As Black Lives Matter agitators have become more hostile and aggressive over the last couple of months, we’ve seen more and more of them taking over city streets and highways. Not just for march-throughs but for stationary “protests” that last for hours, and in some cases days and even weeks as we saw in Seattle with the CHAZ/CHOP occupation.
It’s not a new tactic, as Legal Insurrection has previously reported, but it’s happening more frequently.
Along with the human roadblocks belligerent protesters set up comes frustration for drivers who want to pass through to get to their destination.
In situations where people are trying to get through come face to face with protesters, there are usually people videotaping what’s going on, whether it be the protesters themselves, news crews, or nearby street cameras.
More often than not, news reports and social media accountings of these encounters attempt to portray protesters blocking traffic in a sympathetic light. They show these people as “peacefully” expressing their First Amendment rights before a driver happened on the scene in an attempt to get to where they need to go. Context is often left out of these reports, especially when they come from protesters and their supporters. Both of them have a narrative and an angle to exploit.
The following two videos show very recent examples of how protesters use deceptive manipulation tactics to garner sympathy and support for “the cause,” only to be exposed once people get a chance to watch actual footage of the incidents in question:
Georgetown
Julia Clark attended a Georgetown protest Saturday night and angrily recounted her experience involving a woman in a car later that night on Twitter. Julia proudly admitted that she and other protesters “blocked off streets” and “demanded that people turn around.” In her words, the roadblock “was a minor inconvenience for this affluent white neighborhood”:
Next, Julia shared a video of protesters ambushing a woman in a vehicle. She noted the woman tried to get around them by driving through a gas station parking lot (and presumably to avoid interacting with protesters like Julia). Because of this, Julia and other agitators “stood in front of her car and demanded she turn around.” The woman didn’t. Julia described the woman’s next move was to “step on the gas”, insinuating her goal was to mow over as many protesters as possible.
But if you watch the video, that’s not what the woman did at all. In fact, she maneuvered her car as gently as possible, presumably to get the person(s?) on the hood of her car to jump off so she could drive away without further incident:
In the very next tweet, Julia altered her story to allege, “in the video above, she had already attempted to run us over multiple times.” Except, again, the video did not support her claim. Regardless, Julia pleaded with her Twitter followers to dox the woman in the car, asserting she committed a “hate crime.”
Aurora, CO
Also on Saturday, there were reports of multiple shots fired during a protest on I-225 in Aurora, Colorado. Here’s how a Twitter user named Joshua Rodriguez, who filmed the incident according to local news outlets, initially reported the shooting:
Roughly ten hours later, Rodriguez posted a photo of the alleged Jeep driver’s face along with a screengrab of what he claims is his license plate. Nearly ten hours after posting that, however, Rodriguez posted a photo of another person who Aurora police say was the actual shooter. As it turns out, it was one of the protesters:
Helicopter video from NBC 9News of the I-225 protest shows protesters cleared out of the way right before the driver drove through the protest, with some protesters throwing their backpacks at the Jeep. According to the reporter describing what happened, another protester claimed the man who fired the shots was trying to fire at the tires of the Jeep to stop it, but instead hit fellow protesters:
As my RedState colleague Nick Arama wrote Sunday about the Austin, TX, BLM shooting where gunfire was exchanged between a now-deceased protester and a driver, protests where marchers are allowed to surround and confront drivers in vehicles are not safe for anyone:
Whatever the facts here, the practice of stopping or surrounding cars has to stop. Some drivers have been terrified and have driven off, hitting people. We’ve seen where protesters have attacked people in the cars, even shot them. We’ve seen where a protester has shot a driver in Colorado and we’ve seen where a driver hit people who were blocking a highway in the middle of the night. If a driver knows that and/or is surrounded by an angry group, it’s not going to end well. It’s not good for the drivers or the protesters.
I agree. Recent incidents show the manipulative protester tactic of blocking people from being able to drive through has become increasingly dangerous and deadly. It’s time for law enforcement to shut down this practice once and for all. One way to go about it would be to stop allowing highways to be taken over by demonstrators, for starters. This has been allowed to go on for too long, and it has gotten way out of hand.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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