Southern Poverty Law Center had to pay out a very large settlement for falsely accusing people. It is now a discredited leftist organization. They once did good work but not anymore, now they are just a left wing Marxist smear group.https://apnews.com/article/breonna-taylor-race-and-ethnicity-shootings-police-law-and-order-d1050fda1457cbf120723a9c78904913
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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Police arrested three people at a right-wing rally Saturday afternoon in Portland, Oregon, and authorities say they’re also investigating an assault after one person who was documenting the event was pushed to the ground and kicked in the face.
Several hundred people, dozens of them wearing militarized body armor, had gathered — far fewer than the 10,000 organizers had expected to show to support President Donald Trump and his “law and order” reelection campaign as tensions boil over nationwide following the decision not to charge officers in Louisville, Kentucky, for killing Breonna Taylor.
The event began at noon and was largely dispersed by 3 p.m. The Oregon Department of Transportation shut down the interstate highway for a brief time to help control the crowd and flow of traffic.
“The purpose of this closure was to clear some people out of the area who wanted to leave and to keep competing groups separate,” said Chris Liedle, a spokesman with the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, in updates posted on Twitter as the city braced for the threat of violence at multiple rallies in the area.
The people arrested include a man suspected of driving under the influence and a woman for an outstanding arrest warrant, Liedle said.
Dozens began to show up two hours before the rally, some packed into the beds of pickup trucks. Many were wearing some sort of militarized body armor, including helmets and protective vests. Many flew American flags or black flags bearing the logo of the Three Percenters, another far-right group and some wore Make America Great Again hats.
The Proud Boys, a group that has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, described it as a free speech event to support Trump and the police, restore law and order and condemn anti-fascists, “domestic terrorism” and “violent gangs of rioting felons” in the streets. Local and state elected officials forcefully condemned the event and rushed to shore up law enforcement ranks as left-wing groups organized several rallies to oppose the Proud Boys’ message.
TJ Detweiler, who works in construction and plumbing, said at the rally that he wanted to end domestic terrorism in the U.S.
“I would like to see people stop the looting and rioting and enjoy the country for what rights we have,” Detweiler said.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on Friday said she was sending state troopers to help the Portland police and was creating a unified command structure among city, regional and state law enforcement — a tactic that essentially circumvents a city ban on the use of tear gas as a crowd-control measure. The state police said a “massive influx” of troopers would be in Portland by Saturday morning.
“This is a critical moment. We have seen what happens when armed vigilantes take matters into their own hands. We’ve seen it in Charlottesville, we’ve seen it in Kenosha and, unfortunately, we have seen it in Portland,” she said, referencing deaths in Virginia, Wisconsin and Oregon during clashes between those on the right and left of the political spectrum.
“The Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer groups have come time and time again looking for a fight, and the results are always tragic,” said Brown, a Democrat. “Let me be perfectly clear, we will not tolerate any type of violence this weekend.”
The Proud Boys are self-described “Western chauvinists” and they have held multiple events in Portland since Trump’s election alongside other right-wing groups such as Patriot Prayer that often end in violent clashes with left-wing counter-demonstrators.
Last month, Aaron “Jay” Danielson, a Trump supporter and Patriot Prayer follower, was shot and killed after some vehicles in a pro-Trump car caravan diverted into downtown Portland and crossed paths with left-wing activists. The suspect in the shooting, a self-described anti-fascist, was killed the following week by law enforcement as they tried to arrest him in Washington state.
The Proud Boys mentioned Danielson in their permit application, as well as Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old charged in the shooting deaths of two Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Some attending Saturday’s rally carried signs that said “Free Kyle Now.” The permit application had estimated 10,000 people would attend.
Rittenhouse’s attorneys have said he was acting in self-defense. The Proud Boys raised the specter of a vigilante response to the actions of a “mob” in a permit application filed with the city this week.
“Portland leadership is unwilling to stop the violence,” the Proud Boys wrote in the application. “They have been blinded by their hatred of our President and will not allow outside help stopping the violence.”
