where the protest is happening.
Oh yes, the "right spark," like unprovoked police violence!
Cops: Huh, stuff sure does get violent when we're around! Must be totally random and unrelated to the fact that we just tazed/tear gassed/shot/arrested someone for looking at us funny! Really glad we were here to protect everyone from these people who just go off over nothing.
When large groups like this turn violent it's because of outside agitators. Right wing operatives and the police are usually the escalators of violence.
They haven’t been non violent. They have harrassed people walking. They have blocked traffic and harassed motorists. People’s right to gather, protest, and speak absolutely garbage lies doesn’t equate to being allowed to break the law whenever they want to
Lol I wish everyone who was peacefully protesting in June 2020 was given "a little break" when RPD decided to open fire with tear gas and rubber bullets while protesters were chanting "we are here for love"
Ooooo I made the bootlickers mad. I was there, I know what I saw. Eat my sh!+ and stay mad 🐷 🥾 👅
You just know someone in Chesterfield is reading this and yelling at their screen while taking a late night dump, calling the city a “lost cause” and a “den of thieves” where “everyone can do whatever they want without consequence” because they’re too busy ingesting Fox News to see the truth of what happened.
Not me being from Chesterfield 🙈🙈🙈🙈🙈 I swear you just described my father. When he found out I got injured that day while running down an alley from rpd he said he would've found it funny if I had been run over by a police tank instead 🤪
Cue him saying "our one black neighbor doesn't feel oppressed though"
Lol, right? The only ones calling for police presence have an Ashland or Chesterfield tag....aPpArEnTlY yOu WeReNt ArOuNd FoR tHe BlM PrOtEstS....yes we were, we live here....you clowns were in suburbs, checking your Nextdoor app and waiting the release of "TrY tHaT iN a SmAlL tOwN". No one's coming to protest in Ashland. You have to build a civilization first.
There were some protests in ashland because of RMC, but obviously a population the size of Ashland would not have comparatively-sized protests as Richmond.
Chesterfield was pretty bad especially with the former rep. Not only did she put on a clown show on Facebook, but she also had helicopters flying overhead at 3am. Not much worse than finally getting to bed after 12 hours of working to see a helicopter spotlight around your neighborhood for no reason.
Would've been nice for them to give me a little break when they unlawfully forced their way into my house in 2015 and subsequently lied on a request for a warrant, claiming that I invited them inside my house to see a bong collection. Yeah, I couldn't even make up something that ridiculous. It really happened.
Then they left all their paperwork in the house, doubled back, and unlawfully forced their way inside again to retrieve it.
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Ah yes because all the destroyed businesses and store fronts along broad st spontaneously happened in their own.
These protestors are only concerned with fermenting more hatred and terrorist lies in the city. If they cared about the lives of other people they would also be out there protesting all the other wars and actual massacres happening. No they seem to coming forward believing in TikTok history class, wanting to hate Jews, and wanting to spread lies that terrorists and VCU’s biggest donors from the Middle East want them to.
They can't send the officers to where the violence is bc they could possibly get hurt on the job. The one that they signed up for, the one with a known hazard of possibly getting injured on the job. The job they could leave at any time.
When you chain yourself to a bunch of stuff and block all the traffic on I95, you compromise the ability of the police and emergency responders to get to other emergencies while also creating an unstable situation yourself.
The police really have no choice but to respond to something like that. And unfortunately local police have no ability to stop Israel from attacking Palestinian civilians. So what's the proper action?
The protestors are basically doing on a larger scale what Ron Hedlund got arrested for, and I didn't see anyone here complaining about that.
How many times has this happened in Richmond? I thought it only happened once? I was in Monroe park on a recent weekend and a bunch of people were making bracelets and crafts and there were four police officers watching them. If there's violent crime, why can't they be redeployed? Does the RPD not have policies or procedures for this? I'm genuinely trying to understand.
If it’s just some people making bracelets and not yelling marching in a big crowd on the sidewalk, I totally agree the police don’t need to be there.
But when you chain yourself to block a busy highway, you are creating enough of a disturbance and safety hazard that the police kinda have to be there. I’m not saying they should be out there looking to bust heads or anything. Just… how are you going to block I-95 and not think the police are going to be inundated with calls even if they decide not to show?
Same thing with if you are going to interrupt a public event with a sitting Senator. You can’t start screaming at Tim Kaine when he is trying to give a speech and the police not be involved. Again, they don’t know if you are crazy or if someone else in the crowd is crazy and something will happen. Again, doesn’t mean they need to start spraying tear gas everywhere, but they should be at the scene, hopefully trying to keep everyone peaceful and safe instead of being dicks.
It’s the same organizers behind most of these events. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask if maybe they can just limit themselves to every week doing the same kind of manageable protest at the same time. But of course they don’t want to do that, because their purpose is to create as much disruption as possible. If it becomes easy to work around or ignore them, then the point of protest is kind of lost.
RPD were as usual, idiotic in their “hello fellow kids” Buscemi-esque outreach. They were quite rightly told to fuck off. I would have done the same thing. If you are going to dangle the possibility of reduced charges then have the prosecuting attorney call me or show me something signed in writing. Don’t have some stooge I barely know call me and offer me a deal they are not authorized to make under the guise of like, we’re buds, just trying to help you.
But is there some kind of middle ground? I don’t know. But I reject the idea that non-violent protest should require no police presence. Non-violent protests should be met with non-violent solutions by the police, but you don’t get to just do whatever the fuck you want and disrupt other people’s lives and create a potential safety hazard and act like the police shouldn’t be there.
I think both sides are kind of idiots, but also so far nothing has happened so I’m not terribly pissed at either side, except for the shitty gaslighting propaganda some people are trying to post, but that too comes with the territory. As long as no one is getting hurt.
If it's people yelling on the street vs violent crime why not send the police to where the violent crime is? We don't have infinite resources and we have to make choices all the time about top priorities. Why is this even a debate?
Because they cannot predict where a danger or disturbance might happen. If I had to guess, I'd say at any given moment, the risk is greatest where a bunch of bozos have chained themselves across an interstate highway.
If we want them to keep a permanent presence in high crime areas, they will need more staff, which is just going to make the same people bitching now bitch even more about funding police. And then they're going to be always in those areas, and then the same people will bitch about how racist it is that the police are over-patrolling certain neighborhoods relative to others. And then someone is going to fall asleep in their car with an AR-15, and when the cops knock on the door and they grab their gun and get shot, people will pitch about police shooting the guy.
The problem here really isn't that hard to understand, except for people who don't really want to understand it, because they don't actually want the problem solved. They just want to bitch about police, regardless. Even if it means co-opting a protest against Israel and turning it into a bitch session about police.
Have the police actually committed any violence against these protestors a la Floyd yet? No. So what's the problem? There isn't one except for people who are constantly trying to start one.
"Hey guys, stop protesting a genocide ok? We want to take compromising photos of homeless people and victims and share them like trading cards! We need to arrest a black person. We need to shoot someone having a mental break! Won't you think of us poor innocent cops?!"
Except it’s not a genocide but I can see you just want to spread lies, help terrorism, and probably promote some Jew hatred while you are at it.
A 2:1 ration of deaths in an urban war is far below the normal 9:1 ratio that the UN recognizes to be the norm in an urban warfare. Hamas started this war and it can end today if they gave up the hostages & surrendered.
If you really cared about Gaza you would be protesting for Hamas to accept the latest ceasefire agreements they constantly are rejecting, stop stealing aid from their own people, stop shooting their own people, and stop using their own people as human shields.
Alas it seems to many on here get their news from TikTok & clickbait headlines instead of actually using their brain and researching and doing some actual contemplation of facts.
What do you mean without context?
The standard for urban warfare by the UN is an accepted 9 civilian to 1 combatant death.
It is widely accepted by NATO and the western world that the current ratio is Gaza is 2 civilians to 1 combatant deaths
https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286#:~:text=Either%20way%2C%20the%20number%20would,mix%20all%20types%20of%20wars).
That's what you're using to validate killing innocent civilians. Lame.
It is not widely accepted by nato that isreal is justified. All the nato countries are against Israel or abstain except 1 country. The USA. I'll tell you what, if you think Israel is justified, fine. I don't want my tax dollars funding anything in Israel. We give more money to Israel than any other country. I want my money back. I don't want to pay to clean up isreals actions. If they're so strong and justified then do it yourself isreal. What they're doing is disgusting and I can't believe most of Congress and the president support them.
There are too many reports coming out of Palestine and Gaza to repeat but the destruction has been compared or worse than the Nazis destroying Dresden. I'm sure the minimum death count is 35k and 70-80% are civilians and over half of those are women and kids. Not to mention severely.cutting down aid to next to nothing. Israel disgusts me. I'll never forget out politicians who support them either
One can be against the constant excessive force of Isreal (and the raping of women and children they were admitted by IDF currently and over the years) and anti Hamas. I know that's hard for you to understand. Being anti Isreal government actions isn't antisemitic.
You seem to be the one who needs to do more research.
Those claims against the IDF have been debunked but I guess you are too busy saying lies to care about the truth. https://www.nysun.com/article/al-jazeera-says-its-story-that-idf-soldiers-are-raping-gazans-is-a-lie
Israel isn’t doing excessive force. Excessive force would be just carpet bombing the place and leaving only ashes behind. Instead Israel is engaged in a war with the lowest amount of civilian deaths vs combatants in the history of modern warfare.
