The following video was recorded at an “activist training session” organized by Lisa Fithian, an anarchist agitator who helped make events like the 1999 WTO meeting and Occupy Wall Street so very peaceful. In this clip, one young woman makes her motives very clear.
“Personally, I think we don’t need to be on West Florissant. I wanna advocate that we go on South Florissant because the people on South Florissant don’t look like me. And the people on West Florissant look like me, and they’re with it. So I really don’t have anything to protest on West Florissant, personally. So if I’m in the area I’m going to Ferguson PD.”
What’s the difference between West Florissant Avenue and South Florissant Road in Ferguson? Moni Wasu, CNN:
West Florissant Avenue runs parallel to South Florissant Road, separated by several blocks. But the division runs much deeper. The two thoroughfares tell the story of two cities in one, of the gulf between class and race.
Some white residents told me they lived in a bubble: They own homes off South Florissant Road, eat in restaurants there and rarely venture into the streets that were familiar to Michael Brown, the black teenager who was shot and killed by white police Officer Darren Wilson on August 9.
Black residents who live in the patchwork of homes and apartments off West Florissant Avenue sounded a similar note. They, too, lived detached from other parts of Ferguson.
There you have it. At least one protester wants to go to South Florissant Road to protest. Not because anybody there had anything to do with what happened. Because they don’t look like her. Because of the color of their skin.
And that isn’t racist. Her nonchalance about it, as if it almost goes without saying, isn’t racist.
Making a note of it is racist.
Quoting protesters is racist. Blaming them for any further violence that occurs in Ferguson is racist. Holding them accountable for their own actions is racist.
Disagreeing with any of that is racist.
You racist.
(Hat tip: Jim Hoft)