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said the city and its police force did not need or want help from “paramilitaries or vigilante groups.”
Police have canceled all scheduled days off for officers Saturday and will primarily be focused on keeping dueling groups of protesters separated.
Deputy Chief Chris Davis acknowledged that Oregon is an open-carry state for firearms. But he reminded those attending the rally and counter-demonstrations that under Portland law, it’s illegal to carry a loaded firearm in public without an Oregon concealed handgun permit. Officers will patrol for weapons and check for permits as needed, he said.
“We ask that you come peacefully and engage in your free speech peacefully,” Police Chief Chuck Lovell said. “It’s OK for us to disagree about things. But at the end of the day, doing so peacefully, letting people exercise their rights safely is very important. So that’s my ask the folks who are attending.”
The rally comes as Portland approaches its fifth month of almost nightly protests against racial injustice and police brutality.
Demonstrators want the city to take millions from the police budget and reallocate it to support the Black community. Some also are angry with the mayor — who is also the police commissioner — for allowing police to use tear gas until recently and for what they call overly aggressive police tactics. Wheeler has also refused to cede control of the police bureau to a Black city councilwoman with a decades-long resume of activism around police reform.
Mix in a whole lot of telling people how 'the libs' feel about what they do and don't forget about Dear Leader. People should not listen to other people telling them what to feel about 'them'.
The people behind the violence in the American protests of George Floyd.
- Thread starter hanimmal
- Start date
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
Because you said so? You have anything to show you are not just saying shit and expecting us to buy it?
here you go. I await your apology.
Clare Locke LLP secured an unprecedented $3.375 million settlement from the Southern Poverty Law Center, Inc. on behalf of British Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation based on false and defamatory statements in the SPLC’s Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists. As part of the settlement negotiated by Clare Locke, the SPLC’s president also admitted that it was wrong to include Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam in the Field Guide in the first place, explaining that they “have made valuable and important contributions to public discourse, including by promoting pluralism and condemning both anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamist extremism.”
Clare Locke LLP secured an unprecedented $3.375 million settlement from the Southern Poverty Law Center, Inc. on behalf of British Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation based on false and defamatory statements in the SPLC’s Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists. As part of the settlement negotiated by Clare Locke, the SPLC’s president also admitted that it was wrong to include Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam in the Field Guide in the first place, explaining that they “have made valuable and important contributions to public discourse, including by promoting pluralism and condemning both anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamist extremism.”
Liberal Washington Post also has an article titled "The Southern Poverty Law Center has lost all credibility"
In 2014, the SPLC placed Ben Carson — later a Republican presidential candidate and now the current secretary of housing and urban development — on its “extremist watch list,” alongside neo-Nazis and white supremacists. After an uproar, the group removed him and apologized.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
That is your proof of what?
How does a right wing hack's op-ed prove your point about that post you replied to?
Other recent stories by this dude:
Fogdog
Well-Known Member
lulz
Yes, an opinion piece was published under that title.
Any good media outlet contains multiple points of view in order to give good balanced coverage on a subject. That they published this piece along with others that are favorable to SPLC differentiates WaPo from Fox and other right wing propaganda sites.
I might decide that you have a right wing agenda or something if you continue to spew right wing propaganda.
Fogdog
Well-Known Member
Cut the moron some slack. It was the best he could do.
The facts in the article about the $3 million plus settlement are on record.
here you go, maybe you prefer The Daily Beast, a left wing media.
SPLC Pays $3.3 Million Settlement to Counter-Extremism Group It Called ‘Anti-Muslim’
The SPLC also apologized for including Quilliam in its “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists.”
Moron? College graduate. Retired wealthy on my 50th birthday.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
Kentuky just had to pay out $12 million for killing Breonna Taylor as she slept, does that mean all police in Kentucky are doing bad work?
Of course not, just like your example of the SPLC having to pay fines. That is what happens when you have accountability. (even if there is not accountability for the police murdering a innocent woman while she slept)
Unlike 'media' that is just well designed clickbait.
