The following is a letter to the editor, published here as opinion. The opinions expressed in this letter are those of the writer. If you would like to submit a letter to the editor feel free to write to [email protected].
You post about black lives matter but who’s willing to fight for it? Be bold! Our voices need to be heard. It’s time for a change. This is not only just for us right now but think about OUR BABIES and what our future generations deserve!
The peaceful protest is tomorrow, May 31, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 100 N State St. Ukiah CA, 95482 (the courthouse).
I am looking forward to spending the day with you all and speaking up and letting our voices be heard. I am so excited that we all have come together as a community. The riots and protests will not end overnight, it’s going to take all of us to come together and demand justice. We need to be together today so that we’re taking part in ensuring a peaceful future.
Masks are encourage for the safety of others. Those who wish to take part but would not like to compromise their health, we suggest staying in your cars and supporting out on the streets.
Make signs, make noise.
Be sure to bring water, energy packed foods and gear to keep yourself safe. This is not a gathering for a riot. We are coming together to support our black communities. We really do not want the police to get involved. As long as the protest stays peaceful we should all be safe.
Essence Roque
Willits, CA
I sure hope it DOES remain peaceful. Over 30 US cities are burning tonight from what started as “peaceful” protests.
What happened to George Floyd was an abomination. I don’t care about whether he tried to pass a counterfeit $20, or if was drunk or high, or if he “resisted arrest.” NO ONE should put a knee on anyone’s neck, ever. The cops carry TASERs for a reason, but those were not deployed. Why not, IF Floyd was such a “threat” to the cops – it sure doesn’t appear he was any sort of threat.
I do particularly object to the race baiting angle of this situation. Do Black Americans take more than their “fair share” of abuse from the police? Certainly, that’s pretty clear. WHY is definitely debatable, though. Was the cop – I should say, pig – with his knee on Floyd’s neck, who is (soon to be: was) married to a Hmong (Asian) woman, a “racist”? I’m going to need to see evidence that Floyd was targeted BECAUSE he was Black. Yet left-wing propagandists, including the inflammatory, race-baiting mayor of Minneapolis, claims Floyd would be alive if he was White? Hmmm…really? Is Justine Damond still alive? Name doesn’t rink a bell? Not surprising, since she was a blonde White woman. She had the “White privilege” of being shot dead by a Black immigrant Minneapolis Police Department cop responding to her 9-1-1 call for help. Did Minneapolis burn for that? No.
The ironic thing with Floyd’s death is that it was perpetrated by a Minneapolis Police Department “officer,” who answered to a Black police chief, a Black deputy police chief, a Democrat mayor, and a Democrat governor. If “institutional racism” is the cause of Floyd’s death, that’s very, very interesting…I guess it’s not “right-wing White racists” causing it.
How about we speak out and protest killer cops and police brutality, in general? Represent Floyd, and Damond, and Breona Taylor of Louisville (Black woman killed in her bed), and Kelly Thomas of Fullerton (White man), and my classmate and Army veteran, Parminder Shergill (Indian/Asian-American man, shot dead because cops peed their pants)…all murdered by the police…
All white people are infused in a culture of systemic racism and thus are capable in behaving in racist ways whether they are conscious of it or not. Being married to a person of color does not absolve anyone of racist behaviors or thought processes. Of course police violence is a widespread problem for all people but Death by cop is a leading cause of death for black men. Please educate yourself and find your humanity and stop centering your own experience. Right now we must protect the most vulnerable and the most oppressed and that means standing up for black lives.
You say the cop could have used a taser? I don’t understand how you can think that passing a counterfeit bill was punishable by anything close to the actions George Floyd received. He may not have even known he was passing it or … he may not have even been the one who did pass it! Has that ever been confirmed? Reports say the store owner said the “perp” (who was not a “perp” yet because it had never been proven he knew he done anything wrong) was later outside on top of a car, but the police pulled him out when he was sitting in a car, not on it. The store worker said he was about 6 feet, but Floyd was 6 feet 6 inches, hard to miss that discrepancy. Later, after he was handcuffed and sitting in a patrol car, Chauvin pulled him back out and then proceeded to apply brutal force. Why? What could have possibly attributed to that? How do we know that Floyd wasn’t just someone in the wrong place at the wrong time? And even if he did pass the bill, that is not a crime unless you are aware you are doing it. So the police became judge and jury. Obviously, he received this treatment because of his race.