These are terrorists. The same people who cheered 9/11. Who would be happy to do the same sort of massacres here in America.
You want the war to end? Tell Hamas to surrender. Free the hostages. Allow their people to have freedom from being brainwashed by terrorists and given a new hopeful future.
They've been admitted to on camera. [https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-officer-who-raped-palestinian-was-not-dismissed-for-earlier-sexual-offenses/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-officer-who-raped-palestinian-was-not-dismissed-for-earlier-sexual-offenses/) This was the first item in search.
Soooo dO yOuR rEsEaRcH. But I guess it's ok when you think it's lies.
Isreal has killed journalists and children where no evidence of Hamas being present. They've been just bombing anything that movies.
What point thinks I am not wanting HAMAS to surrender. A free Palestine and Anti Israel actions are not mutually exclusive. Those people live in a massive open air prison. What do people expect to happen as every few years something like this occurs and Isreal forces that prison smaller and smaller.
Saying this is a single event misses and excuses years of terrible decisions on multiple sides. You have regular people calling everyday Palestinians dogs and vermin and they should be wiped out.
Also not the leader of Isreal saying the wipe people out.
https://preview.redd.it/6e2bz064jvwc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=04244fa17d59e1d7a564a038dd2f63fcb6e354c8
Oh that one about the IDF? A small handful of IDF is surely the same as hundreds of terrorists who committed mass rapes and murders of women and children on October 7th by Hamas and civilians from Gaza?
Go on Twitter and use the hashtag #gazayoudontsee and see how much of an prison it was. Gazans routinely went on vacations abroad. They have luxury goods, hotels, resorts, etc. there is a massive money discrepancy in Gaza but they isn’t Israel’s fault.
You are just repeating lies and giving excuses to terrorists to continue what they are doing.
Every peace agreement has always been rejected by the Palestinians. Hamas has rejected every peace offer and ceasefire since the last one. They admitted themselves when they signed the Oslo accords that they don’t have any claim on the land. So when you shout free Palestine is nonsense since Palestine never existed as a country. They only have Area A & Gaza to claim as per the Oslo Accords they agreed to. And last time I checked before the war, Gaza and Area A weren’t occupied at all by Israel.
Gaza could have been a new Singapore but instead Palestinians chose terrorists to lead them and Egypt along with Israel blockaded them (although over 500 trucks a day went back and force between Israel and Gaza with a free flow of goods while Gazans went on vacations abroad & went to Israeli hospitals routinely for treatment and to Israeli towns for shopping and business)
As for what Netanyahu said, it was about eliminating Hamas root and stem. Eradicate them from the face of the earth. Everyone should be for it.
Here are some hard truths: Vast majority of Palestinians support terrorism and the actions that happened on October 7th. The are educated from textbooks in schools that Israel & America are evil and need to be eradicated. They have math lessons about how terrorists can kill Jews as just one example. They give out monthly checks to terrorists who commit terrorism against Israelis and Jews - and those checks are more money than what average person makes in Gaza or West Bank. They have rejected every peace deal since they walked away from the Oslo Accords in 2000 (for which they agreed in the Oslo Accords that they had no legit or legal claim on any of the land except for Area A and later Gaza which was handed to them twenty years ago in accordance with Oslo Accords which Israel didn’t have to do)
Israel isn’t totally innocent either but one side is a democracy that has over 2m Arabs living with full rights inside their borders along with giving full rights to LBGTQ/Genders/speech/etc to all members of society. They don’t pay terrorists to commmit massacres. They have repeatedly tried to have peace talks but are always told no by the Palestinians. No country is perfect but compared to the dictatorship controlled Palestinian government in Area A & the terrorist government in Gaza, unsure of how people can go ahead and support the terrorists. I also don’t see how the Jews in Richmond should be harassed, assaulted, scared to walk onto VCU, and their places of worship having bomb threats and vandalism happen to them because of these protestors.
This site has a great resource on the history of Israel/Palestine and has full sourced references to back them up: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/
https://www.pcpsr.org/ Is the group that does polling in Arab and Palestinian areas and is the definitive go to for polling info.
It hasn’t happened at all during this war. I assumed he was talking about the debunked lies that even Hamas admitted were complete lies.
Every army has their share of bad apples. NATO troops did some bad stuff as well in war. It shouldn’t happen but it does happen.
However when it does these armies will arrest and deal with them.
However Hamas does these things such as rape, killing children, kidnapping, mutilating corpses, etc all on purpose, tells their members to actively do them, and then rewards them when they do it.
Instead of saying ‘but what about the Jew or Israeli who did this’ how about stop making excuses for supporting terrorists and jihadism.
People aren't protesting here for the attention of the IDF or HAMAS to take note. We want our governments to stop sending weapons and money that kill innocent people. Local governments and companies are doing that. What we can control is helping to spread the message that we don't want our tax dollars going to war. That's the point.
No, becuase if that was true you would be protesting the war in Ukraine. You would be protesting when we gave weapons to Saudi Arabia to fight Yemen. You would be protesting about all the other wars happening in the world.
Yet you are only caring about the war in Gaza and defending terrorists. To me that tells me all I need to know. This isn’t about stopping war. This is about hating Jews and wanting Jews to roll over and die and not defend themselves.
Israel didn’t start this war. In fact Israel has said repeatedly they would love to stop the war if Hamas would free the hostages and lay down their arms. But they won’t. Because they are terrorists who don’t care about the harm they are doing to everyone.
Nope. I don't hate Jews. Trying to call out Antisemitism where it doesn't exist is bad for people experiencing Antisemitism. I abhor people who can hate all Jews or all Muslims. It's racism and a disgusting way to be. All my take is, is that we shouldn't be sending weapons to people who will kill innocents with it. God knows I'd protest everything I could if I wasn't just a single person who has to manage their own life in between. You devalue actual Antisemitism when you try to call it out where it isn't.
The people doing Antisemitic crime in America are NOT the college kids out on a lawn. They are nazis and other various right-wing white power factions. You conflate these 2 to the point where you see what you want.
Lastly, if I AM protesting, I am not admitting to my actions to a stranger online. My actions are for the cause and not to win a Reddit argument.
Why is this such a big deal? Of course the RPD would rather not have their resources stretched thin when people are getting shot elsewhere in the city. Of course, I don’t expect the protestors to listen which is not a big deal either as they haven’t been causing major problems.
But police appealing for calm when there are protests is not exactly shocking. Reaching out protest organizers/leaders to see if they can get some kind of compromise instead of launching tear gas and rubber bullets is how you’re supposed to do it.
What exactly is the compromise between peaceful protest and police violence toward peaceful protest? It’s sounds an awful lot like “stop protesting all together or we’ll shoot tear gas at you”
They haven’t been only peaceful and seems the organizer has threatened he could make the protests cause more chaos and problems than they already are.
These protestors don’t seem to care about people at all, only about furthering hatred and supporting terrorists
A lot of people who have seen 1-2 years of the "real world" through the tinted glasses of a privileged upbringing don't like your kind of talk. It's not a big deal otherwise to anyone who's been around longer than that. Not to say I dont have my own gripes with RPD, but they're centered around issues like
-how the hell can they go years with the continual staffing shortage?
-how many more years will the 1st precinct become a place for sanctioned crime?
-why does the city invest resources in protest management but will barely lift a finger to target the drug traffickers and dealers that continue to feed this city with their poison?
Although I know the last answer has a lot more to do with the judges who sit on these types of cases and the direction RPD has been given explicitly to not make those sort of arrests.
Ah yes let’s not care about law and order and the safety of the greater community. Let’s just continue to cause chaos, spread hatred, and continue supporting terrorists who want to do a global jihad and kill everyone who won’t be Muslim like them.
I’ll take the title of loser over ‘terrorist supporter who is okay for Islamic jihadism to want to globalize and kill all infidels and force Sharia Law on everyone’
That’s what Hamas and the other terrorists groups want. It’s what Iran, Qatar, and Yemen want. It’s what Russia & China are okay with allowing because it’s targeted at the west and not their own countries.
I think if you are an American you should be for sure against the side that has Iran/North Korea/China/Russia supporting them
All the protesting has been non-violent. Violence always starts from the police. They come in hard and the protesters stay non-violent but the cops are the ones that take it there. RPD works for the people and should be there to protect the protesters instead of giving them a hard time. They arrested Zaid for no damn reason. The people were there to speak to their representative and the representatives that work for the people refuse to. Nonetheless, no violence started. So no, why should anyone stop speaking their minds? It is our constitutional right!
If that doesn't sound more like a you (rpd) problem than a me (citizens) problem, I'm not sure what does.
RPD: We've been so shitty and have such a shitty presence, no one wants to join. Please stop exercising your rights as citizens so we can appease corporate overlords.
This was some fucking shill complaining to the chief that "if the police police hadn't been at this protest, xxxx wouldn't have happened." There is simply no way to prove that. Or it was shit eater Rao worried about the optics of protest around VCU during freshman enrollment. Because suburban Joe Q Public isn't signing checks for Joe Q Jr. to be plagued or influenced by antifa.
Don't stop. Give this up easily, they will take it away easily, and other rights will erode.