Good for you, must have a lot of time to get brainwashed online I am guessing by the way you are coming off tonight.
Fogdog
Well-Known Member
Fogdog
Well-Known Member
You are very good at right wing propaganda. I'll hand you that.
Now, then, are you saying that Brad Parscale is being used as a fall guy for the Trump Campaign's illegal activities. If so, then we agree on this.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/09/29/san-marino-man-charged-blm-protest/#comments-wrapper
A man accused of driving his truck into a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters in Pasadena, Calif., in May was turning his family’s vineyard into a training camp to prepare to engage in “civil disorders,” according to federal authorities.
Benjamin Jong Ren Hung, 28, from San Marino, Calif., was charged last Wednesday with conspiracy to transport firearms across state lines and with making a false statement in relation to the purchase of firearms, according to a federal criminal complaint.
A judge denied Hung bail Monday; he will remain in federal custody before his trial. His arraignment is scheduled for Oct. 15, a public information officer at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California told The Washington Post.
Hung was first arrested by Pasadena police on May 31 on suspicion of attempted assault with a deadly weapon after he drove his Dodge Ram truck into a crowd of more than 100 people peacefully protesting racial injustice at an intersection in Old Town Pasadena.
The crowd quickly dispersed, and no injuries were reported.
While searching Hung’s car, Pasadena police found a loaded semiautomatic handgun, high-capacity magazines loaded with ammunition, a machete, a long metal pipe and a megaphone, according to an affidavit filed by FBI Special Agent Diamond Outlaw, along with the criminal complaint.
Hung first obtained the handgun from a friend who purchased it for him in Oregon, the affidavit alleges, then transported it to California. The friend who purchased the weapon falsely said he was the actual transferee of the gun, rather than Hung, prosecutors say. Hung and his friend then planned to transport the firearm to his home in San Marino before bringing it to the demonstration, according to the affidavit.
An investigation, led by the FBI’s Los Angeles Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Pasadena Police Department, found Hung had previously purchased at least three more weapons in Oregon, which he also transported to California.
Federal officials say Hung had amassed an arsenal of firearms and tactical equipment and used his family’s vineyard in Lodi, Calif., as a training camp “to prepare to engage in civil disorders.” A photograph from Hung obtained by investigators showed six firearms displayed on a table along with large number of rifle barrels, magazines, ammunition of various calibers and a tactical vest with assault rifle magazines.
On the weekend of the alleged attack, Hung bragged about his efforts to assault protesters, according to the affidavit. He had also communicated to his associates about creating a “tactical training camp and firearms range at his family’s vineyard and his intent to use the firearms in preparation for civil disorders,” the court document said.
Witnesses’ accounts and social media reports included in the affidavit show Hung had surveilled the area days before the attempted attack in May. At least one witness reported seeing a truck resembling Hung’s vehicle the night before, by the same intersection where the incident took place.
Another witness who worked nearby recalled spotting a truck like Hung’s two days before the attack, according to the affidavit. The witness said that a passenger in a white truck had asked them where they could find protests in Pasadena.
In the document, Outlaw also referred to witness interviews and a video taken by a bystander to describe Hung’s vehicle, which he said bore a plate that read “WAR R1G” and had an elevated suspension and an enhanced exhaust pipe that spewed Black fumes as it rolled toward the crowd. The truck was flying three flags often used by far-right extremist groups, including a 13-states “Betsy Ross” American flag.
If convicted, Hung could face up to five years in federal prison, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
A man accused of driving his truck into a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters in Pasadena, Calif., in May was turning his family’s vineyard into a training camp to prepare to engage in “civil disorders,” according to federal authorities.
Benjamin Jong Ren Hung, 28, from San Marino, Calif., was charged last Wednesday with conspiracy to transport firearms across state lines and with making a false statement in relation to the purchase of firearms, according to a federal criminal complaint.
A judge denied Hung bail Monday; he will remain in federal custody before his trial. His arraignment is scheduled for Oct. 15, a public information officer at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California told The Washington Post.