Selena Rowan:
Forgive me if I don’t sign on to your Marxist theory of “institutional racism.” Marxism was the leading cause of death by government in the 20th Century.
While millions of Black Americans lost their jobs, most permanently, due to Flatten the Economy, you said NOTHING. While millions of Black Americans face the prospect of no money and no food from Flatten the Economy, right now, you say NOTHING. In fact, I’d bet you’re one of the extreme left cheerleaders who said Flatten the Economy was “necessary” to “protect” us.
So spare us the BS about “protecting the vulnerable.” Your words and actions are entirely self-serving, purely for political reasons.
Oh, and BTW, white is the presence of all colors. Black is the absence of color. You agitprop ideologues can’t even get THAT right. 🙂
Outraged:
For whatever reason, perhaps because Floyd was (understandably) terrified, he “resisted arrest.” The propriety and morality of that charge is another debate. The fact is he did. Hence, my observation that a TASER could have been used, instead of manhandling him to the ground and then putting a knee on his neck.
No, it’s not “obvious” he was treated like that due to his race. Your statement to that effect is purely opinion, and, serves only to escalate the violence and anger.
ALL of the facts are going to come out, but open insurrection seems to be response of those who DEMAND an immediate lynching not just of Chauvin but all four of the cops, whose roles in the situation are still in question.
You ask what should police do to people “who do not peacefully cooperate”. There is more to the story than meets the eye. Since when was passing a counterfeit bill an offense unless the person somehow knew he or she was passing it? And yet they treated Floyd like a criminal. He must have cooperated at some point because he was sitting, handcuffed behind his back, in a squad car when this bunch then pulled him back out and threw him on the ground and applied this brutal maneuver. Why? He was not resisting arrest at that time.
Calling people names is your way of thinking you’re winning an argument but it just makes you look like you are angry (over nothing). Now is not the time for such behavior, if you ask me. You ask what I am doing to “stop the insurrection in America” but I can’t answer because I don’t know which “insurrection” you are referring to. Is the “insurrection” that African Americans are demanding their rights or is the “insurrection” that the police are using high-handed, injurious and even murderous methods on those races they resent? What is the responsible thing to do at this time? I believe it is speaking up against acts like this without recriminations against the victims.
J.C. is a total bot.
Are you having a problem comprehending his well articulated statement?
Jill, you are the proverbial NPC, able to parrot only what the Television has programmed into you. The ideological father of the “protestors,” Vladimir Lenin, called someone like you an “useful idiot.”
Selena Rowan does not know what she is talking about. It sounds like from her statement that she is a racist.
The worse racists are always among the extreme left. It’s terribly ironic that Karl Marx was notorious for his KKK-level racist statements, including the German form of the “N” word against his political opponents (e.g., Ferdinand Lassalle). That doesn’t stop today’s Marxists from worshiping him (while at the same time they have huge problems with Americans like Thomas Jefferson).
I just love the doublethink these “anti-racists” (sic) practice. Someone who commits their life and bloodline to a person of another race is still “racist.” LOL
I just read a terribly sad story out of Minneapolis: a Black firefighter was looking to open a bar, and expended his life savings in getting it ready. The Flatten the Economy lockdown delayed him in opening it, and now, it’s been burned to the ground by “protestors.” That’s left-wing “racist justice.”
I sure hope Ukiah PD and the MCSO are fully-ready for this “peaceful protest” later today.
Tokalenko I sense a lot of anger in your statement regarding protesters. However, that aside, what is the point of arresting someone who passes a counterfeit bill? Unknowingly using counterfeit money is not an offense and even the store owners said they were surprised by the actions of the police in going after the “suspect”. As for “resisting arrest” he was no longer resisting when they dragged him out of the squad car, handcuffed and possibly having a heart attack or at least having trouble breathing. You complain about “lynchings” of police officers, and yet this was the real lynching. Execution for a “crime” that was never committed and the judge and jury were the police. Protesters should not be looting and causing damage, I agree, but our culture teaches that high end goods are the definition of “class”, and “class” is what causes these problems to arise. And no I am not a Marxist so don’t even go there. When you direct information at all people across the board that they MUST have these luxury articles and then deprive them of them, and use the color of their skin to some extent to decide on social standing, you are setting up these problems. I don’t agree with tearing down these institutions, but change is called for, deep change in the way people communicate and treat each other. The way we treat each other is something we can do something about and those three officers could have done something about what was going on with this Chauvin character. Why didn’t they do something about it? One officer did say Floyd should be turned on his side, but continued to tolerate this abuse. This kind of cruelty is very ominous and people are right to protest. They are not right to break windows and loot, burn squad cars and commit violence. That is stupid, but our culture instills these silly values and then is shocked when they get this feedback.