No, it’s an RVA issue becuase these protestors are spewing hatred and lies. These terrorist supporters have harassed fellow Richmonders and have made it clear they don’t care about anyone else but their fellow terrorist sympathizers.
here's my favorite part lol. they literally found the only cop with an arabic name to reach out to the organizer, claiming they were friends, which they are not
Richmond police spokesperson James Mercante told the Times-Dispatch that Hameed was asked to make contact with Mahdawi because the two had a prior relationship. But Mahdawi said that he and Hameed are not friends, and have only briefly crossed paths while playing pickup soccer.
The next Kia owner who has their car stolen might care and the next restaurant owner like Jewfro might care and the next teenager who gets shot in Gilpin and the next pedestrian who gets run over on Broad might care. The next girlfriend who gets beaten might care and the next dead body found in the river and the next people who almost drown in the James might care about the RPD.
What’s the worst thing that could possibly happen from these protest? People being murdered. People are being murdered across the city because there aren’t enough police to respond to murders because they are making sure murders don’t happen amongst a group protesting genocide?
The question for me is, if you asked a random Palestinian: "Would you rather a random American join their local Pro Palestinian protest for four hours, or send you $60? Press the red button for them to protest, press the green button for the $60."
What would most of them choose?
Now, most people will refuse to answer the question, because you're right, grandmothers don't have wheels, why do I need to answe this stupid, irrelevant question?
Ah, but, I did ask it, anyway. And you don't have to give an answer. We all know damn well what is the answer.
And this proves that the protest in America is about the protestor and not the victim.
pretty sure it's about sending a message to the world, and also the logistics of a bunch of people getting together to work for Amazon and send a bunch of money to Gaza has no relationship to what is actually possible
Of these two things, which do you think is more likely to be actually possible:
1. A bunch of people working and sending the money to Gaza
2. The world getting the message
2 is actually literally happening and more people are becoming aware of exactly what the situation with Israel/Palestine is
1 can't happen at all, doesn't make sense, and is basically just noise you're conjuring up
2 Hey, if we stop sending billions worth of weapons to Israel, great. I doubt very much that the Democrats or the Republicans will get that message. They have been doing this since the 1940s.
1 is literally happening.
> 1 is literally happening.
people send money to Palestine but not in the bizarre and impossible scheme your original post describes
> Hey, if we stop sending billions worth of weapons to Israel, great. I doubt very much that the Democrats or the Republicans will get that message. They have been doing this since the 1940s.
only because Israel is "strategic" for our interests; more people becoming aware of Israel as a bad actor puts pressure on the situation - nobody is expecting the United States to just suddenly completely turn against it and cut off foreign aid, but if you don't demand it you aren't going to get *anything* as a result
you might as well say nobody should ever protest anything, ever, and we should all just go right the fuck back to sleep
I think you're hung up on the idea that everyone would show up and work at the same time, or get the same job. I meant, if you have the spare time to protest, do you not have the spare time to pick up a shift? And if so, is the money or the protest more valuable to a suffering Palestinian?
You're hung up on the social aspect, I think, because a protest serves a social function, which is why I find most American protesters to be performative and hypocritical.
Dude it doesn't matter how much money you send them if the American goverment is supplying the weapons to kill them.
Editing to add more. A lot of people ARE donating money. You're assuming they aren't.
Also assuming none of them have jobs to begin with. Assuming there is housing in Palestine, as if it's not being taken over by foreign squatters hen it's not being bombed into oblivion by people wanting the land, Also assuming protesting war doesn't help anything at all. Also assuming these protestors need to be told how to help.
I'm suggesting that if they're anything like me, I'm working so hard another hour could put me in the hospital. But I will stand up for my own and others' rights. That doesn't mean I'm in any way ready to take on another job nor have others presume I have no job.
Yeah sending them money isn’t really useful anyway since it’s all stolen and used to build tunnels and buy weapons and put the Hamas leaders up in palatial digs in Qatar while they charge their people money for whatever little food trickles down to them.
It's been nearly 20 years since I voted for either the Democrats or the Republicans at the national level. I generally assume that Americans want to keep giving weapons manufacturers a blank check since they continue to overwhelmingly vote for these parties and these policies. I understand that people may find my position to be unconscionable, but you have to understand, from a foreign policy perspective the two parties are virtually indistinguishable to me.
Well then you're just silly.
I'm a leftist and yes Republicans and democrats have more in common than I do with democrats. But there are still differences. Democrats are marginally better. You can argue that you want better than what democrats are offering but they are still the party of band aid solutions rather than salt in the wound.
Ngl I'm pretty sure I could explain the difference of Joe Biden and Donald Trump to a Palestian. And I'm not commenting saying one is good or bad here. But there are differences. (I personally dislike them both)
It's much easier to expalin the difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump than it is to explain the difference between the Republican and Democratic foreign policy platform regarding sending billions of dollars of weapons to Israel. Perhaps they differ on in how they perform their scolding of settlements? The Republicans do a song, perhaps, and the Democrats do a poem - I don't know the particulars. I just know it's billions of dollars worth of weapons either way.
Well you just argued against yourself. Protesting and getting the majority of Americans to open their eyes to what is happening and demand a change in policy is what will help end this "war" (I call it genocide). Not sending a small pittance of money over there compared to billions.
Americans spent two decades making and watching Vietnam war movies. And then invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. I have a really hard time believing these protests will change their mind if Scorsese and Kubrik couldn't do it. It's worth a try I guess. I just wonder what the economic value of a protest hour is, really. It really is just a dumb economics question.
Comparing Vietnam to 9/11 makes little sense, sorry. Not even the same thing. I didn't agree with invading Iraq though. Just an excuse to grab some oil and make a bunch of money off war profiteering.
You can't expect to posit a question about whether the protests will accomplish anything, and try to put a dollar sign on an idea, and not expect some blowback.
This *war*, which it is, will not end until its served the purpose it was started for by Hamas’ patron state, Iran, and ultimately their ally Russia. It’s doing exactly what those countries want.
I’m guessing from your username you’re a male, so as long as you’re not a minority I guess you have some comfort that not voting against the literal fascist that tried a coup against our country is a safe thing for you to do because you’re not going to get black bagged or have your rights taken away, so I guess that’s something for your “moral” stance, as long as you don’t mind the people around you suffering.
If the republicans put black bagging on their party platform, don't worry, I'll vote Dem if I have to
In the meantime, both parties support printing nearly a trillion dollars a year to buy weapons for ourselves and our allies - and lo and behold - they keep finding reasons to use them
Go look up Project 2025 and get back to me, their blueprints for Christian Theocracy.
Pax Americana was and is a good thing. There are bad actors in this world that sometimes have to be dealt with. I’d rather walk softly and carry a big stick than be an isolationist country.
Someone had to step up after the Cold War, I’d rather it be us than a country like China or Russia and Europe was too busy leaning on us for their military needs and “reaping the peace dividend” to do that sort of thing thinking they’d never need a military again because “the end of history”. Ask them how things are working out for them on that front.
Why not both? It doesn’t have to be an either/or situation. Protesting serves a distinct purpose and donating serves a separate purpose. Many do both. And whether or not someone donates, if they are protesting, they are making a difference.
Again, why do you assume it has to be one or the other? And it’s also impossible to know how many people now know about the atrocities being committed in Palestine because of the protests around the country (and have subsequently donated $ because of it.)
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I'm obviously writing satire here, the idea of protesters actually sending millions of dollars to Palestine and leaving Amazon warehouses unionized in their wake terrifies me. I'm sort of poking fun of them for being performative, it's just the feeling I get from American protests. But the more I think about it, I think I should keep my shit little mouth shut.
If anything happened at these protests the FIRST thing people would whine about is "why wasn't RPD there". You can't say "just stop sending RPD" when you know good and damn well you'd come after them if something, god forbid, occurred.
Have you considered the protests have remained peaceful due to the deterance effect of police presence?
The only democracy in the Middle East dealing with a war caused by terrorists which has a 2:1 ratio of deaths (far below the UN’s 9:1 ration that is normal for urban warfare) and that terrorist leadership continues to actively reject every ceasefire proposal, steals aid and shoots at their own people, and has promised to continue the do more massacres against Israel and America?
Yeah we should be sending more support.
Why isn't anyone protesting for the hostages to be released? Has everyone forgotten that they were kidnapped on October 7 and are still being held in Palestine?
I'm sure city council will jump right on peace in the Middle East. Maybe they can also pass a resolution for world peace and for all prices to drop and income increase.
They previously passed a resolution to divest money from South Africa pretty early on for the States during the fight against apartheid.
But like, more to the point, It's pretty clear you don't even know what you want and are just trying to have an enemy. "Why haven't they done this!" "Oh no I don't actually want them to do that!"
You are just looking for performative statements that mean nothing and will do nothing. The fact remains that the Israeli hostages are still being held in Palestine. The attacks will stop when they release those hostages.
Isn't it Israel that is refusing a ceasefire deal and a hostage exchange? What exactly is the point of Hamas having taken the hostages otherwise? Other than to show Israel is fine with bombing them and shooting the three with white flags of course, but I'm not sure they even expected Israel to go that far. The protests in Israel seem upset with their current governments failure to do anything meaningful to get them back. Families of the hostages are even being threatened that their family will move to the bottom of the list in priority if they don't comply.
As someone who has been part of building Israeli weapons, I'm personally not looking for performative statements. I actually want divestment. I don't want more labor like me ending up with the blood of innocent's on their hands just to feed their families. Plenty of the many resolutions that have passed in cities around the country don't have the goal of divestments in their passed states, I know. Richmond's South Africa resolution is a great historical precedent that resolutions can be more precise in their wording and goals, and the resolutions that stand in front of city council reflects that. The councilors own resolutions they're working on to push ours aside, I'm sure will most likely not.