Hung was first arrested by Pasadena police on May 31 on suspicion of attempted assault with a deadly weapon after he drove his Dodge Ram truck into a crowd of more than 100 people peacefully protesting racial injustice at an intersection in Old Town Pasadena.
The crowd quickly dispersed, and no injuries were reported.
While searching Hung’s car, Pasadena police found a loaded semiautomatic handgun, high-capacity magazines loaded with ammunition, a machete, a long metal pipe and a megaphone, according to an affidavit filed by FBI Special Agent Diamond Outlaw, along with the criminal complaint.
Hung first obtained the handgun from a friend who purchased it for him in Oregon, the affidavit alleges, then transported it to California. The friend who purchased the weapon falsely said he was the actual transferee of the gun, rather than Hung, prosecutors say. Hung and his friend then planned to transport the firearm to his home in San Marino before bringing it to the demonstration, according to the affidavit.
An investigation, led by the FBI’s Los Angeles Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Pasadena Police Department, found Hung had previously purchased at least three more weapons in Oregon, which he also transported to California.
Federal officials say Hung had amassed an arsenal of firearms and tactical equipment and used his family’s vineyard in Lodi, Calif., as a training camp “to prepare to engage in civil disorders.” A photograph from Hung obtained by investigators showed six firearms displayed on a table along with large number of rifle barrels, magazines, ammunition of various calibers and a tactical vest with assault rifle magazines.
On the weekend of the alleged attack, Hung bragged about his efforts to assault protesters, according to the affidavit. He had also communicated to his associates about creating a “tactical training camp and firearms range at his family’s vineyard and his intent to use the firearms in preparation for civil disorders,” the court document said.
Witnesses’ accounts and social media reports included in the affidavit show Hung had surveilled the area days before the attempted attack in May. At least one witness reported seeing a truck resembling Hung’s vehicle the night before, by the same intersection where the incident took place.
Another witness who worked nearby recalled spotting a truck like Hung’s two days before the attack, according to the affidavit. The witness said that a passenger in a white truck had asked them where they could find protests in Pasadena.
In the document, Outlaw also referred to witness interviews and a video taken by a bystander to describe Hung’s vehicle, which he said bore a plate that read “WAR R1G” and had an elevated suspension and an enhanced exhaust pipe that spewed Black fumes as it rolled toward the crowd. The truck was flying three flags often used by far-right extremist groups, including a 13-states “Betsy Ross” American flag.
If convicted, Hung could face up to five years in federal prison, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
MSNBC is breaking that Trump told his official trolls to make comments sympathetic comments about the killer kid in Kenosha.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
These poor potential domestic terrorists that ( or essentially now maybe just over-privelaged gang members) are so brainwashed into this online propaganda warfare that is going on if they believe the cult logic they spout. I wouldn't doubt these guys all could easily be tracked if you looked at their social media content over time with how and when they got trolled into believing the nonsense they do.
Seriously if anyone actually sees this that has kids who might be falling into the trap Trump's trolls (foreign and domestic) are setting and they are showing signs of being in a cult, take the time to explain to them how anything they do online is being manipulated by paid trolls catifishing them into thinking they are their friends/'them'.
And know that they are likely 'true believers' with whatever it is that they think is really important, and it has been reenforced over years from getting trolled from 'the other side of the issue' and being taught how to argue back by whichever sock puppet friend it is that stands up for them, trolls that are good at ending conversations in the real world.
Edit: Although I will add that I do think this is essentially propaganda film making about the Proud boys that is used to radicalize people against them. And the attack just switches at that point to radicalizing kids into being potential domestic terroists against Trump/Proud Boys using these type of videos.
The reason I think this is likely the case:
They seem too defensive to Assange's pleas to have credibility to me. Assange helped the Russian military to smuggle the NSA files Snowden downloaded, out of America.
idk, just find it suspect, not that any of it is lies, but most good propaganda is designed that way.
