Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser had city workers paint a new mural on the street very near the White House. The mural is all in huge yellow letters and spells out “Black Lives Matter”.
By Giovanni Russonello / New York Times / June 5, 2020
Beyond the scenes of protest and resistance playing out in cities across the country, a movement of a different sort has taken hold.
The American public’s views on the pervasiveness of racism have taken a hard leftward turn over the past few years. Never before in the history of modern polling have Americans expressed such widespread agreement that racial discrimination plays a role in policing — and in society at large.
Driven by the Black Lives Matter movement, this shift has primed the country for a new groundswell — one that has quickly earned the sympathy of most Americans, polling shows. As a result, in less than two weeks, it has already forced local governments and national politicians to make tangible policy commitments.
In a Monmouth University poll released this week, 76 percent of Americans — including 71 percent of white people — called racism and discrimination “a big problem” in the United States. That’s a 26-percentage-point spike since 2015. In the poll, 57 percent of Americans said demonstrators’ anger was fully justified, and another 21 percent called it somewhat justified.
I
n the Monmouth poll, and in another released this week by CBS News, exactly 57 percent of Americans said police officers were generally more likely to treat black people unfairly than to mistreat white people. In both surveys, about half of white people said so. This was a drastic change, particularly for white Americans, who have not historically said they believed that black people continued to face pervasive discrimination.
“There’s definitely been a seismic shift in the country,” said Steve Phillips, a civil rights lawyer and political analyst who founded the advocacy group Democracy in Color.
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Screw the polls. I can see unity with my own eyes (via camera proxy). Take a little time and check out the photos of the people of DC painting that wonderful BLM artwork/broadside; white, tan, chocolate, mocha, ebony, yellow and all shades in-between armed with paint rollers and standing side by side. It made me smile, and there hasn’t been a whole lot to smile about lately.
The DC mayor did not stop with the renaming of the square in front of the church that Trump defiled, or the street banner, but she lit the whole area up bright so that he couldn’t miss it. But, then again, this is Trump, so a sledge is necessary, not a hammer. She spent a little money and set up projectors to repeat the message on the sides of buildings surrounding the new monument.
It made me smile.
Saturday, June 6: Around 11 a.m., San Diego police said they are monitoring three protests in San Diego: Texas Street and Adams Avenue (about 100 people), Del Mar Heights (about 300) and the County Administration Building (about 3,000 people).
An observer for the OB Rag just counted 6,000 people at the Balboa Park, 6th Street.
One of the largest demonstrations this past week had ended. The crowd converged on the Rainbow flag in Hillcrest for a few speeches and has now broken up. This crowd marched up from the County Admin building.
Demonstrators are sitting in the street at 4th and C streets in downtown.