I am angry at hypocrisy and I am angry at the vicious intolerance being spewed towards White people. You people shrieking right now – justified to a point – about George Floyd, said SQUAT when White people are gunned down and beaten dead by the police. You WANT this to be about race because it’s your political agenda to make it so. Never mind that a Black Minneapolis cop gunned down White woman Christine Damond. There are thousands of other examples of White folk being molested and butchered by killer cops. THAT DOES NOT MATTER TO YOU.
NOT ONCE have I justified what was done to George Floyd. Chauvin should suffer grave penalty, as did the killer of Damond. We need to see “law enforcement” return to the role of peace officers, and only peace officers. Keeping the peace, and using only the amount of force needed to do so – and only to the same degree and in the same manner as we citizens are permitted in the same situation.
As for Marxism, whether you admit it or understand it is irrelevant – you are clearly an advocate of the Marxist theory of “structural racism,” which is the next phase of the “class warfare” theory you mention. Blacks “incapable” of racism, and all that crap. White people all “privileged.” Your “solution” is not equality, but according special privilege to those you claim are particularly “oppressed” and “disadvantaged” allegedly through no fault of their own.
As for how cops handle those who do not peacefully cooperate, what do you suggest they do instead, other than less injurious and less lethal means, such as I suggested? I suppose the extreme left “solution” of simply not enforcing laws you don’t like?
You wanted the other three cops to stop Chauvin. I agree. However, what are YOU doing to stop the insurrection in America’s cities right now? If anything, you’re making it worse by propagandizing about “privilege” and the mindless consumerism – that most Blacks love to join in with (“Just do it!”).
JC and Gabe don’t know themselves.
Why don’t you just shut up about what you do not know about?
I’ve had a gun stuck in my back for being a White man. Don’t pretend to be in a position to tell me about “privilege” and racism.
What happened to Floyd was an abomination, and I would have no judgment towards the Black community of Minneapolis for exacting true justice on him, if allowed. That would be preferable to the insurrection across the country. One dead killer over several innocent lives already lost.
That should be: “true justice for him.”
Really wish we could edit our posts for typos.
I AM AN 86 YEAR OLD VETERAN OF TWO MILITARY BRANCHES AND SERVED IN PART WITH THE HOPE OF CONTRIBUTING TO THE REALIZATION THAT WE ALL! COULD CO-EXIST IN RELATIVE PEACE AND HARMONY.
APPARENTLY SOME UNKNOWN HIGHER POWER SIMPLY WON’T ALLOW THAT .
I BELIEVE THAT AGITATORS,THUGS, LOOTERS.ROCK THROWERS ,ARSONISTS,ETC. SHOULD BE DEALT WITH SUMMARILY.
M.L.W.
Your fellow African American soldiers that returned from the wars with you- did you stand up for them when they tried to buy homes and were turned away? Didn’t you fight for justice overseas? Wouldn’t you demand it in the country you were willing to give your life for?
Bolsheviks who claim to be “Democrats” do not want to co-exist and live & let live. It’s their way, or else. Would George Floyd want this insurrection, with countless Black-owned businesses burning to the ground? I highly doubt that. Like Rodney King, I can imagine him going on TV, and begging, “Can’t we all get along?”
If this doesn’t die down soon, the Regular Army is going to deploy. The “protestors” will NOT like Martial Law.
As for a higher power, yeah, it’s clear that this world, all countries, are ruled by a shadow elite. All “governments,” and all “mainstream” political parties in all countries, answer to that ruling class. We are ruled like livestock. And most are not clued in enough to understand that, and stampede when the rulers’ media outlets incite them to.
I want to be there and can’t. I stand with you and will find a way to contribute to equality and justice for all. I have a strong reason to do that having lived through some of this.
Well, things are very clear. The COVID-19(84) Plandemic scheme didn’t work as well as our rulers intended, so open Bolshevik Revolution in America is the second phase.
Most of the same people who were shrieking at everyone to “socially distance” and scold people for not wearing masks are now out in force NOT social distancing and most are NOT wearing masks.