Seriously if anyone actually sees this that has kids who might be falling into the trap Trump's trolls (foreign and domestic) are setting and they are showing signs of being in a cult, take the time to explain to them how anything they do online is being manipulated by paid trolls catifishing them into thinking they are their friends/'them'.
And know that they are likely 'true believers' with whatever it is that they think is really important, and it has been reenforced over years from getting trolled from 'the other side of the issue' and being taught how to argue back by whichever sock puppet friend it is that stands up for them, trolls that are good at ending conversations in the real world.
Edit: Although I will add that I do think this is essentially propaganda film making about the Proud boys that is used to radicalize people against them. And the attack just switches at that point to radicalizing kids into being potential domestic terroists against Trump/Proud Boys using these type of videos.
The reason I think this is likely the case:
They seem too defensive to Assange's pleas to have credibility to me. Assange helped the Russian military to smuggle the NSA files Snowden downloaded, out of America.
idk, just find it suspect, not that any of it is lies, but most good propaganda is designed that way.
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hanimmal
Well-Known Member
KENOSHA, Wis. — Anti-police-brutality demonstrators were converging on Kenosha from all over Wisconsin for a second night of marches. An armed right-wing group had put out a call for “patriots willing to take up arms and defend [our] City tonight from the evil thugs.”
Joseph Rosenbaum — depressed, homeless and alone — didn’t belong to either side. He had spent most of his adult life in prison for sexual conduct with children when he was 18 and struggled with bipolar disorder. That day, Aug. 25, Rosenbaum was discharged from a Milwaukee hospital following his second suicide attempt in as many months and dumped on the streets of Kenosha.
His confrontation hours later with Kyle Rittenhouse, a heavily armed teenager who had answered the call for “patriots,” kicked off a chain of violence — the deadliest of the summer — that left Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, dead. A third victim, Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, lost a chunk of his right biceps but survived.
‘I want to fix things’
Hours after he was released from the hospital, Rosenbaum stopped by a pharmacy in Kenosha to pick up medication for his bipolar disorder, only to discover that it had closed early because of the unrest.
He visited his fiancee, who was living in a cheap motel room, but she told him he couldn’t stay the night. She had pressed charges against him a month earlier after a fight in which he knocked her down and bloodied her mouth. If Rosenbaum violated his no-contact order, she warned, he could be sent back to jail.
“I want to fix things,” she recalled him telling her. “I want to get myself right.”
She was open to reconciling. “I just want you to be you,” replied the fiancee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she has received threats to her life.
At 11:45 p.m., Richie McGinniss, a reporter with the conservative Daily Caller, spotted Rosenbaum, his T-shirt wrapped around his head, chasing Rittenhouse down the street. It’s unclear what provoked the confrontation, though Rittenhouse’s attorneys speculated in a video released last week that Rosenbaum may have mistaken the teenager for a similarly attired member of the Kenosha Guard he confronted earlier at the gas station.
Rosenbaum pursued Rittenhouse down Sheridan Road and into the parking lot of a car dealership that would soon go up in flames. He threw his hospital bag at Rittenhouse, missing him, and charged at the teenager.
Someone nearby fired a shot. “F--- you!” someone else screamed. Rosenbaum tried to grab Rittenhouse’s rifle, and the teenager — who was just feet from Rosenbaum — began shooting, striking Rosenbaum in the back and groin. Another bullet grazed Rosenbaum’s head. In the seconds after the gunfire, Rittenhouse is caught on video trying to call a friend for help.
Rosenbaum sprawled on the ground between two cars. McGinniss pulled his own T-shirt off and searched for the wound.
“Put pressure on it!” a young woman begged.
“Where?” McGinniss asked. “Where’s the hole?”
“It’s in his f---ing head!” the woman cried.
Rosenbaum, his eyes open and nose bloodied, lifted his skull slowly off the pavement as if trying to speak. Then he lowered his head and shut his eyes for the last time.
By then, Rittenhouse was jogging down Sheridan Road, chased by a crowd of demonstrators, including Huber with his skateboard.