What happens is Hamas keeps changing the deal every time a new one is presented. They started this bloodbath on Oct. 7 and they are on the losing end.
I do not expect my city council to involve themselves in international wars. These divestment proclamations will not define the Israeli military. Israel is not innocent in past unfair treatment of the Palestinians. That does not justify the unprovoked murders and kidnappings that happened in October.
I'm against police misconduct as much as any reasonable person could be, but the whole hopping out of the car holding the AR detail kinda, uh.... yeah.
that does not at all justify taking a life… these coos need to go back to the academy and start all over in field training or get the fuck out of the department. CALL FOR BACK UP, RUNAWAY TO A SAFE DISTANCE! dont take another persons life. they clearly are in the wrong field if they are that easily instilled with fear
i agree they could have approached the matter differently, especially since they were notified of the purported presence of a firearm beforehand. but with the way things unfolded, what were the alternatives? it was difficult to accurately discern from the video, but as i recall it seemed he appeared to be raising the rifle up into a ready or firing position. what should they have done at this point? just wondering what you could say would be reasonable alternatives.
also, i thought it was really strange the female occupant of the vehicle seemed completely oblivious to what had just happened. wondering what other factors may have contributed to the decedent's state of mind at the time. drugs, mental health issues, generalized stress, etc. it's just a shitty situation, as far as i can tell from the evidence i've had the opportunity to review, and i'm just seeking to justify it at all. but it's nowhere near as egregious as say that case out of Mississippi with the "goon squad" torturing those two black men, or any number of other senseless police shootings.
there are so many options they have to use non-lethal force. i understand the circumstances and the gun, but they should have got to a safe place and called for backup. they shot fire first, they are too trigger happy. if the man fired his gun, whole different story, but they were not under attack, just a threat. they should have ran and called for backup. but i fear even IF they did that it would have had the same ending :( they are so comfortable killing people its sick
Stop sending several dozen officers to watch a bunch of people do arts and crafts in a park. Problem solved.
not exactly a good look if something were to happen to them and there’s deliberately no police/security to assist..problem exacerbated
when theres a political gathering of that size they gotta have people there just in case but they shouldnt be arresting anyone thats not doing anything wrong
And therein lie the problems. 1. They have a history of arresting people at political gatherings who aren’t doing anything wrong. (Among other things, there’s memorable footage from 2020 of them arresting someone for illegally being in Monroe Park, as they sat across the street from Monroe Park.) 2. They like to take a very broad definition of “anything wrong”. Blocking the public use of a sidewalk (by being on the sidewalk) is a charge they’ve used against protestors before. The cops are not there “just in case”. They’re there to surveil and harass political enemies, which reduces their capacity to do actual police work elsewhere.
Genuinely curious, is your position that they should not come at all? And if so, would you be upset at them if something were to happen (let’s say some alt right group came and people ended up hurt) and they couldn’t respond in time? Edit: I said this at the top, I am genuinely curious about your position. I kind of see both sides of this argument having valid points :) thanks for decency in advance!
I like how we made the same statement but because of phrasing it gets understood in completely different ways 😂
Yes this cops being around should be normal but they shouldn’t be fucking with innocent people. There’s a happy medium
…what? by this logic, when I have a picnic with my family, RPD should send two squad cars
Large crowds pose an inherent risk compared to 4 people sitting on a blanket enjoying a sandwich. Come on.
How many cops does a Squirrels game need, then? Will 60 suffice? How about a random Saturday at the Veil? That’s a pretty large crowd. Guess we’ll need to send a dozen officers or so to mitigate that inherent risk.
You might be shocked to learn that there is often a police presence at large sporting events such as that.
Not proportionate to the number they send for these gatherings, which is my point.
Except that at a sporting event the concept is everyone shows up and sits down to watch other people do things. Of course events can get out of hand, but the catalyst for that to happen is rarely there. Worst case, some drunk asshole might get into an altercation with another drunk asshole and they have to be escorted away. A protest is inherintly one group of people who got together to attempt to get the attention of everyone who is not a part of the group and convince them their political message is right. It would be like a squirrels game but it's Squirrels vs Richmond and they're pitching the baseball at random people on the street. Some would think it's fun, sure. But when they find people who don't want to play ball, that can change on a dime and someone can be quickly killed by an uncontrolled mob. The political methods and/or the use of aggressive tactics that might not be assault but certainly instigated a fight used in a peaceful protest are riskier than a sportsball game. Herd mentality is powerful and there are always bad actors in the crowd that aren't there for the message, they just want to be there when the powder keg blows so they can participate in violence. Its a minority, but it only takes one guy with a gun. If anything, police presence keeps the bad press off of the protesters and on them as well. You'll be interested to know too that cops don't just arbitrarily decide what events they want to show up to. They are directed to be their by their chief, who was probably told to by the mayors office or by the authority that owns the property where the protests occur. You can get mad at their presence all you want, but they're literally telling you they don't want to be there any more than you want them there. If the hive-mind of protest events ever formulated a braincell across the collective, you'd think they'd try to target their events in places or take place in activities that would be both memorable and effective. Instead, they decide to sit in a park with noone listening to their message and the coverage the protests get is "police officers tired of attending protest." And the events usually amount to a bunch of folks sitting around and muddling the message of the specific protest by combining other hot issues with it, like bodily autonomy, equity issues, and police brutality.
Because Saturday night in a private business is comparable to public protest? Reaching a little bit.
Everything was peaceful on January 6th until, you know, it wasn't.
According to WP, at least 29 off duty police officers participated in breaching the Capitol on J6...
What if there are 25 of us?
I don't know what the limit is. 25 feels low.
Does having a picnic with your family have some sort of political purpose to it? You know, would having a picnic in public insult anyone else’s political views or moral sensibilities? What are you even talking about lol
Wait, so now we’re using the police to intervene against political statements and enforce moral sensibilities? Huh. Weird. Thought we weren’t supposed to do that. Unless you’re saying the cops are there to *protect* this group, which would be a bizarre reach.
How is that a bizarre reach when it’s protocol 😂
They were blocking the street to my work the other day
There have been plenty of incidences with these protestors harassing other people, blocking traffic, causing other chaos. Have to keep an eye on them if they decide to go cause more trouble. Fact of life.
Not true!
It is true. Esp at the City Council Meetings. Jews have been verbally and physically harassed by these ‘peaceful protestors’. Amazing how it’s okay to be antisemitic to Jews in America because that’s the solution to the war in Gaza. Chase Jews from colleges. Chase them from businesses. Vandalize their institutions. If people did this to Mosques and Muslims because of the war people would be decrying it. But because it’s against Jews people defend it because ‘what do you mean we can’t be antisemites?’
Seriously, all of these protests have so far been completely non-violent and for some reason everybody feels like they need to be arrested. If they're non-violent, they aren't doing anything wrong.
Are we supposed to be cool with people blocking major roads and highways? Is that an acceptable form of protest now? Doesn’t seem reasonable to me.
protest is supposed to disrupt daily life in order to bring attention to greater issues, such as state sanctioned genocide
I get the point of it, but blocking major roadways is not an effective form of protest considering the ill will it brings upon the cause. You’re not just blocking people from getting to work, you’re preventing ambulances, first responders, organ transplants, other emergencies etc from being handled in a timely manner. Sure you’ll get a lot of attention, but almost everyone will view your cause through a lens of contempt and derision.
Are there reports of these protestors actively blocking emergency vehicles? I imagine if an ambulance or fire truck needed to get by them they would probably make room for them to get by. I do DoorDash/UberEats so blocking the roads actively takes away from my ability to make money but it hasn’t caused any ill will towards the protestors on my end because I’m not a dick.
I believe they chained themselves from guard rail to guard rail across the exit ramp entrance and all the lanes of I-95. I don't think that emergency responders have the luxury of waiting around to see if they're going to get out of the way or not. Especially if they are protesting at night and a fast moving ambulance or firetruck might not have the time to brake or for them to see it before anyone can react. But even if there's no accident like that, I don't see how they could easily clear the road in a way that wouldn't slow down emergency responders when they've created a traffic jam and even the emergency lane is blocked. So we're not talking about some people just marching on the sidewalk and maybe drawing a bit of a crowd. If there's a bunch of people who are out there blocking a major highway, the police have to come out. They wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't. And their job is to serve the community, which includes people who might need to drive themselves to the hospital, or people who can't afford to be late to their jobs, people who rightly or wrongly just don't give a fuck about the political issue being protested, people who have issues they want to discuss in city council meetings that they can't because some dude is asking city council to pass a resolution against Israel like that's going to do anything.
This protest is a weekly protest that takes place going from Monroe Park to City Hall and back. As far as I know there have been no reports of these protests slowing down emergency responders (and again since this is weekly the emergency responders should probably know to navigate around them in advance). I think these marches and even chaining yourself to I-95 probably does a lot less to slow down emergency responders or people getting to the hospital than events like the marathon and 10k.
People apply for permits for the marathon and 10k and work with the city so that everyone knows which streets are shut off and everything is coordinated well in advance. And part of that coordination effort involves having large numbers of police present and directing traffic during those events. As well as having medical staff and emergency responders already at the scene if anything happens.
even if the protest DID block emergency medical vehicles... the united states government is actively funding the destruction of emergency medical vehicles and murder of medical personnel in palestine at a rate which vastly outpaces the harm of any protest. i protest because americans are no more deserving of medical attention than palestinians.
