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For me, as a Ukrainian, it's surreal to read about this sort of news in the US.
I will note that Maidan protest against Yanukovich, the traitor and russian agent, accelerated in February 2014 (they had been going on since 2013) when Yanukovich tried to criminalise protest including specifically targeting covering your face.
At any rate, I have a feeling the situation in the US is entering a make or break phase. Good luck and courage to all sane Americans.
I think a corollary would be the Euromaidan/ Maidan protests of 2014. The US has been utterly corrupted by fascist ideology through distributed and targeted propaganda campaigns coming out of, guess who, Russia.
At any rate, I have a feeling the situation in the US is entering a make or break phase. Good luck and courage to all sane Americans.
I think we're just getting started. Two things: one, that the US military police state has an extreme propensity for violence; and two the American people are slow to move, but once motivated to act, tend to also escalate with additional force. We're entering a protests get met with force, protests expand, become more extreme fly wheel. People on the right have been propagandized to for decades to prepare for "war" against their fellow citizens. And I mean that in no uncertain terms. This is a propaganda effort that's been in effect for decades.
I am not going make any predictions, but with the expansion of anti-regime protests, it seems that the situation is entering a new phase.
As the old saying goes, "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen."
While I agree that American security forces tend to have what I call "wannabe cowboy syndrome" (I have firsthand experiences when I was living and travelling to the US), I would also consider more base human reactions with respect to the attitude of the security services.
No one wants to be the one forced to do the dirty work and take the bulk of the risk. This is human nature. And at some point US security forces might question whether they want to take the heat for some oligarchs and other senior criminals.
I would also question the willingness of the US pro-oligarch plebs to actually engage in "war". There is a lot of crazies (especially with the militia LARP that's popular in the US), but the average pro-corruption American arguably has a very low tolerance for challenges. It's one thing to talk big and another thing to well actually put your life on the line (engaging in "war" also means there is a solid chance you get hit).
Just some thoughts from someone who has loved in both the US and Ukraine (this were I currently live too).
We appreciate the perspective. I would say my concern is that there won't be much of a cost for going along and abusing citizens. There are a lot of voices on the left of our political spectrum that are very much stuck in the "law and order" and "back the blue" mindset, so even when those forces are clearly contributing to the degradation of orderly society, no one is willing to put pressure on them from above. And pressure from below is met with extreme force that's then propagandized by our news media to be a justified reaction and that anything less than full compliance with law enforcement is inherently illegitimate.
The cops are mostly already aligned with the American right, they've been training to be "warriors" for decades, and the left of center power centers never want to criticize them. Some of them got tired during BLM and would whine about not being appreciated enough, but that's mostly still just a social consequence, and they have so so many voices calling them heroes and encouraging them to be even worse.
For sure, I agree that US security services seem rather trigger happy and there are massive issues with propaganda in the US (far worse than in many other countries, perhaps even most countries).
Just sharing some thoughts.
But American police are also trained to not risk their lives or be heros.
I wonder how much adversity they would be willing to tolerate if there is real violence.
They've been told for years that if they let their guard down or give an inch of kindness they're going to be killed by dangerous minority criminals, and that just made them more violent. They ride around in military surplus vehicles like they're going to be dodging mortar fire and regularly kill unarmed people because they "feared for their lives". They'd need to be experiencing significant and sustained violence before it becomes anything but validating their worldview.
True but I'm taking about the kind of violence like the north Hollywood shootout or people going after them at home by often enough that it's not ness worthy.
Curious. What is a face shield?
So, face shields are clear shields that cover your face. You'll see really thin plastic ones in doctors sometimes (they were common during covid), and there are heavier ones for welders and such. Cops often wear them as part of their riot gear get-ups.
Thing is, the medical-type shields aren't going to very useful during the LA protests, and the higher-grade ones that would be useful are pretty expensive to be just handing out to people. And then you come to this line in the article
along with a broadcast clip from Fox News appearing to show a man providing masks to protestors from the back of a pickup truck.
So - masks. He was providing some kind of masks to people - surgical, N95, carnival, Halloween - hell, little ballroom masks on sticks or thin cloth Zorro masks. But I'm pretty sure that the prosecutor will decide the charges against him are overstated and drop the charges.
It's mostly a tactic to get this guy off the streets for a bit because he was prepared more than they liked and was helping other demonstrators potentially hide their faces, and to give anyone else with similar ideas reason to pause before they do it themselves.
They said face shields first, masks second. I'd guess they just wanted to avoid repetition and chose a not so accurate word. Somewhere between medical and riot face shields are $10 harbor freight grinder/spark shields. They're not going to stop a rubber bullet, but you might just keep your eye. If any small explosives get involved, it'd shield your face from debris. But it could be more Ike a mask to shield your face from cameras
The thin shields could also help against pepper spray. People going to protests where police violence is expected really should be wearing face (or at least eye) protection.
You can buy protective shields for grinding and what not for pretty cheap at places like Harbor Freight. I'm sure they'd hold up to rubber bullets just fine.
Anything that obscures the face. It could have been some guy sharing face masks to prevent COVID for all we know