“Racism is so American that when you protest it, people think you are protesting America.”
— Protest sign, A Small Good Thing: What Is Really Being Asked For Here
*****
“At first I thought I should just shut up and listen to black people about this issue. But why would I do that? It’s not their problem, it’s mine. People of colour are being failed by the system. The white system. Like a broken pipe flooding the apartment of the people living downstairs. The faulty system is making their life a misery, but it’s not their job to fix it. They can’t, no one will let them in the apartment upstairs. This is a white problem. And if white people don’t fix it, someone will have to come upstairs and kick the door in.”
— Banksy, the street artist, Banksy supports Black Lives Matter with latest artwork
*****
“I can’t believe that someone, for nine minutes, was killing someone on the street and nobody did anything to stop it. I see that as a threat to me as an African-American, that American society does not care about my life, does not care about me … how do I explain what happened to George Floyd to my kids?”
— Jean-Rene Watchou, Madison mayor imposes curfew after rioting, looting Downtown
*****
“June 1 was the beginning — buckle up. Things we have not thought about historically will happen. Like I said, even him starting a war, wherever your mind can take you, the lowest step what this caged animal — I’m not literally calling him a caged animal — but what a caged animal can do, he is capable of doing. I think the next five months will be the most tumultuous months our country has ever seen throughout history.”
— Donny Deutsch, ‘Buckle up’: MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch warns Trump willing to do literally anything to win re-election
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“The longer the ruling elites refuse to address the root causes behind these protests, the more they loot the treasury to enrich themselves and their fellow oligarchs, the more they engage in futile and absurd efforts to deflect blame, the more unrest will spread.”
— Chris Hedges, The Treason of the Ruling Class
*****
“The word “violence” is going to be used a lot to describe the events in US cities over the weekend and all this week. So it’s going to be important to be clear about who is violent and what violence is. Property destruction and harming human beings are profoundly different actions, and with a few exceptions (seemingly interlopers in the protests) virtually all the violence visited on human beings during this round of civil unrest across the US has been inflicted by police.”
— Rebecca Solnit, As the George Floyd protests continue, let’s be clear where the violence is coming from
“If you don’t listen to people for long enough, what options do you leave them?”
— Maddison Stallman, one of a group of UW-Madison law students handing out water bottles and rendering first aid, Madison mayor imposes curfew after rioting, looting Downtown
*****
“No comment other than ‘Black lives matter’.”
— Martin Gugino, Hospitalized Buffalo protester has a three-word response to Trump’s Twitter attacks