More real action (as opposed to kabuki) happening in Aurora, CO?

Just saw on CNN Live TV report that in Seattle things were not all just kabuki this evening either:

Breaking: At least 45 arrested after protesters throw explosives and rocks at police in Seattle, authorities say

By Amir Vera and Hollie Silverman, CNN Updated 1:26 AM ET, Sun July 26, 2020

Seattle protesters threw large rocks, bottles, fireworks and other explosives at officers Saturday, police said. Others set fire to a portable trailer and a construction site, police said in a series of tweets.

At least 45 people have been arrested on charges of assaulting officers, obstruction and failure to disperse, police said. Twenty-one officers have been injured from having projectiles thrown at them, according to police. Most officers were able to return to duty, the department's Twitter said. One officer was hospitalized with a leg injury caused by an explosive.

Police described the protest as a riot [....]

The showed video of the construction site fire, it looked pretty serious. I haven't looked at any videos on Twitter. 

Is this real or altered? Some New York protesters marching Saturday chant "fuck Joe Biden":

The account is new, started in June, has lots of videos, just started posting on protests in NYC and is clearly sympathetic to the protesters. And furthermore, doesn't comment a lot politically, is presenting as just a reporter of what protesters are doing and what police are doing.

If it's trying to be disruptive like a Russian troll would, he is awful awful subtle and smart about it. Nothing else seems altered to me, looks like very accurate reporting, though it does seem almost too well done at times.

I'd tend to believing that one is true as the Brooklyn crew of protesters that came over the bridge yesterday tend very much to be Bernie types or Green Party types.

Another wild west gunfight scenario Saturday that didn't work out very well:

A Man Was Fatally Shot At A Black Lives Matter Protest In Texas

Garrett Foster had protested "almost every day for the past 50 days" with his fiancé, Foster's mother said.

By Julia Weinstein @ BuzzFeedNews.com,July 26, 2020, at 3:32 p.m. ET

A man was killed Saturday night after gunshots were fired at a Black Lives Matter protest in Austin, Texas.

A suspect — who witnesses said tried to drive through the crowd of protesters before shooting the victim — was arrested Saturday night and is cooperating with officers, the Austin Police Department said.

The victim was brought to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. No one else was injured during the incident, authorities said.

The victim was identified by family and friends as Garrett Foster, an Austin resident who was protesting along with his fiancé, Whitney Mitchell, who is a quadruple amputee.

It is not yet clear what led to the shooting, and police have not identified the suspect.

A police official said Saturday that Foster "may have been carrying a rifle and approached suspect vehicle."

The suspect then shot at the victim from his car, the official said.

Shortly before he was killed, journalist Hiram Gilberto Garcia interviewed Foster, who was reportedly carrying an AK-47 rifle. During the interview, Foster said that he began bringing his gun to protests after his roommate was arrested during one of them [....]

NYTimes headline story this morning: Cities In Bind As Turmoil Spreads Far Beyond Portland

The U.S. government exercised extensive authority in Portland, Ore., a city that has made it clear it opposes the presence of federal agents.
New protests in other cities are creating a dilemma for local leaders who had succeeded in easing some of the turbulence in their streets.

By Mike Baker, Thomas Fuller and Shane Goldmacher

Updated July 27, 2020, 2:20 a.m. ET, filed from Portland

Peaceful Protesters With ‘Room for Rage’ Sympathize With Aggressive Tactics

A forceful campaign by federal law enforcement in Portland, Ore., has prompted an escalation in tactics from some protesters, while others wonder whether they are losing their focus.

By Kate Conger, Thomas Fuller and Mike Baker @ NYTimes.com, Updated July 28, 2020, 3:27 p.m. ET

PORTLAND, Ore. — Minutes before midnight on Sunday, the first firework of the evening screeched low over the heads of protesters gathered in Portland, Ore., sprinkling them with white flecks of light and ricocheting into the courthouse that has become a symbol of an unwelcome federal incursion into a local outcry over police brutality.

Some ducked under makeshift shields to protect themselves from the falling sparks, while others cheered at the sight of the blazing projectile hurtling toward the courthouse and the federal law enforcement agents inside: “This is what democracy looks like!”

In recent weeks, protesters in Portland have pointed laser beams, lobbed water bottles and trash bags and, in one case, according to the Portland Police Bureau, hurled an open pocketknife at the officers guarding the courthouse; they have used power tools, crowbars and bolt cutters to yank down a fence. In Seattle, demonstrators over the weekend set fire to several construction trailers at a youth detention facility, and protests in Richmond, Va., Los Angeles and Oakland, Calif., were also marked by fires

Yet the nightly assault on the federal courthouse has been part of a much wider peaceful resistance — high school students, military veterans, off-duty lawyers, lines of mothers who call themselves the “Wall of Moms”

[....]

“To see people standing in Portland destroying property and not actually doing the work of advocating for Black people was disturbing,” said Rachelle Dixon, the vice chair of the Multnomah County Democrats and an organizer in the Black community. “I think they’re a distraction from the everyday needs of people of color, especially Black people. My life is not going to improve because you broke the glass at the Louis Vuitton store.”

During the protests Sunday night in Portland, organizers tried to gently coax protesters away from the courthouse, calling them to the nearby Multnomah County Justice Center to listen to speeches. “We’re family now,” said one of the speakers, a local activist and artist who performs under the stage name Itchy Trigga. “We can’t allow the feds to break up our family.”

But as the protest ticked closer to its 60th consecutive day, protesters regrouped in front of the courthouse. Federal agents responded to the fireworks from the crowd with tear gas, sending protesters reeling, and later began a pursuit through Portland’s streets.

