Why would protesters on the left wear masks?

[Nevernose]

77. Tear gas: the police are NOT liberal's friends.

If soaked in vinegar or urine. They also help avoid arrest. That's why you see so many arrests of innocent protestors who just happened to be in the area, or why that kid got the shit kicked out of him in the parking garage of the Charlottesville police station and didn't seem to want to do shit, or why that guy felt free popping off a round into the middle of a crowd -- while police watched -- and would have never faced consequences had activists not posted the video (he's arrested on "discharging a firearm within 1000 feet of a school" which ppl have made convincing arguments is a decent charge, but still sounds hinkey to me).

It's the police who infiltrate groups like the DSA and people planning protests, who send in undercover cops to create crime and entrap suspects, who have literally been "infiltrating" pacifist QUAKER churches for fifty years.

That's where it started, anyway. Liberal activists, like many other groups in this country, don't have to commit any crimes to get arrested or worse.

I'm not antifa (I'm old and fat and partially disabled), but I still worry about RW nutjobs threatening my family or my job. While I think tha Nazis and Klansmen and shit like that should be publicly excoriated, I don't think run of the mill political protestors, either pro or anti Trump, should have their lives attacked or ruined. We won't do that to them, but they'ld do that to us in a heartbeat just to put a momnt's warmth in their cold hearts.

(And I'm also a little paranoid since the time I was at a big union rally/protest about ten years ago. Showed up to work the next day and a friend, luckily even more liberal than me, pointed me out on the front page. There were five hundred people in that crowd scene...)