Recon of the protest at the Ukiah Courthouse indicates the same is true here. The Coronavirus has magically become unimportant overnight as the media-inflamed situation has overtaken it.
I hope the people who are fomenting insurrection in most of America’s cities right now understand what Martial Law and open Civil War will mean for everyone. Y’all are BEGGING for it. That includes the “peaceful protestors.” Just as BLM agitators say there are “no good cops” because good cops don’t stop the bad ones, “peaceful protests” right now amidst open violence in America not seen since 1865 are doing nothing to ratchet down the anger leading to the mass violence.
I will no longer read any of your writings. You have no other forum so you spend your time saying all these things just to agitate without giving any solution to get behind. The best thing to do is ignore you.
Whether you read what I write is irrelevant. Whether you listen to me or someone else saying the same things or not, is irrelevant. The facts I/we convey exist whether you put a blinder on or not.
You want solutions? I HAVE solutions! You don’t want REAL solutions. You want phony “solutions” that will not address ALL of the facts that have led to the current situation, whether COVID-19(84) or the racial insurrection.
I’m from Mendocino County. I have always believed that you fight for what you believe in. I think that family is very important. I also believe that one wrong does not constitute another. Two wrongs DO NOT make a right. I have been taught this all my life and have tried to instill this on my grown children. Violence is not the answer to anything. it solves nothing. My thoughts are that anyone that becomes violent during this time should be arrested and carried away from the peaceful protestors. How anyone can think that violence should be done to innocent people during this time is just ignorant. I encourage people to protest peacefully, don’t hold up traffic, don’t tag buildings, don’t start fires, and don’t act like an ass.
It’s clear that the riots/terrorism/insurrection are planned and organized by entities as yet unknown. Completely synthetic. Numerous reports, including from the Kansas City Police Department, of pallets of bricks pre-positioned in cities across the country. Who paid for and delivered those is the thread to unravel it all.
Someone or something is taking great advantage of Floyd’s killing. Someone with a big pile of money (which excludes “White supremacists,” who are usually on welfare themselves). There are countless Black folk who are being injured by the insurrection. I almost cried when I watched an elderly Black lady distraught about the fact her neighborhood stores were destroyed or incapacitated, and she had no way to get somewhere else because the buses were shut down. Justice is definitely not the interest of the insurrectionists and those funding and “managing” them.
Why is it that white people don’t riot when white people are killed by the cops? Who is it that you see out in the streets rioting? Why are they mostly black people? Why is it that I watched black people attack old people after they try to defend their stores and beat them to a bloody pulp? They are the ones creating the racial tensions. When I see video’s labeled “hunting season on white people” how is it that I’m supposed to feel any different and get over these racial tensions if this is what I see every single second of the day watching these riots? While I’m not racist, I find that black people can be racists all day long, but once the table is turned? This is what happens….
The Bolshevists (Marxists who believe in “change by any means necessary,” including armed violence and endless lying) tell the world the Blacks (and other “people of color” – sic) are “incapable of racism because they do not have power.” LOL, America elected, twice, an African man to the Presidency, but, Blacks have no power.
Of course, any sane, rational person will recognize that judging someone on their race is “racism,” whether against Blacks, Whites, Browns, or otherwise. And yes, the only race who is not permitted within the Overton Window to be “proud” of their heritage is Whites – European-Americans.
That said, it does appear the garden-variety thugs on the street burning down cities and looting every store, Black-owned, corporate-owned, and beyond, are being “managed” by some very well-organized, and very well-funded entities. We’ve seen countless evidence, with the pre-positioned pallets of bricks and incendiaries (e.g., Molotov cocktails in bushes), and numerous instances of “community organizers” (sometimes with lighter skin – not sure if they’re White, as opposed to the usual adherents of Bolshevism who call themselves something else when expedient) giving orders to the garden-variety thugs. These riots, this insurrection, is NOT an organic response to Floyd, et. al.’s killings.
Is China funding this? Are domestic enemies of America funding this? George Soros may be involved, as he has been before, but he simply doesn’t have the resources to fund it all himself. There are others, very rich, involved. What are their goals? Lunatics and professional liars in government and media have claimed “White Supremacists” are organizing, and funding, all this. OMG, are they serious? The typical Ku Klux Klown or Hollywood “Nazi” costume fetishist is on welfare or Social Security, literally usually lives in a trailer, and is often troubled in “organizing” a beer run.