On Monday, the U.S. attorney in Portland, Billy J. Williams, appealed for an end to the nightly clashes. “I ask all Portlanders to join us in working with community leaders, faith leaders and business leaders to find an end to this,” he said. “The violence is wearing this city out.”

Mayor Ted Wheeler and Jo Ann Hardesty, a city commissioner, said in a statement that they wanted to “discuss a cease-fire and removal of heightened federal forces” with the Department of Homeland Security, including Chad F. Wolf, its acting secretary.

[....]

 

Fact Check: How Violent Are the Portland Protests?

Attorney General William P. Barr said protesters had used fireworks, Tasers, pellet guns and lasers to target federal officers in Portland.

By Kate Conger and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs @ NYTimes.com, July 28, 2020 Updated 4:03 p.m. ET

(The underlined below are all embedded links at NYT site, but don't transfer with a paste, I am not going to hand transfer them in, you'll have to click if you want them.)

PORTLAND, Ore. — Attorney General William P. Barr forcefully defended the federal response to long-running protests in Portland on Tuesday, telling the House Judiciary Committee that the protests had become violent. The federal intervention has been condemned by state and city officials, but Mr. Barr argued it was necessary to prevent violence from spreading to other American cities.

The nightly protests in Portland, which began in late May as a response to the police killing of George Floyd, have become the backdrop for a conflict between federal officials and local leaders. Mr. Barr and other federal officials have drawn attention to vandalism and other reckless behavior on the part of the protesters, while city officials have said that federal agents dispatched to the district court in downtown Portland have exceeded their authority and harmed peaceful protesters.

There are currently 114 federal law enforcement officers in Portland, according to a legal filing from the U.S. attorney’s office, drawn from various agencies including Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Protective Service. Their presence has reinvigorated tensions that had been subsiding, local officials said. Several peaceful protesters have been seriously injured, including a Navy veteran whose hand was smashed by officers and a man who was shot with a projectile that fractured his skull.

“As I’ve said from the beginning, these peaceful protests are being hijacked by a very hard core of instigators, violent instigators,” Mr. Barr said. “Police casualties far exceed anything on the civilian side.”

Have protesters used violence against federal officers?

The crowds have been largely peaceful and have included high school students, military veterans, off-duty lawyers and lines of mothers who call themselves the “Wall of Moms.”

Mr. Barr acknowledged in response to questions from representatives that many protesters had remained peaceful. “You have a lot of people who are out protesting and demonstrating,” he said. “The particular violent opportunists who are involved here get into these crowds and engage in very violent activity and hijack it.”

But he emphasized that some protesters have thrown rocks, water bottles and fireworks at federal officers. Others have shone lasers at federal agents and at security cameras surrounding the building, in an effort to block their view of the crowd. Several fires have been set near the courthouse, which federal officials have said could spread to the building and harm the agents inside.

This has been amply documented with photographs, videos, and by New York Times reporters on the ground.

 

Here's a photo of a firework exploding behind the federal officers in Portland. pic.twitter.com/SrDhsddHxU

— Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) July 25, 2020

 

Mr. Barr also claimed that protesters had used Tasers, pellet guns and slingshots against the federal officers. The Times could not independently confirm the use of those weapons.

As federal agents moved beyond the courthouse and into the streets of Portland — which experts have said they may not have legal authority to do — agents have also been involved in scuffles with protesters who tried to prevent arrests.

Have any federal officers been injured?

In a July 22 court filing, the U.S. attorney’s office in Oregon said that 28 federal law enforcement officers had been injured during protests in Portland.

“The most serious injury to an officer to date occurred when a protester wielding a two-pound sledgehammer struck an officer in the head and shoulder when the officer tried to prevent the protester from breaking down a door to the Hatfield Courthouse,” the filing stated. Other injuries included “broken bones, hearing damage, eye damage, a dislocated shoulder, sprains, strains, and contusions.”

The Department of Homeland Security said in daily briefings about the protests that agents had been burned by fireworks and a “caustic substance” that were thrown over a fence surrounding the courthouse.

The legal filings and daily reports from the Department of Homeland Security do not make reference to one of the injuries described by Mr. Barr: that projectiles fired from pellet guns “have penetrated marshals to the bone.” On July 23, the White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany referenced a similar incident. “Another federal agent was shot with a pellet gun, leaving a wound deep to the bone,” she said. A Department of Homeland Security spokesman did not respond to a request for more information about this injury.

 

Volleys of tear gas and glass bottles pic.twitter.com/Qw28XnQ1zH

— Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) July 25, 2020

 

 

Has there been violence used against protesters?

Mr. Barr emphasized the injuries sustained by federal officers and said that they outnumbered those incurred by protesters.

There is not a comprehensive tally of injured protesters, but at least five people have filed civil lawsuits describing injuries and seeking damages of up to $950,000. Other injuries, like those sustained by the Navy veteran, have been captured on video.

Groups of nurses and doctors have recently joined the protests, voicing objections to violence from the federal forces. Jillian Trent, an emergency room nurse who joined a recent march, said that she had seen an uptick of patients with injuries caused by rubber bullets and other police munitions. “People are coming in with their jaws falling off,” she said.

Under questioning, Mr. Barr said [....]

why not just go home, really? If you did that, it's a twofer, you're not following their instructions to head to the west and the north, you're still disobeying.

JUST GO HOME! What is the purpose of having to be on courthouse grounds? What does that have to do with Black Lives Matter? You guys just want to fight with someone from the Federal government for the heck of it, don't you? Reminds me of my brothers wanting to play army when they were little. They could probably still do a sound track for you.