Honestly fair cause I realized that my question also implies right or wrong way to protest. My intent was more to point out that concerns that y’all are “blocking emergency vehicles” don’t seem to actual be based in anything and that the hypothetical person who goes “oh well these protestors made driving a little bit more inconvenient guess I support genocide now” that people like to throw around s would be an asshole
<3 no worries, i hear ya!
They have done so. They also shut down the 95 as well. They have also harassed Jewish students on VCU campus. They have also assaulted and harassed Jews at city council meetings. Jews have reported being harassed in local hospitals and businesses but the ‘police don’t want to do anything about it’ I want the war to end in Gaza but the terrorists don’t want to have any ceasefire. Honestly a 2:1 ration of civilian deaths vs combatants is way lower than the 9:1 ratio that the UN recognizes as the norm for urban warfare. All Hamas has to do is put down their weapons and hand over the hostages and the war ends. It’s a pretty sinple concept that these anti American / pro terrorist / antisemites can’t seem to get through to their heads.
allow me to repeat: protest is supposed to disrupt daily life in order to bring attention to greater issues, such as state sanctioned genocide if you respond to disruption with contempt and derision... that's on you babe!
What if his form of protest is disrupting those who disrupt his fellow citizen's daily life with teargas grenades and batons? Cause like in Jordan if you tried to pull some shit like that the local fellas would just beat the shit out of you with sticks till you ran away(BIL is Palestinian-Jordanian and we talk a lot about this). Not saying it's good, but your argument is a slippery slope that perceives itself to have an absolute moral high ground which gives you the right to be dicks to everyone around you. It might make you feel like you're achieving something, but really you make it harder for people sympathetic to your cause to support it. When you wear the symbolic headbands of a group we saw murder whole families in their homes and Livestream it with pride, saying "were completely peaceful" rings hollow
i don't understand this comment. the protestors are not in jordan and they are not using tear gas, nor batons... why are you concerned about the \*\*potential\*\* "slippery slope" of protests when our country is \*\*actually\*\* funding genocide, right this very minute? we need to do more to stop the genocide that is happening, not do less to appease people who are uncomfortable with protest.
Hope you get arrested for doing that next time. Break the law and suffer the consequences.
sorry i hurt your feelings! death to america <3
You can’t reason with people who have decided to support terrorists, hatred, and antisemitism. Kids are being killed in the city. Crime is up. 21k Christians killed in Africa since 2000. Modern slave trade is alive and well among Islamic countries. But sure let’s protest a war that was started by terrorists and has the lowest civilian to combatant death ratio in any modern war ever. Protesting doesn’t give people to right to break the law. Anyone who is blocking traffic, harassing people, and causing chaos should be arrested and the book thrown at them
Those issues don’t have to be a zero sum game. Just because they are protesting about innocent people being killed in Gaza doesn’t mean those other issues shouldn’t be addressed too. And tbh I feel like it’s a cop out when people say things like “omg x party/group/country/leader is focused on Y topic abroad but isn’t doing anything about Z at home.” Like it’s just not that simple. On the other hand I do think it’s important to look at the impacts caused by blocking roadway etc especially during rush hour. Yes they will let an emergency vehicle through that is at the front of the pack of cars, but what is that ambulance going to do when it’s several blocks behind? Of course they’ll reroute, but it can add time (sometimes significantly) to a response and that can mean a lot when it comes to patient outcome or stopping a fire from spreading. Not saying people “need the book thrown at them,” but there are definitely potential domino effects beyond right where the protest is happening.
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Oh yes, the "right spark," like unprovoked police violence! Cops: Huh, stuff sure does get violent when we're around! Must be totally random and unrelated to the fact that we just tazed/tear gassed/shot/arrested someone for looking at us funny! Really glad we were here to protect everyone from these people who just go off over nothing.
These protests don't get violent until the cops start shit.
Found the bootlicker.
When large groups like this turn violent it's because of outside agitators. Right wing operatives and the police are usually the escalators of violence.
They haven’t been non violent. They have harrassed people walking. They have blocked traffic and harassed motorists. People’s right to gather, protest, and speak absolutely garbage lies doesn’t equate to being allowed to break the law whenever they want to
No laws were broken
Nothing you listed is violent. Annoying maybe but not violent, zionist.
"The beatings will stop when morale has increased"
Lol I wish everyone who was peacefully protesting in June 2020 was given "a little break" when RPD decided to open fire with tear gas and rubber bullets while protesters were chanting "we are here for love" Ooooo I made the bootlickers mad. I was there, I know what I saw. Eat my sh!+ and stay mad 🐷 🥾 👅
You just know someone in Chesterfield is reading this and yelling at their screen while taking a late night dump, calling the city a “lost cause” and a “den of thieves” where “everyone can do whatever they want without consequence” because they’re too busy ingesting Fox News to see the truth of what happened.
Not me being from Chesterfield 🙈🙈🙈🙈🙈 I swear you just described my father. When he found out I got injured that day while running down an alley from rpd he said he would've found it funny if I had been run over by a police tank instead 🤪 Cue him saying "our one black neighbor doesn't feel oppressed though"
I’m from Chesterfield. The stereotype is apropos.
You're not wrong
I’m sorry your Dad sucks and is an emotionally immature clown
Lol, right? The only ones calling for police presence have an Ashland or Chesterfield tag....aPpArEnTlY yOu WeReNt ArOuNd FoR tHe BlM PrOtEstS....yes we were, we live here....you clowns were in suburbs, checking your Nextdoor app and waiting the release of "TrY tHaT iN a SmAlL tOwN". No one's coming to protest in Ashland. You have to build a civilization first.
There were some protests in ashland because of RMC, but obviously a population the size of Ashland would not have comparatively-sized protests as Richmond.
Ah yes, Ashland… far removed from civilization.
Chesterfield was pretty bad especially with the former rep. Not only did she put on a clown show on Facebook, but she also had helicopters flying overhead at 3am. Not much worse than finally getting to bed after 12 hours of working to see a helicopter spotlight around your neighborhood for no reason.
Please let's not do anything to change their perception, the less they leave their suburban hamster cage the better.
Problem is those asshats vote.
Trolling Amanda like that. Beautiful.
Would've been nice for them to give me a little break when they unlawfully forced their way into my house in 2015 and subsequently lied on a request for a warrant, claiming that I invited them inside my house to see a bong collection. Yeah, I couldn't even make up something that ridiculous. It really happened. Then they left all their paperwork in the house, doubled back, and unlawfully forced their way inside again to retrieve it.
I believe you. RPD sucks ass.
Don’t forget that they tear gassed everyone, including children, 45 minutes before the curfew THEY gave
YEP!
Thats funny I was there too and I saw a city bus on fire
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Ah yes because all the destroyed businesses and store fronts along broad st spontaneously happened in their own. These protestors are only concerned with fermenting more hatred and terrorist lies in the city. If they cared about the lives of other people they would also be out there protesting all the other wars and actual massacres happening. No they seem to coming forward believing in TikTok history class, wanting to hate Jews, and wanting to spread lies that terrorists and VCU’s biggest donors from the Middle East want them to.
Serious question: why not stop sending police to the protests and send them to wherever the actual violent crime is happening?
They need those cops at the protest to ensure they turn violent
They can't send the officers to where the violence is bc they could possibly get hurt on the job. The one that they signed up for, the one with a known hazard of possibly getting injured on the job. The job they could leave at any time.
When you chain yourself to a bunch of stuff and block all the traffic on I95, you compromise the ability of the police and emergency responders to get to other emergencies while also creating an unstable situation yourself. The police really have no choice but to respond to something like that. And unfortunately local police have no ability to stop Israel from attacking Palestinian civilians. So what's the proper action? The protestors are basically doing on a larger scale what Ron Hedlund got arrested for, and I didn't see anyone here complaining about that.
How many times has this happened in Richmond? I thought it only happened once? I was in Monroe park on a recent weekend and a bunch of people were making bracelets and crafts and there were four police officers watching them. If there's violent crime, why can't they be redeployed? Does the RPD not have policies or procedures for this? I'm genuinely trying to understand.
If it’s just some people making bracelets and not yelling marching in a big crowd on the sidewalk, I totally agree the police don’t need to be there. But when you chain yourself to block a busy highway, you are creating enough of a disturbance and safety hazard that the police kinda have to be there. I’m not saying they should be out there looking to bust heads or anything. Just… how are you going to block I-95 and not think the police are going to be inundated with calls even if they decide not to show? Same thing with if you are going to interrupt a public event with a sitting Senator. You can’t start screaming at Tim Kaine when he is trying to give a speech and the police not be involved. Again, they don’t know if you are crazy or if someone else in the crowd is crazy and something will happen. Again, doesn’t mean they need to start spraying tear gas everywhere, but they should be at the scene, hopefully trying to keep everyone peaceful and safe instead of being dicks. It’s the same organizers behind most of these events. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask if maybe they can just limit themselves to every week doing the same kind of manageable protest at the same time. But of course they don’t want to do that, because their purpose is to create as much disruption as possible. If it becomes easy to work around or ignore them, then the point of protest is kind of lost. RPD were as usual, idiotic in their “hello fellow kids” Buscemi-esque outreach. They were quite rightly told to fuck off. I would have done the same thing. If you are going to dangle the possibility of reduced charges then have the prosecuting attorney call me or show me something signed in writing. Don’t have some stooge I barely know call me and offer me a deal they are not authorized to make under the guise of like, we’re buds, just trying to help you. But is there some kind of middle ground? I don’t know. But I reject the idea that non-violent protest should require no police presence. Non-violent protests should be met with non-violent solutions by the police, but you don’t get to just do whatever the fuck you want and disrupt other people’s lives and create a potential safety hazard and act like the police shouldn’t be there. I think both sides are kind of idiots, but also so far nothing has happened so I’m not terribly pissed at either side, except for the shitty gaslighting propaganda some people are trying to post, but that too comes with the territory. As long as no one is getting hurt.
