White supremacists shot five Black Lives Matter protestors yesterday at a sit-in that was being staged at Minneapolis’s Fourth Precinct Police Station. All of the injuries were non-life-threatening.
The sit-in was being staged in protest of the death of Jamar Clark, a 24 year-old who was fatally shot by the police in November. Black Lives Matter has maintained a peaceful presence at the precinct ever since.
From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
Miski Noor, a media contact for Black Lives Matter, said “a group of white supremacists showed up at the protest, as they have done most nights.”
One of the three counterdemonstrators wore a mask, said Dana Jaehnert, who had been at the protest site since early evening.
When about a dozen protesters attempted to herd the group away from the area, Noor said, they “opened fire on about six protesters,” hitting five of them. Jaehnert said she heard four gunshots.
Police have identified at least one suspect in the shooting, but thus far no arrests have been made:
The white supremacist who opened fire on #Justice4Jamar has been identified as Sam Hyde #4thPrecinctShutDown pic.twitter.com/Tss2FdP8fK
— CNN Breaking Alerts (@CNNBrkingAlerts) November 24, 2015
There isn’t much to add here, but two quick and rather obvious points:
Black Lives Matter, via Gerry Lauzon / Flickr
First, for all of the conservative talk about how dangerous the Black Lives Matter movement is — they’re “thugs,” they’re “lawless,” they are “calling for the murder of police officers” — it remains the case that the violence associated with the movement has been directed at them, rather than having come from them.
Second, Sherrod Brown was on to something when he said that the greatest terror threats in the United States generally come from people who look like him, rather than Syrian refugees. There were as many armed and dangerous white supremacists at last night’s sit-in as there have been refugees arrested on terrorism charges since 2001. Don’t tell me how dangerous five year-old orphans fleeing a civil war are when you’re looking the other way as white supremacists are showing up to peaceful protests (and mosques) armed.
White people are showing up to protests and places of worship armed and dangerous, and yet we’re scared of the people who the guns are pointed at. It’s high time we got our heads screwed on straight about who in our country is really dangerous, and who isn’t.
