How do you explain these black bloc people smashing up businesses in the streets? I saw the footage a few days ago. Passing by stores smashing windows. These did not look like your Starbucks corporate businesses either. They view them as the patriarchy?
Kyle Rittenhouse - it looked like self defense from the videos.
The driver told Portland police he dropped someone off downtown and traveled past a candlelight vigil at Pioneer Courthouse Square. . . . The driver told police that once he stopped, a man wearing all black started yelling at him through a closed window. He reported the man then jumped onto the car, smashing its windshield. . . .
Police didn’t disclose any details about whether the man was associated with the vigil, if any, but said people dressed in all black attended the event.
Do you mind providing said footage? I’m curious to see where you’ve sourced it from. I’m simply speaking from conversation with people actually in the streets in Portland. The ‘rioting and looting’ as it’s portrayed is contained to two city blocks by the courthouse downtown. If you learn the methodology of antifascist action, you will find their main priority is as a barrier between black people /bipoc and the police and right-wing demonstrators. I will give you that looting happens occasionally, and there are systems in place to deal with the very few outliers who may act out. Also, in the incidence that black folk smash a window of a known racist, it is not the job of antifa- a majority white group mind you- to stop them. They are not there to tell descendants of the African diaspora a la chattel slavery how to respond to the generations of terror and killing.
As for Kyle, take a closer look at the video. A teenager armed with an assault rifle walking into the line of protestors, yeah someone tried to disarm him. That man who was trying to protect others died in the street on the scene. The other died on the way to the hospital. The third was hospitalized. Real nice kid to look up to, bud.
Let’s think about it this way. Someone walks up to you in the street with a gun pointed at you and your family. You aren’t sure of his intentions, but the gun is pointed at you, and he looks young. Do you do nothing in the hope that he’s just having a bad day and wants to feel powerful. I mean, he might not murder you and your family right? Or do you attempt to disarm him? Who’s the real aggressor here mr (ms/mrs?) cake?
If a person has a gun in the street, I would not go anywhere near him. I would go the other way. Insane to confront someone packing a gun.
I seem to remember one of the dead or injured was illegally carrying a weapon. The footage of that looks like it was self defense as do the others. It doesn’t look like he went there to intentionally kill people.
Regarding the footage, I cannot find it. But I just found this. Whether it is the same I don’t know:
Once the virus dies out I must visit Portland. It seems like a fascinating place.
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It’s changed a lot in the decade since I first attended uni there, a lot more gentrification and issues with rental prices on the up and up around the entire metro area, but the spirit of the city is largely unchanged. The place has a big heart. Not sure where you’re from originally, but if it is a multicultural place it can be jarring to some when they experience just how white Portland is. Oregon has a dark racial history, the remnants of which are still very palpable today. Please do visit, it’s a unique and gorgeous place, plenty to do, see, eat.
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Right, so it seems that protest and standing up for equity just might not be for you. That’s okay, there are many ways people can contribute to making the world a better place. These people were in the streets of Kenosha, WI because another unarmed black man was murdered by police, just weeks after the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery by the ex-cop father and his son in Georgia, and not long before that was the murder of an EMT nurse sleeping in her bed Breonna Taylor. Maybe a protest isn’t the place for you, but sometimes people participate in movements that are bigger than themselves and their own interests. If someone is coming at your people with a gun you can run, you can hide, you can start a fire fight, or you can try to get the gun away from them to save lives.
So, what is this weapon one of the dead had? Gun? Knife? Mace? Baton? I can tell you what, Antifa are not the ones showing up with military grade rifles. You know what would happen if they did that? The police would kill them all in the street. Kyle? Killed two people. Let’s pretend it was purely self defense. Two people are dead. What happened? 15 minutes of police questioning. They give him some water to drink and send him home.
You said it doesn’t look like he went there to intentionally kill people. Well guess what. He murdered people with friends, family members, parents, lovers. How many people have BLM and antifa killed? How many governors have they kidnapped recently? How often do you see them walking freely around American cities in full military attire and armed to the teeth, role playing some tough guy militia?
