Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Labor Day weekend this year means 100 days of protest since Memorial Day weekend and George Floyd's murder at the knee of police changed America, and it looks more and more like this time it will be different and remain so.

After 100 days of dissent in Washington, the boundaries between cities, states and even countries have dissolved as protesters from Hong Kong to Portland to D.C. swap tactics, share strategies and ping from one demonstration to the next.

The protests after the police killing of George Floyd have developed a language and shared culture as daily demonstrations become a fact of life in cities across the country. Enraged by the backdrop of police violence and racial inequality that plays out in graphic videos depicting police brutality against Black citizens, protesters have developed new means of resistance experts say may change protests in America forever.

Marches have grown more confrontational — cornering politicians in their homes and heckling strangers as they go about their lives. Protesters have embraced mobility and taken to participating in demonstrations far from their hometowns. Some fly, some drive — some have walked for days.

Online tutorials about crafting homemade shields to protect against rubber bullets and stinging pepper ball pellets using plywood, foam pool noodles, trash can lids and other household wares have spread like wildfire.

What were once considered obvious markers of troublemakers looking to break things have become muddled as demonstrators scramble to protect themselves from rubber bullets and chemical irritants police use to disperse crowds.

Influenced at first by the longevity and intensity of pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, then by the evolving tactics of protesters in American streets, experts say the mainstreaming of ideas and tactics once considered radical reflects a political sea change spurred by a youth-led uprising.

“This is bringing people into a different way of being,” said Mark Bray, a Rutgers University historian and former organizer of the Occupy Wall Street movement. “Things are happening now at a profound level.”

While the nation’s capital braces for protests in the days and weeks ahead, months of unrelenting demonstrations, mass arrests and standoffs with police have changed D.C. protesters in ways big and small: Their tools, their tactics and their tolerance for behavior once decried as antithetical to peaceful protest have shifted.

On recent nights, as smoke and explosions ripped through the night air and police advanced on a line of demonstrators while shouting, “Move back,” it became clear that the flash bangs just don’t work like they used to.

Longtime demonstrators in D.C. have stopped sprinting for cover. They kick sparking canisters back toward police, walk steadily away from the rapid pop of rubber bullets and strap on respirators and gas masks when the threat of tear gas hangs in the air.

The protests have also given first-time demonstrators an up-close look at munitions, controversial crowd control tactics like “kettling” — when police surround a group of demonstrators and arrest them en masse — and the use of chemicals that make people cough, gag, cry and burn.

But images captured at these events also serve a tactical purpose: With every video of a protester disarming a tear-gas canister or volleying a smoking stun grenade back at law enforcement, demonstrators are learning skills that may have otherwise taken months to acquire on their own.

America is now in this for the long haul.  This time really is different. At the minimum these protests are going to continue through January's inauguration, and should it be a Trump second term, all bets are off how long they go.

Let's hope that it becomes a Biden administration world party in January instead.

Black Lives Still Matter.