After Blake was shot, Huber attended the first night of demonstrations. The next morning, they headed to the beach with Gittings’ 3-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, skipped rocks and gazed out at Lake Michigan.
Huber’s friends said he didn’t talk much about politics or activism, but they weren’t surprised he took to the streets. “I wouldn’t say he was political,” said one close friend, “but I think he definitely hated racists.”
Huber was part of the crowd at the gas station trying to calm Rosenbaum down after a self-styled militia member pointed his gun at the protesters. And he was standing just down the street from the car dealership when Rittenhouse fired the shots that killed Rosenbaum.
“Stop him,” a voice screamed as Rittenhouse jogged down Sheridan Road, according to Grosskreutz’s video footage.
“Get his a--!” someone else yelled.
Huber told Gittings to take cover in a nearby alley. “I tried to grab him,” Gittings said. “I tried to stop him.”
But Huber, skateboard in hand, adrenaline pumping, was already gone.
‘Like a war zone’
Rittenhouse was now jogging down Sheridan Road with Huber and a handful of others in pursuit. He passed Grosskreutz, who was standing on the sidewalk, live-streaming the increasingly chaotic scene.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Grosskreutz asked without emotion as Rittenhouse, his rifle hanging off his shoulder strap, approached. “You shot somebody?”
“I am going to get the police,” Rittenhouse replied.
It took a few seconds for Grosskreutz to realize what was happening. “Who’s shot?” he asked. Seconds later, Grosskreutz gave chase, his pistol drawn.
In a recent interview, Grosskreutz said he had been attending protests since late May, when George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis police custody. He had grown up in a working-class neighborhood just outside the Milwaukee city limits. His mother was a dental assistant and his father did not work, he said. After high school, he had spent a few years as a paramedic, but the steady diet of gunshot wounds, drug overdoses and poverty wore on him. So he decided to attend Northland College, a small liberal arts school where he majored in outdoor education.
When his summer internship in Milwaukee was curtailed because of the pandemic, Grosskreutz decided to focus on the protests. He joined a new group, the People’s Revolution, which was calling for an end to police brutality, and he used his training to provide basic medical aid to the marchers and others. He and some friends outfitted a black pickup truck with a red cross and packed it with gauze, water, tourniquets, bandages and quick-clotting agents.
Grosskreutz, a gun owner with a concealed-carry permit, brought a pistol to most of the rallies. As the summer progressed, the protesters were frequently joined by self-described pro-police militias whose members carried rifles.
Some of Grosskreutz’s fellow protesters bought their own firearms for protection. Grosskreutz said he never felt threatened. But the night he was shot felt different from earlier marches.
“For lack of a better term, it felt like a war zone,” he said.
That evening, crowds had gathered around the Kenosha County Courthouse chanting anti-police-brutality slogans and berating officers. Police used stun grenades, tear gas, rubber bullets and armored vehicles to disperse the crowds, and Grosskreutz provided medical aid to an 18-year-old woman who had been hit in the arm by a rubber bullet.
After dark, police began pushing the protesters away from the courthouse toward the armed pro-police groups, who had taken up positions to defend businesses on Sheridan Road. Some trained their guns on the protesters as they passed. A few of the protesters began lighting dumpsters on fire.
“Gunshots,” said Grosskreutz on his live-stream video, moments after Rittenhouse fired on Rosenbaum. Rittenhouse passed, then Huber. Grosskreutz fell in just behind him.
After a few yards, Rittenhouse stumbled and fell to the ground. An unidentified man ran toward him and delivered a flying kick. Rittenhouse fired at him but missed.
Then came Huber, who swung a skateboard at Rittenhouse’s shoulder and reached for his rifle. Rittenhouse fired again, hitting Huber in the chest.
Last came Grosskreutz, who ran toward Rittenhouse with his pistol drawn. Rittenhouse raised his rifle and shot. A bullet tore through Grosskreutz’s right biceps.
“Medic!” Grosskreutz screamed as he stumbled away. “I need a f---ing medic!”