With all due respect it doesn’t sound like you know exactly what you are talking about. I just thought I’d like to bring some insider information into this thread. But to be completely honest with you my main motivators are justice, freedom, and truth, and if we aren’t on the same level that is okay also.
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Hasn’t the fight been for equality? How do you see the fight for equality and equity as different?
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In response to your “news” post:
Way to cite a right-wing “news” site well-known for spreading disinformation. It makes zero sense that "antifa"or blm for that matter would vandalize anything in NE Portland. That’s a black neighborhood and I used to like right near there. My assumption is that if there was damage done it was likely done by the proud boys, a skin-head “western chauvinist” group of adults with little man syndrome. This is merely my speculation based on similar false flags and attempts to cause chaos by this particular group, showing up p*ss drunk looking to fight.
If you are actually curious to know the truth of what happened though, I can ask my friend about it. Actually I’m curious too now so I will ask them. If something this big happened I have a feeling my friends would’ve mentioned it.
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I don’t know of any American who thinks of Rittenhouse as anybody other than a young man who defended his life.
Defending your life is still legal in the USA. That’s why he was released and that’s why he isn’t going to face serious charges.
I reckon your perspective of antifa is perhaps even more distorted than the perspective you make up for others to serve as justification for antifa’s cowardice and your apparent support for it.
Equity is a form of equality. Equality refers to not only equal treatment but also equal opportunity under the law and in normal social circumstance. Otherwise what have you?
For example, painting black lives matter on 5th avenue in NYC and in DC is not equality, it is symbolism. It does nothing to materially help those groups whom have the deck severely stacked against them.
That’s my take anyway, I don’t claim to be an expert by any means, just educated and trying to stay informed on current events - particularly the ones that affect the places and people I care about 
Sounds like the Americans you met aren’t very nice people, I’m sorry to hear that. We’re not all murder apologists, I promise. I don’t really know how to simplify it any further for you to understand it, but I dearly wish you did.
This kid brought an assault rifle to a pepper spray and rock fight. He was not “defending” anything. He drove from another state with a gun, presumably in hopes of using it. Well, he got his wish, more dead Americans.
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Equity refers to equal outcomes, not equal opportunity. Calling it “a form of equality” means nothing unless you acknowledge that the goal is strictly outcomes.
I hope you don’t actually slather jam over shit and call it dinner, too.
Careful, your pince nez is slipping. Check your condescension.
He did not cross state lines with his rifle, it was loaned to him by the group he was with in Kenosha.
There is no jury outside Portland that would convict an American for shooting to death two thugs stomping and punching him, and for shooting off the bicep of a third brandishing a pistol.
That’s funny that last part. I’m going to keep it civil with you because my background is in conflict resolution and restorative justice. It’s ok.
I think I’ve found a way to get to the bottom of our perceived disagreement quickly:
Do you believe that there are any systemic barriers that inhibit groups of Americans based on the color of their skin?
equality was a fine goal to strive for, no one should be discriminated on a basis of sex, sexual orientation, race, religion. I get that. Even bend the rule sometimes ok.
Equity is not a form of equality, what we are talking about is an outcome that can only be achieved through discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, race and religion.
The two ideals are juxtaposed.
Very unlikely if you are unable to admit that defending one’s life is a right so basic that it’s not enumerated in the Constitution.
Pal, go set up your struggle session somewhere else.
Also, with all due respect you kind of missed the forest for the trees by picking out my choice of the word equity; a word colloquially used in place of equality, rather than responding to the point of the post. But yes, they are technically different.
So, what you are doing is creating something called a “straw man” argument. I did not deny anyone the right to defend themselves. If some BLM people trespassed on Kyle’s property he has the right to defend himself. Your argument however was that by driving to another state with a gun his intention was to put himself presumably in danger to “defend himself”.
That is not my argument at all, as I’ve said twice now. Stop putting words in my mouth.
BLM did not trespass on his property. What happened was 3 goons tried to assault him, one with a pistol and 3 of whom stomped/kicked/punched him. He defended his life, and quite rightly so.