Under the headline Protests
mount across U.S. over Floyd’s death,
this picture appeared prominently on the front page of the May 30, 2020 New
Jersey Star-Ledger.
Journal-Constitution
Under the photo is the following caption:
A protester smashes a window
Friday at the CNN Center in Atlanta. Across the U.S., demonstrators carried
signs and chanted their messages of outrage over the death of George Floyd in
Minneapolis. Protests also took place in New York, Denver, Houston and other
cities, with some of them turning violent Friday night. In Atlanta, protesters
set a police car on fire, struck officers with bottles, vandalized the
headquarters of CNN and broke into a restaurant. Others used barricades to
break police vehicle windshields and jumped from car to car. Associated
Press; photo by Alyssa Pointer, Atlanta.
My emphasis. "A protester smashes a window. . .” Let
that sink in.
The First Amendment lists “the right of the
people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of
grievances” as two of the inalienable rights of every individual. Destroying
the property of others is not peaceable. It is not a petition, which is
primarily an intellectual exercise.
And
it is certainly not legitimate protest. Shame on the Star-Ledger for equating
destruction to protest. This is not protest. It is pure nihilism. It is blatant injustice perpetrated against innocents who had
nothing to do with the actions of those Minneapolis cops. The caption that accompanies
that picture describing this guy as a protestor does not lift
him to a higher moral plain. It disparages legitimate protestors, dragging them
all down to the level of this criminal thug.
This is the same newspaper that routinely rails
against “fake news.” You can’t get faker than to call this a form of legitimate
protest. This is the press at its worst.
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1 comment:
"A protester smashes a window". The nature of such a statement sunk into my head back during the 1960s. It ought to sink into the head of any kid today just as easily. Anybody should have the integrity to keep the phenomenon of violence as a concept separate from the concept of protest, and to properly include it under the concept of CRIME, and to see this guy's action as a crime, not as a protest, contrary to any pseudo-journalism. I hope this guy is in jail under serious felony charges, without bail.
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