Khrushchev’s warning that the Marxists would bury America seems a quaint detail of history for those who believe “Communism collapsed in 1989.” But what if it didn’t collapse, but re-branded? The Socialist Unity Party, East Germany’s Communist Party, renamed itself to, first, the “Party of Democratic Socialism,” and then to “Die Linke” (“The Left”) in united Germany. For decades, committed Marxists have infiltrated “Western” society, especially in academia, the media, and government. They’ve worked to undermine every “American” value our country has had, repainting American values as “racist, sexist, homophobic, oppressive,” and whatever else the BS du jour is for them. They’ve gained such an upper hand in “the West” it’s time for open violence, apparently.
They’re counting on us not resisting.
When you are a minority you are always afraid when you encounter law enforcement, we don’t have the privilege of just going around fearing that we will be accosted because of the color of our skin. For a white person will never know that fear especially in our county. Our children are fodder for being forced to be told they are gang affiliated forced out of school into continuation schools. Also the African Americans have always been mistreated for over 400 years when brought to this country to be worked to death and make this country what it is now. And remember those of you who speak of these people protesting and you call it an insurrection! I guess you forgot your history, how did this country mount an insurrection to free itself from the British, you take a land that it is not yours by violent means and here we are, trying to save this land for white Americans through a military force, boy how the tables turn when one has been under the boot asking for change!
Spare us the anti-American, race-baiting BS.
I’ve had a gun stuck in my back for being White. That doesn’t fit your agenda.
The Irish were “indentured servants,” who were the ones actually “worked to death.” Why? Because they were low-cost or even free (“transported” for real or alleged crimes). Blacks slaves were always costly, and were tended like valuable livestock. Of course, the plight of the Irish (and English, in many cases) doesn’t fit your agenda. Nor does the fact the first slave owner in America to have his “property rights” adjudicated was Black, not White.
You dare compare the “liberation” of Best Buy’s televisions and mobile phones with the armed resistance of the Colonists against London? Seriously? Did the Colonists go around burning their own cities, and stealing everything not nailed down? NOPE.
As for “taking land (or things) not yours,” that is a fact of history, back then, and right now, as well. Caucasians once lived across northern Asia, all the way to the borders of what is now China. Caucasians once lived, long, long ago, here in the Americas, and contributed to the gene pool that became the “Native” Americans. If we want to talk about conquest, we can look at what the “Native” Americans did to each other, most notably, the Aztecs. Have a heart, man! Pun intended.
As the descendant of a “race” of people whose ethnonym was synonymous with “slave,” I should be demanding my “reparations” from the Mongols, the Central Asians, the Turks, and the Vikings. I’m speaking, of course, of the Slavs (as one may guess from my name, I’m Ukrainian).
Black Americans seem to have zero clue of the vast privileges they have in America, despite real (but also sometimes imagined) oppression of the past, and especially, of the current. Had their ancestors stayed in Africa, most of them would simply not exist today. It was the hated Blue-eyed Devils™ like me who created the technology that made it possible for them to even exist. Want to talk cultural appropriation? Yeah, look at the contributions of the Europeans and European-Americans to what makes the modern world, modern. Those looted TVs at Best Buy? Made in China, sure, but invented by Evil White Guys like Philo T. Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin.
Look, here’s the thing: Blacks HAVE been molested and killed by “the System.” I fully acknowledge that. But you will NOT get any support or even cooperation from me when you make this into a race war. I am NOT paying a single cent in “reparations” to anyone who did not personally experience slavery. I am NOT apologizing for a single thing for being born European-American or for the alleged “privileges” I have. I’m willing to work with a COLOR-BLIND society, but I know the Bolshevist agitators won’t have that. If we see color, we’re racists; if we won’t see color, we’re racists (“not seeing color is denying xx”). Screw that. You get a color-blind society, where King’s “content of character” is the only criteria, or you get war. I didn’t start it. The insurgents in America’s once-great cities did. They can accept receiving due-justice, which is to see the cops who killed Floyd suffer dearly, or we targets of their hate are going to fight. Literally.
Your argument lacks data. Even when adjusting for population whites are more likely to be assaulted or killed by police. This is fake news and phony outrage over a non problem. The interests involved are political and it really isn’t about race. Tribalism is simply a convenient tool to divide and conquer.
How embarrassing….as Malcolm X once said…” if a white liberal is walking by your side…turn the other way”