What the heck are the Ferguson protestors protesting?

lol, yeah. Should say "Season's Beatings"

In at least some of them, I don't think it will be a "race war" situation - they're on college campuses, and campus riots aren't usually what they were back in the 60's, together with the fact that the core organizers, and probably participants, are going to be from the "privileged" classes - those will likely be just a bunch of kids wanting to be socially relevant, without mayhem in mind.

The one in Greensboro, NC particularly could go either way. There are 6 colleges in the immediate area, and the population overall across all areas of the cities when I lived there was 33% black. There were some fairly rough customers out in the wilds of the city, and the governmental plaza is close enough to center-city for government work. What I worry about there is a bunch of college kids showing up to be socially relevant, and a bunch of angry folks showing up there for other purposes, and turning the crowd. That could get ugly.

In 1979, at Morningside Homes in Greensboro, what happened was a bunch of white agitators (CPUSA, as I recall) went in to a black neighborhood for the purpose of starting trouble (which could then, of course, be blamed on the black folks). They advertised a "Death to the Klan" rally, in a black neighborhood - who could possibly think trouble might start? Some Klansmen showed up (they said their intent was to counter the CPUSA "Death to the Klan" rally and show they weren't scared of the Communist Party, and it was the Communists who chose a black neighborhood for the battleground, not the Klan), and all went well for a while... until one of the CPUSA folk shot at the Klansmen to get the party going, I guess 'cause it was too dull for them up to that point. The Klansmen weren't acting the way the wanted them to, had to liven then up a bit.

All hell broke loose. Who could have possibly predicted THAT? People died, people were ruined for life. Some of those people had it coming to them, IMHO, for instigating it to begin with. The CPUSA instigated it, the Klan reciprocated, and a black neighborhood had to take the fallout.

That's part of the history of Greensboro, and I have a bad feeling about the potential for history to repeat. Note that some of the info above was from a black woman who lived in that neighborhood, and who later worked under me, who was there and saw it. She would have been around 20 at the time, I think.

Humans never learn.

I have to wonder, how many of the other venues have been selected for explosive potential?

It's supposed to take place from the Old Capitol Building to the Wren Building.

Scotland-Jamestown ferry still operating? I used to love that trip across the river.

If it may help for some additional context, I'd also add something about Occupy and how that came to function with Law Enforcement vs. what we see now.

First, to address the overlap and connection...We've already seen, last time this blew up, how easily they reached out to use the F.A.A. as a tool for suppression of media coverage. Local issues drew in an unrelated federal agency to support in ways that may not have even been legal in the end. So Local/State/Federal already blurs here, and well established that way on matters of tactical command. 

During Occupy and certainly by late October of 2011 (while things were still peaceful in most U.S. camps), it was fairly common knowledge and with confirmation found later, that Homeland Security had been coordinating and organizing the national response. That is a very important thing, because the impression at the time for most IN the camps (and in the bubble of 'immediate' not 'big picture' info) was that these were local issues with local responses varying greatly around the nation. Perhaps some were..in the real small examples..but coordination was out of the same kind of 'Incident Command Center' as one can read about being used for Waco, Ruby Ridge or the Atlanta Prison Riot. (FBI had incident command on those, and to different levels of background from public view).

We know D.O.J. has been in this from the start. We now know, at the cost of someone's job, D.H.S. has vehicles and assets borrowed from across it's organizational chart for this. (Did anyone happen to read the agency names on the side of those DHS vehicles photographed in St Louis?? They weren't logical to the immediate need, themselves) 

I think all this matters because when this pops, some locals may think they are facing Ferguson, St Louis and Missouri State Police. They are, of course, in the physical people standing there. From comments...(in 2011 as well as now) the cops themselves may not even be fully aware of how much their commander's words are not their own. However....these folks will be facing the coordinated resources available to the U.S. DHS....not the far more limited and finite resources of local or even regional police assets.

I hope it goes well for them (the people), and I hope they know when to stand, when to break off and when to flat out run like hell.

@wrabbit2000, The DHS thing was bound to happen. It's been the goal ever since that gestapo-like organization was initiated. They have been surely, and not so slowly, insinuating themselves into nearly every local department across the nation, to the extent of "federalizing" some, and creating a defacto national police force.

They already equip, train, coordinate, and issue orders to way too many "local" departments. That is the whole reason and rationale for the fusion centers.


I could see some DOJ involvement, given that they (the protestors) have vowed to take this nation-wide, but not DHS... then again, I think DHS should not even exist. We don't need a national Stormtrooper Front.

Know what some of my buddies used to call an armored vehicle in a Baghdad IED alley?

A mobile microwave.

I wonder if we'll see an American Tienanmen Square moment out of this when the tanks - erm, I mean "armored crowd control vehicles" roll in?

Nope, not any of us want to see that, but I can't help thinking it might be best for us in the long run. Kinda like an operation - no one wants to go under the knife and endure the pain to have an appendix removed, and it hurts like the dickens, but after it's all over, the patient is in a much better position for living.