Dreamwidth Suggestions

The word for today is "indignation". That summary comes from the USA's own history via a USA historian, one of the two that I keep mentioning so often. That pair of USA historians called the USA officially a fascist government several days (weeks?) ago. In that same vein, I didn't catch this news originally, but this morning I saw that our Minnesota Governor Walz compared events now to Nazi occupation.

Which brings me to today's theme song. The lyrics feature the primary chant during the march where one group called out "F**K ICE!" and the other group called out "ICE OUT!" We continued that process occasionally throughout the 2+ hours that I was at the march. Another chant was the ever popular "This is what democracy looks like!" CAUTION: This video is loud, and it uses the same crude language throughout. I would normally include the great lyrics, written below the video as is my custom, except for the same crude language. It's appropriate, though.

I like this video primarily because it has excellent drone footage of the downtown march in Minneapolis during the general strike on Friday last week. I need to find an original source for it. The crowd was enormous. Tens of thousands of people. This video footage is great. The crowd attendance was great.

I'm pretty sure that I'm not up to the task for all of this cloak-and-dagger stuff in my life at the moment. I mean, I understand that I'm being increasingly dramatic, but... I'm short on sleep, and, seriously, this is what's happening in my actual city and my actual life right now.

I'm in the middle of taking virtual training courses, and I'm already having to rethink how I want to participate. So, I think that means the first session was excellent. I now understand much more about legal observer tactics. And apparently the neighbor-to-neighbor community networking method that is being used here in Minneapolis is modeled after one developed a decade ago for Rogers Park in Chicago.

A few hours before that training session, the neighborhood security response chat (loosely described in this video) was compromised shortly after I joined it. It made me wonder, "Hmmm. I certainly didn't share details, but the timing is strange. I wonder if my Yahoo email account is monitored, since the needed details were there with my invitation?" Which then led me to wonder about the appointment I have tomorrow after work to meet a total stranger at the nearby Cub grocery (aka "public space" which is open to ICE intrusion). I never really understood why meeting a unionist in Minneapolis would be necessary before I could talk to the IBT Local 8 (in Pennsylvania) about what it would mean for me to join from another state. I did ask IBT Local 8 about it, using my Yahoo email address. Later, a random person contacts me to meet in person about unions and cross-state involvement. "Sure, " I say, simplemindedly. Now, though, I wonder. Should I ask the local network to have someone there at that time, to record the interaction, just in case? Or is this just part of the Teamsters' own cloak-and-dagger protocol? They certainly have their own history of corruption and violence. *sigh*

Fascism sucks. It ruins everyone, I think. Trust is hope is antidote... maybe? We have to choose which life, which world, we want to inhabit. I'm certain of that much, at least. The rest of this Andor political intrigue is just not my specialty. I prefer everything out and visible on the proverbial table.

I've seen lots of good and interesting videos recently. I'll leave you with this one primary recommendation, though. I mentioned the high-quality Legal Eagle channel back in 2024, and here is their main lawyer in a very uncharacteristically emotional video with good review of what's happening. He gets bonus points for mentioning stochastic terrorism, which I've also called out a few times over the years.

By now, everyone knows about this morning's event and the video. This news article contains both.
https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/breaking-federal-agent-shoots-man-in-south-minneapolis

Somebody took still images from that video and highlighted a key point. The federal agents removed the gun before shooting the victim who had a phone in his hand. Elsewhere, news is reporting that the victim was registered to conceal carry that gun. I'm using online reports (caution: "I saw it on the internet, so it must be true.") and this New York Times summary.

What do we do now? Our Minnesota state governor Walz sent an even more strongly worded message to Trump.

I'm ready (and so is he, "I'm 70 years old, and I'm fucking angry") to write a new detailed list of grievances for the next Declaration Of Independence, with that list eerily similar to last time.

We live in historic times.

I'm back home. I skipped the indoor part of the event that was scheduled. I got home in time to watch the 5pm local news (KSTP 5), 5:30pm national news (ABC World News Tonight), and 6pm PBS. None of them impress upon their viewers the actual scale of what just happened.

Minneapolis is geographically small. When it expanded and encountered other cities, it didn't annex them but just stopped expanding. This page explains some of that history. We have not quite 500,000 residents in an area of only 153 square kilometers (59 square miles) in total area, with 6% of that area being water. That's significantly smaller than someplace like Austin TX, where I lived before moving to the Twin Cities about 30 years ago. The size of home lots is smaller than most places in the suburbs, so we have a lot of people in less space.

I showed up at 2pm in the face-freezing cold weather. I was mostly prepared for it after decades of accumulating appropriate layers of gear, but I still needed chemical handwarmers, which kind people were handing out freely. I hung around for a full hour before asking someone near me about 3:05pm, "Do you know when the march is supposed to be?" They said, "Oh, it started at 2pm. There's just that many people here." What a wonderful reason to be feel frustrated. I waited a while longer before realizing that the arthritis in my back wouldn't allow much more of this inactivity. For inexplicable reasons, standing still is worse on my back than moving. I finally moved to join what appeared, maybe, to be an end of the line, and I started walking. And kept walking, slowly, for more than an hour across not-so-many blocks of downtown to the destination on the west side. Other arthritic parts were complaining by then, and my surgical mask had long since given up any semblance of function in the bitter cold (I pushed it aside because it kept freezing, leading to fogged-up eye glasses), so I headed back to the bus for the ride back home. Even at my home neighborhood, people would see me carrying an "ICE OUT" poster and honked their support at me as I walked home.

The general strike was approved even at the state-level AFL-CIO. I made sure to thank my bus drivers both going downtown and coming back home, so they knew I appreciated their enabling me to protest, which is a great form of solidarity. They're absolutely not scabs for working during an approved general strike.

CNN published the headline "Hundreds brave freezing temperatures at downtown Minneapolis rally and march". So now we know that CNN airs propaganda for the administration. The organizers claim 50,000 people attended. I don't know for sure. It easily could have been that many. Some news outlets are saying "tens of thousands" of people protested. Nobody could capture a single image, because our path on the march wound between different skyscrapers. You can get a sense of the scale in these photos, these photos, this video, and this video. I was there for over 2 hours and never saw the whole of it.

My own recording in video and photograph is lame in comparison to those links. Even early at the event, my fingers stopped working well whenever I took them out of the gloves, so I just couldn't fumble with my phone easily to record the many wonderful things I saw. I really like the loon Star Wars poster and the magnificent loon flag. The various Liam (the bunny child) posters were heartbreaking, of course. I'll leave this link to a folder with what small things I did manage to capture. I'm sorry, but it was just too cold for me to operate my smartphone skillfully.

My faith in humanity is restored for at least the next 24 hours. Until the next inhumane Republican thing happens, whatever it is.

We live in historic times.