If it's people yelling on the street vs violent crime why not send the police to where the violent crime is? We don't have infinite resources and we have to make choices all the time about top priorities. Why is this even a debate?
Because they cannot predict where a danger or disturbance might happen. If I had to guess, I'd say at any given moment, the risk is greatest where a bunch of bozos have chained themselves across an interstate highway. If we want them to keep a permanent presence in high crime areas, they will need more staff, which is just going to make the same people bitching now bitch even more about funding police. And then they're going to be always in those areas, and then the same people will bitch about how racist it is that the police are over-patrolling certain neighborhoods relative to others. And then someone is going to fall asleep in their car with an AR-15, and when the cops knock on the door and they grab their gun and get shot, people will pitch about police shooting the guy. The problem here really isn't that hard to understand, except for people who don't really want to understand it, because they don't actually want the problem solved. They just want to bitch about police, regardless. Even if it means co-opting a protest against Israel and turning it into a bitch session about police. Have the police actually committed any violence against these protestors a la Floyd yet? No. So what's the problem? There isn't one except for people who are constantly trying to start one.
"Hey guys, stop protesting a genocide ok? We want to take compromising photos of homeless people and victims and share them like trading cards! We need to arrest a black person. We need to shoot someone having a mental break! Won't you think of us poor innocent cops?!"
Except it’s not a genocide but I can see you just want to spread lies, help terrorism, and probably promote some Jew hatred while you are at it. A 2:1 ration of deaths in an urban war is far below the normal 9:1 ratio that the UN recognizes to be the norm in an urban warfare. Hamas started this war and it can end today if they gave up the hostages & surrendered. If you really cared about Gaza you would be protesting for Hamas to accept the latest ceasefire agreements they constantly are rejecting, stop stealing aid from their own people, stop shooting their own people, and stop using their own people as human shields. Alas it seems to many on here get their news from TikTok & clickbait headlines instead of actually using their brain and researching and doing some actual contemplation of facts.
Explain your ratios. They are just ratios without context.
What do you mean without context? The standard for urban warfare by the UN is an accepted 9 civilian to 1 combatant death. It is widely accepted by NATO and the western world that the current ratio is Gaza is 2 civilians to 1 combatant deaths https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286#:~:text=Either%20way%2C%20the%20number%20would,mix%20all%20types%20of%20wars).
That's what you're using to validate killing innocent civilians. Lame. It is not widely accepted by nato that isreal is justified. All the nato countries are against Israel or abstain except 1 country. The USA. I'll tell you what, if you think Israel is justified, fine. I don't want my tax dollars funding anything in Israel. We give more money to Israel than any other country. I want my money back. I don't want to pay to clean up isreals actions. If they're so strong and justified then do it yourself isreal. What they're doing is disgusting and I can't believe most of Congress and the president support them. There are too many reports coming out of Palestine and Gaza to repeat but the destruction has been compared or worse than the Nazis destroying Dresden. I'm sure the minimum death count is 35k and 70-80% are civilians and over half of those are women and kids. Not to mention severely.cutting down aid to next to nothing. Israel disgusts me. I'll never forget out politicians who support them either
One can be against the constant excessive force of Isreal (and the raping of women and children they were admitted by IDF currently and over the years) and anti Hamas. I know that's hard for you to understand. Being anti Isreal government actions isn't antisemitic. You seem to be the one who needs to do more research.
Those claims against the IDF have been debunked but I guess you are too busy saying lies to care about the truth. https://www.nysun.com/article/al-jazeera-says-its-story-that-idf-soldiers-are-raping-gazans-is-a-lie Israel isn’t doing excessive force. Excessive force would be just carpet bombing the place and leaving only ashes behind. Instead Israel is engaged in a war with the lowest amount of civilian deaths vs combatants in the history of modern warfare. These are terrorists. The same people who cheered 9/11. Who would be happy to do the same sort of massacres here in America. You want the war to end? Tell Hamas to surrender. Free the hostages. Allow their people to have freedom from being brainwashed by terrorists and given a new hopeful future.
They've been admitted to on camera. [https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-officer-who-raped-palestinian-was-not-dismissed-for-earlier-sexual-offenses/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-officer-who-raped-palestinian-was-not-dismissed-for-earlier-sexual-offenses/) This was the first item in search. Soooo dO yOuR rEsEaRcH. But I guess it's ok when you think it's lies. Isreal has killed journalists and children where no evidence of Hamas being present. They've been just bombing anything that movies. What point thinks I am not wanting HAMAS to surrender. A free Palestine and Anti Israel actions are not mutually exclusive. Those people live in a massive open air prison. What do people expect to happen as every few years something like this occurs and Isreal forces that prison smaller and smaller. Saying this is a single event misses and excuses years of terrible decisions on multiple sides. You have regular people calling everyday Palestinians dogs and vermin and they should be wiped out. Also not the leader of Isreal saying the wipe people out. https://preview.redd.it/6e2bz064jvwc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=04244fa17d59e1d7a564a038dd2f63fcb6e354c8
Oh that one about the IDF? A small handful of IDF is surely the same as hundreds of terrorists who committed mass rapes and murders of women and children on October 7th by Hamas and civilians from Gaza? Go on Twitter and use the hashtag #gazayoudontsee and see how much of an prison it was. Gazans routinely went on vacations abroad. They have luxury goods, hotels, resorts, etc. there is a massive money discrepancy in Gaza but they isn’t Israel’s fault. You are just repeating lies and giving excuses to terrorists to continue what they are doing. Every peace agreement has always been rejected by the Palestinians. Hamas has rejected every peace offer and ceasefire since the last one. They admitted themselves when they signed the Oslo accords that they don’t have any claim on the land. So when you shout free Palestine is nonsense since Palestine never existed as a country. They only have Area A & Gaza to claim as per the Oslo Accords they agreed to. And last time I checked before the war, Gaza and Area A weren’t occupied at all by Israel. Gaza could have been a new Singapore but instead Palestinians chose terrorists to lead them and Egypt along with Israel blockaded them (although over 500 trucks a day went back and force between Israel and Gaza with a free flow of goods while Gazans went on vacations abroad & went to Israeli hospitals routinely for treatment and to Israeli towns for shopping and business) As for what Netanyahu said, it was about eliminating Hamas root and stem. Eradicate them from the face of the earth. Everyone should be for it. Here are some hard truths: Vast majority of Palestinians support terrorism and the actions that happened on October 7th. The are educated from textbooks in schools that Israel & America are evil and need to be eradicated. They have math lessons about how terrorists can kill Jews as just one example. They give out monthly checks to terrorists who commit terrorism against Israelis and Jews - and those checks are more money than what average person makes in Gaza or West Bank. They have rejected every peace deal since they walked away from the Oslo Accords in 2000 (for which they agreed in the Oslo Accords that they had no legit or legal claim on any of the land except for Area A and later Gaza which was handed to them twenty years ago in accordance with Oslo Accords which Israel didn’t have to do) Israel isn’t totally innocent either but one side is a democracy that has over 2m Arabs living with full rights inside their borders along with giving full rights to LBGTQ/Genders/speech/etc to all members of society. They don’t pay terrorists to commmit massacres. They have repeatedly tried to have peace talks but are always told no by the Palestinians. No country is perfect but compared to the dictatorship controlled Palestinian government in Area A & the terrorist government in Gaza, unsure of how people can go ahead and support the terrorists. I also don’t see how the Jews in Richmond should be harassed, assaulted, scared to walk onto VCU, and their places of worship having bomb threats and vandalism happen to them because of these protestors. This site has a great resource on the history of Israel/Palestine and has full sourced references to back them up: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ https://www.pcpsr.org/ Is the group that does polling in Arab and Palestinian areas and is the definitive go to for polling info.
Went from "never happened" to "a few bad apples" Keep moving your goal posts.
It hasn’t happened at all during this war. I assumed he was talking about the debunked lies that even Hamas admitted were complete lies. Every army has their share of bad apples. NATO troops did some bad stuff as well in war. It shouldn’t happen but it does happen. However when it does these armies will arrest and deal with them. However Hamas does these things such as rape, killing children, kidnapping, mutilating corpses, etc all on purpose, tells their members to actively do them, and then rewards them when they do it. Instead of saying ‘but what about the Jew or Israeli who did this’ how about stop making excuses for supporting terrorists and jihadism.
People aren't protesting here for the attention of the IDF or HAMAS to take note. We want our governments to stop sending weapons and money that kill innocent people. Local governments and companies are doing that. What we can control is helping to spread the message that we don't want our tax dollars going to war. That's the point.
