Peaceful march to the polls in North Carolina is met with police pepper spray and arrests, causing o
Earlier DU thread in LBN: Police pepper-spray, arrest protesters marching to the polls in Alamance County
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Source: Washington Post
Peaceful march to the polls in North Carolina is met with police pepper spray and arrests, causing outcry on eve of election
By Barry Yeoman and Isaac Stanley-Becker
11/1/2020, 8:05:20 p.m.
GRAHAM, N.C. — The voters came in black sweatshirts emblazoned with the mantra of the late Georgia congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis, who celebrated "good trouble."
Fists and iPhones raised, they chanted “Black lives matter” and promised “power to the people,” as they made their way from a Black church to the base of a monument to a Confederate soldier. In its shadow, they paused for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, honoring George Floyd, the Black man killed by a Minneapolis police officer who knelt on his neck for what was later determined to be 7 minutes and 46 seconds.
The participants in Saturday’s “I Am Change” march had intended to conclude at an early-voting site to emphasize turnout in the final days of the presidential campaign. Those plans were thrown into disarray when law-enforcement officers in riot gear and gas masks insisted demonstrators move off the street and clear county property, despite a permit authorizing their presence.
As tensions escalated, officers deployed pepper spray and began making arrests. Among those caught in clouds of the irritant were children as young as 3 years old, as well as elderly residents and a disabled woman, said participants in the march.
The episode, which was live-streamed on Facebook by the march’s organizer, the Rev. Greg Drumwright of nearby Greensboro, unfolded three days before an election that feels to many Americans like the edge of an abyss. It capped nearly a half-year of protests after the killing of Floyd. And it reflected efforts to channel indignation on the street into power at the ballot box in North Carolina, a critical battleground state, and other places deciding the country’s direction.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/election-graham-north-carolina-protest/2020/11/01/beee5d8c-1c64-11eb-90dd-abd0f7086a91_story.html
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almost ran a Biden bus off the road, stopped traffic on the Garden State Parkway in NJ, blocked the Mario Cuomo Bridge in NY, and caused mayhem in many other parts of the country.
NO ONE WAS PEPPER SPRAYED OR ARRESTED. White privilege writ large.