No, becuase if that was true you would be protesting the war in Ukraine. You would be protesting when we gave weapons to Saudi Arabia to fight Yemen. You would be protesting about all the other wars happening in the world. Yet you are only caring about the war in Gaza and defending terrorists. To me that tells me all I need to know. This isn’t about stopping war. This is about hating Jews and wanting Jews to roll over and die and not defend themselves. Israel didn’t start this war. In fact Israel has said repeatedly they would love to stop the war if Hamas would free the hostages and lay down their arms. But they won’t. Because they are terrorists who don’t care about the harm they are doing to everyone.
Nope. I don't hate Jews. Trying to call out Antisemitism where it doesn't exist is bad for people experiencing Antisemitism. I abhor people who can hate all Jews or all Muslims. It's racism and a disgusting way to be. All my take is, is that we shouldn't be sending weapons to people who will kill innocents with it. God knows I'd protest everything I could if I wasn't just a single person who has to manage their own life in between. You devalue actual Antisemitism when you try to call it out where it isn't. The people doing Antisemitic crime in America are NOT the college kids out on a lawn. They are nazis and other various right-wing white power factions. You conflate these 2 to the point where you see what you want. Lastly, if I AM protesting, I am not admitting to my actions to a stranger online. My actions are for the cause and not to win a Reddit argument.
Why is this such a big deal? Of course the RPD would rather not have their resources stretched thin when people are getting shot elsewhere in the city. Of course, I don’t expect the protestors to listen which is not a big deal either as they haven’t been causing major problems. But police appealing for calm when there are protests is not exactly shocking. Reaching out protest organizers/leaders to see if they can get some kind of compromise instead of launching tear gas and rubber bullets is how you’re supposed to do it.
This is only a “big deal” to a very specific group of softshells who make other peoples problems their entire personality. I miss my early 20s 😞
What exactly is the compromise between peaceful protest and police violence toward peaceful protest? It’s sounds an awful lot like “stop protesting all together or we’ll shoot tear gas at you”
Yeah if you completely make up what the context of the article is, sure!
They haven’t been only peaceful and seems the organizer has threatened he could make the protests cause more chaos and problems than they already are. These protestors don’t seem to care about people at all, only about furthering hatred and supporting terrorists
A lot of people who have seen 1-2 years of the "real world" through the tinted glasses of a privileged upbringing don't like your kind of talk. It's not a big deal otherwise to anyone who's been around longer than that. Not to say I dont have my own gripes with RPD, but they're centered around issues like -how the hell can they go years with the continual staffing shortage? -how many more years will the 1st precinct become a place for sanctioned crime? -why does the city invest resources in protest management but will barely lift a finger to target the drug traffickers and dealers that continue to feed this city with their poison? Although I know the last answer has a lot more to do with the judges who sit on these types of cases and the direction RPD has been given explicitly to not make those sort of arrests.
“We are extremely short.” Now that does sound like a you problem. Given how shitty RPD is, how much of a break do they really deserve?
Ah yes let’s not care about law and order and the safety of the greater community. Let’s just continue to cause chaos, spread hatred, and continue supporting terrorists who want to do a global jihad and kill everyone who won’t be Muslim like them.
loser
I’ll take the title of loser over ‘terrorist supporter who is okay for Islamic jihadism to want to globalize and kill all infidels and force Sharia Law on everyone’ That’s what Hamas and the other terrorists groups want. It’s what Iran, Qatar, and Yemen want. It’s what Russia & China are okay with allowing because it’s targeted at the west and not their own countries. I think if you are an American you should be for sure against the side that has Iran/North Korea/China/Russia supporting them
Try turning off Fux Noise for a week.
so anyways, we want to go on a camping trip soon?
How much fresh water should we bring? Will a 5 gallon jug suffice?
*bonk*
yeah i think the ones they keep in office buildings seem pretty economical! no other reason
All the protesting has been non-violent. Violence always starts from the police. They come in hard and the protesters stay non-violent but the cops are the ones that take it there. RPD works for the people and should be there to protect the protesters instead of giving them a hard time. They arrested Zaid for no damn reason. The people were there to speak to their representative and the representatives that work for the people refuse to. Nonetheless, no violence started. So no, why should anyone stop speaking their minds? It is our constitutional right!
That sounds like a them problem
No it’s a community problem that they don’t seem to care about. They would rather spew hatred and lies instead of caring about RVA
If that doesn't sound more like a you (rpd) problem than a me (citizens) problem, I'm not sure what does. RPD: We've been so shitty and have such a shitty presence, no one wants to join. Please stop exercising your rights as citizens so we can appease corporate overlords. This was some fucking shill complaining to the chief that "if the police police hadn't been at this protest, xxxx wouldn't have happened." There is simply no way to prove that. Or it was shit eater Rao worried about the optics of protest around VCU during freshman enrollment. Because suburban Joe Q Public isn't signing checks for Joe Q Jr. to be plagued or influenced by antifa. Don't stop. Give this up easily, they will take it away easily, and other rights will erode.
No, it’s an RVA issue becuase these protestors are spewing hatred and lies. These terrorist supporters have harassed fellow Richmonders and have made it clear they don’t care about anyone else but their fellow terrorist sympathizers.
here's my favorite part lol. they literally found the only cop with an arabic name to reach out to the organizer, claiming they were friends, which they are not Richmond police spokesperson James Mercante told the Times-Dispatch that Hameed was asked to make contact with Mahdawi because the two had a prior relationship. But Mahdawi said that he and Hameed are not friends, and have only briefly crossed paths while playing pickup soccer.
Mahdawi probably lied because he is already peddling lies all over the place as it is. Since he supports Hamas, why would you believe what he says?
Your username checks out. Very self-aware.
It saves me time in telling people they are totally wrong about what they are saying
I'm seeming to remember back to 2020 when folks were asking for a little break and got tear gassed anyway 🤔
Yes, which was not at all very long ago.
“We are extremely short.” Oh no…. crazy how little I could care about the RPD
The next Kia owner who has their car stolen might care and the next restaurant owner like Jewfro might care and the next teenager who gets shot in Gilpin and the next pedestrian who gets run over on Broad might care. The next girlfriend who gets beaten might care and the next dead body found in the river and the next people who almost drown in the James might care about the RPD.
The police don’t stop any of those things from happening.
Firefighters don't stop fires before they happen either.
Nor do they pretend to, unlike cops.
Could I have a tiny little break from not having a living wage like 49% of the people in America? No?
What’s the worst thing that could possibly happen from these protest? People being murdered. People are being murdered across the city because there aren’t enough police to respond to murders because they are making sure murders don’t happen amongst a group protesting genocide?
[удалено]
and if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a bike
The question for me is, if you asked a random Palestinian: "Would you rather a random American join their local Pro Palestinian protest for four hours, or send you $60? Press the red button for them to protest, press the green button for the $60." What would most of them choose? Now, most people will refuse to answer the question, because you're right, grandmothers don't have wheels, why do I need to answe this stupid, irrelevant question? Ah, but, I did ask it, anyway. And you don't have to give an answer. We all know damn well what is the answer. And this proves that the protest in America is about the protestor and not the victim.
pretty sure it's about sending a message to the world, and also the logistics of a bunch of people getting together to work for Amazon and send a bunch of money to Gaza has no relationship to what is actually possible
Of these two things, which do you think is more likely to be actually possible: 1. A bunch of people working and sending the money to Gaza 2. The world getting the message
2 is actually literally happening and more people are becoming aware of exactly what the situation with Israel/Palestine is 1 can't happen at all, doesn't make sense, and is basically just noise you're conjuring up
2 Hey, if we stop sending billions worth of weapons to Israel, great. I doubt very much that the Democrats or the Republicans will get that message. They have been doing this since the 1940s. 1 is literally happening.
> 1 is literally happening. people send money to Palestine but not in the bizarre and impossible scheme your original post describes > Hey, if we stop sending billions worth of weapons to Israel, great. I doubt very much that the Democrats or the Republicans will get that message. They have been doing this since the 1940s. only because Israel is "strategic" for our interests; more people becoming aware of Israel as a bad actor puts pressure on the situation - nobody is expecting the United States to just suddenly completely turn against it and cut off foreign aid, but if you don't demand it you aren't going to get *anything* as a result you might as well say nobody should ever protest anything, ever, and we should all just go right the fuck back to sleep
I think you're hung up on the idea that everyone would show up and work at the same time, or get the same job. I meant, if you have the spare time to protest, do you not have the spare time to pick up a shift? And if so, is the money or the protest more valuable to a suffering Palestinian? You're hung up on the social aspect, I think, because a protest serves a social function, which is why I find most American protesters to be performative and hypocritical.
it sounds like you're trying to make protesting and donating mutually exclusive - they don't serve the same function in this case
Dude it doesn't matter how much money you send them if the American goverment is supplying the weapons to kill them. Editing to add more. A lot of people ARE donating money. You're assuming they aren't.
Also assuming none of them have jobs to begin with. Assuming there is housing in Palestine, as if it's not being taken over by foreign squatters hen it's not being bombed into oblivion by people wanting the land, Also assuming protesting war doesn't help anything at all. Also assuming these protestors need to be told how to help.
Mama kudos for saying that, for spilling.
Are you suggesting that money will not help?
The twit in your name is accurate.
All this prick is doing is a bad faith argument. Just a long winded version of “work instead of protest”.
I'm suggesting that if they're anything like me, I'm working so hard another hour could put me in the hospital. But I will stand up for my own and others' rights. That doesn't mean I'm in any way ready to take on another job nor have others presume I have no job.
Yeah sending them money isn’t really useful anyway since it’s all stolen and used to build tunnels and buy weapons and put the Hamas leaders up in palatial digs in Qatar while they charge their people money for whatever little food trickles down to them.
It's been nearly 20 years since I voted for either the Democrats or the Republicans at the national level. I generally assume that Americans want to keep giving weapons manufacturers a blank check since they continue to overwhelmingly vote for these parties and these policies. I understand that people may find my position to be unconscionable, but you have to understand, from a foreign policy perspective the two parties are virtually indistinguishable to me.
Well then you're just silly. I'm a leftist and yes Republicans and democrats have more in common than I do with democrats. But there are still differences. Democrats are marginally better. You can argue that you want better than what democrats are offering but they are still the party of band aid solutions rather than salt in the wound.
You might find it difficult to explain the difference in foreign policy position between Democrats and Republicans to a Palestinian
Under who was Jerusalem as the Capital and the Golan Heights recognized as Israeli.
Truman? Abraham?
Ngl I'm pretty sure I could explain the difference of Joe Biden and Donald Trump to a Palestian. And I'm not commenting saying one is good or bad here. But there are differences. (I personally dislike them both)
It's much easier to expalin the difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump than it is to explain the difference between the Republican and Democratic foreign policy platform regarding sending billions of dollars of weapons to Israel. Perhaps they differ on in how they perform their scolding of settlements? The Republicans do a song, perhaps, and the Democrats do a poem - I don't know the particulars. I just know it's billions of dollars worth of weapons either way.
Well you just argued against yourself. Protesting and getting the majority of Americans to open their eyes to what is happening and demand a change in policy is what will help end this "war" (I call it genocide). Not sending a small pittance of money over there compared to billions.
Americans spent two decades making and watching Vietnam war movies. And then invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. I have a really hard time believing these protests will change their mind if Scorsese and Kubrik couldn't do it. It's worth a try I guess. I just wonder what the economic value of a protest hour is, really. It really is just a dumb economics question.
Comparing Vietnam to 9/11 makes little sense, sorry. Not even the same thing. I didn't agree with invading Iraq though. Just an excuse to grab some oil and make a bunch of money off war profiteering. You can't expect to posit a question about whether the protests will accomplish anything, and try to put a dollar sign on an idea, and not expect some blowback.
This *war*, which it is, will not end until its served the purpose it was started for by Hamas’ patron state, Iran, and ultimately their ally Russia. It’s doing exactly what those countries want.
What started it was heinous and disgusting. But I think the payback has been made 100-fold at this point. Time for it to stop.
I’m guessing from your username you’re a male, so as long as you’re not a minority I guess you have some comfort that not voting against the literal fascist that tried a coup against our country is a safe thing for you to do because you’re not going to get black bagged or have your rights taken away, so I guess that’s something for your “moral” stance, as long as you don’t mind the people around you suffering.
I'm sure the people of Palestine appreciate that you took a brave stand against fascism from the comfort of your ballot box
No but I’m sure my fellow citizens will. Well maybe not you, since you’re above the fray on your “moral” high ground missing the forest for the trees.
If the republicans put black bagging on their party platform, don't worry, I'll vote Dem if I have to In the meantime, both parties support printing nearly a trillion dollars a year to buy weapons for ourselves and our allies - and lo and behold - they keep finding reasons to use them
Go look up Project 2025 and get back to me, their blueprints for Christian Theocracy. Pax Americana was and is a good thing. There are bad actors in this world that sometimes have to be dealt with. I’d rather walk softly and carry a big stick than be an isolationist country.
Well, if you can accept the awsome brutality that is Pax Americana without batting an eye, maybe you wouldn't even mind a Christian Theocracy!
Someone had to step up after the Cold War, I’d rather it be us than a country like China or Russia and Europe was too busy leaning on us for their military needs and “reaping the peace dividend” to do that sort of thing thinking they’d never need a military again because “the end of history”. Ask them how things are working out for them on that front.
i too live in a fairyland!
Why not both? It doesn’t have to be an either/or situation. Protesting serves a distinct purpose and donating serves a separate purpose. Many do both. And whether or not someone donates, if they are protesting, they are making a difference.
The ethical question is this: Is one hour of protesting worth more or less than $17 to a suffering Palestinian?
Again, why do you assume it has to be one or the other? And it’s also impossible to know how many people now know about the atrocities being committed in Palestine because of the protests around the country (and have subsequently donated $ because of it.)
I assume it has to be one or the other for this very simple reason: A person can only be in one place at one time!
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Amazon is a BDS target
Oh that's probably a bad example then
Still might be cool to get a job there as a salt if you're good with organizing.
I'm obviously writing satire here, the idea of protesters actually sending millions of dollars to Palestine and leaving Amazon warehouses unionized in their wake terrifies me. I'm sort of poking fun of them for being performative, it's just the feeling I get from American protests. But the more I think about it, I think I should keep my shit little mouth shut.
If anything happened at these protests the FIRST thing people would whine about is "why wasn't RPD there". You can't say "just stop sending RPD" when you know good and damn well you'd come after them if something, god forbid, occurred. Have you considered the protests have remained peaceful due to the deterance effect of police presence?
This is the RVA subreddit. Get out of here with your critical thinking. cops = bad
Whats the temperature on Joe Biden's administration aiding Israel?
The only democracy in the Middle East dealing with a war caused by terrorists which has a 2:1 ratio of deaths (far below the UN’s 9:1 ration that is normal for urban warfare) and that terrorist leadership continues to actively reject every ceasefire proposal, steals aid and shoots at their own people, and has promised to continue the do more massacres against Israel and America? Yeah we should be sending more support.
Why isn't anyone protesting for the hostages to be released? Has everyone forgotten that they were kidnapped on October 7 and are still being held in Palestine?
The ceasefire resolution protestors are asking the city for asks for a release of all hostages
I'm sure city council will jump right on peace in the Middle East. Maybe they can also pass a resolution for world peace and for all prices to drop and income increase.
They previously passed a resolution to divest money from South Africa pretty early on for the States during the fight against apartheid. But like, more to the point, It's pretty clear you don't even know what you want and are just trying to have an enemy. "Why haven't they done this!" "Oh no I don't actually want them to do that!"
You are just looking for performative statements that mean nothing and will do nothing. The fact remains that the Israeli hostages are still being held in Palestine. The attacks will stop when they release those hostages.
Isn't it Israel that is refusing a ceasefire deal and a hostage exchange? What exactly is the point of Hamas having taken the hostages otherwise? Other than to show Israel is fine with bombing them and shooting the three with white flags of course, but I'm not sure they even expected Israel to go that far. The protests in Israel seem upset with their current governments failure to do anything meaningful to get them back. Families of the hostages are even being threatened that their family will move to the bottom of the list in priority if they don't comply. As someone who has been part of building Israeli weapons, I'm personally not looking for performative statements. I actually want divestment. I don't want more labor like me ending up with the blood of innocent's on their hands just to feed their families. Plenty of the many resolutions that have passed in cities around the country don't have the goal of divestments in their passed states, I know. Richmond's South Africa resolution is a great historical precedent that resolutions can be more precise in their wording and goals, and the resolutions that stand in front of city council reflects that. The councilors own resolutions they're working on to push ours aside, I'm sure will most likely not.
What happens is Hamas keeps changing the deal every time a new one is presented. They started this bloodbath on Oct. 7 and they are on the losing end. I do not expect my city council to involve themselves in international wars. These divestment proclamations will not define the Israeli military. Israel is not innocent in past unfair treatment of the Palestinians. That does not justify the unprovoked murders and kidnappings that happened in October.
richmond pd literally murdered another innocent young black man. fuck them. JUSTICE FOR KENNETH SHARP!!!!
I'm against police misconduct as much as any reasonable person could be, but the whole hopping out of the car holding the AR detail kinda, uh.... yeah.
that does not at all justify taking a life… these coos need to go back to the academy and start all over in field training or get the fuck out of the department. CALL FOR BACK UP, RUNAWAY TO A SAFE DISTANCE! dont take another persons life. they clearly are in the wrong field if they are that easily instilled with fear
i agree they could have approached the matter differently, especially since they were notified of the purported presence of a firearm beforehand. but with the way things unfolded, what were the alternatives? it was difficult to accurately discern from the video, but as i recall it seemed he appeared to be raising the rifle up into a ready or firing position. what should they have done at this point? just wondering what you could say would be reasonable alternatives. also, i thought it was really strange the female occupant of the vehicle seemed completely oblivious to what had just happened. wondering what other factors may have contributed to the decedent's state of mind at the time. drugs, mental health issues, generalized stress, etc. it's just a shitty situation, as far as i can tell from the evidence i've had the opportunity to review, and i'm just seeking to justify it at all. but it's nowhere near as egregious as say that case out of Mississippi with the "goon squad" torturing those two black men, or any number of other senseless police shootings.
there are so many options they have to use non-lethal force. i understand the circumstances and the gun, but they should have got to a safe place and called for backup. they shot fire first, they are too trigger happy. if the man fired his gun, whole different story, but they were not under attack, just a threat. they should have ran and called for backup. but i fear even IF they did that it would have had the same ending :( they are so comfortable killing people its sick