He was kneeling on the side of the road when live-streaming independent journalist C.J. Halliburton approached.
“I have a tourniquet in the bag,” Grosskreutz told him. The journalist dropped his camera and slipped the tourniquet over Grosskreutz’s arm, fumbling with the strap.
“That’s not how you use it,” Grosskreutz yelled.
“Help me,” replied the journalist, who started to cinch it.
“Make it tight!” Grosskreutz told him.
“This is going to hurt,” the journalist worried.
“Do it!” Grosskreutz ordered. “Do it!”
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
Continued from above:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/03/kenosha-shooting-victims/?arc404=true‘Just another cog’
In the days that followed the shooting, conservatives proclaimed Rittenhouse a victim of leftist mob rule. “Are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder?” asked Fox News’s Tucker Carlson. “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”
The next day, Rittenhouse was charged with reckless homicide and illegal possession of a dangerous weapon; he is being held near his Illinois home while fighting extradition to Wisconsin. Trump opined on the charges at a White House briefing.
“He was trying to get away from them,” the president said of Rittenhouse. “He was in very big trouble. He probably would have been killed.”
Others hailed the three victims as heroes. In Germany, a Berlin skateboard park was named for Huber. “Never again fascism,” his fellow skaters wrote in German and English on the sign paying tribute to his bravery. GoFundMe pages for Rosenbaum, Huber and Grosskreutz raised a combined $251,000.
“I did not know JoJo [Rosenbaum], but I will remember his name along with the list of those who have wrongfully lost their lives in support of equality and justice,” wrote one woman, who gave $200.
One man donated the minimum — $5 — so he could blast Rosenbaum as a “child molester and a piece of sewage.”
Rosenbaum’s fiancee struggled to make sense of it all. She hadn’t known about Rosenbaum’s criminal history. “I’m slowly learning who Joe was,” she said.
She started to read a five-page presentencing report from his 2002 conviction for child sexual conduct, which described in graphic detail the abuse that Rosenbaum suffered as a child and the harm he inflicted on others. But she stopped after a few sentences: She wanted to remember him as a goofy, kindhearted, boisterous man.
“I have to remember him that way or I get too down,” she said. “If he could make you laugh, he’d do it. Everyone has demons they fight. He was trying to get his life back together. All he really wanted was a job, a home and a family.”
In Milwaukee, doctors stitched up Grosskreutz’s arm. A bullet from Rittenhouse’s rifle had torn through a tattoo of a caduceus, the medical staff and snake, on his biceps.
Grosskreutz complained to friends that he sometimes felt like “just another cog in this big political agenda.” He hated that the shooting and its aftermath were being used to widen divisions in the country.
“People are ascribing motives to people that don’t even exist . . . communist, antifa, whatever,” he said in an interview. “I’m just a person. I’m a human being. I was never there to hurt anybody.”
Shortly after the shooting, Grosskreutz called Huber’s girlfriend to offer his support. “We’re bonded for life,” he told her.
She had watched the video of Huber’s final moments before he was shot. The hardest part was seeing how close Huber got to wresting the gun from Rittenhouse in the split second before he was killed. “He almost got it away from him,” Gittings said.
She hopes to use $150,000 from Huber’s GoFundMe to provide for her daughter and to build an indoor skateboarding park to help foster a sport that Huber complained was waning in popularity. Huber’s family had a private funeral for him, but Gittings said they didn’t invite her. Once the police investigation concludes, she plans to hold her own ceremony with the skateboard Huber struck Rittenhouse with. She’ll gather his friends at the end of a pier and roll the board into Lake Michigan.
On a warm afternoon in late September, about a month after the shooting, she and a group of Huber’s friends headed off to the skate park that had been his refuge. Gittings had scabs on her knees and bruises up and down her calves from recent falls.
She skated until she was out of breath, took a swig of water and plopped down on the concrete next to her friends. They talked about skating, police-shooting victim Breonna Taylor, the upcoming Trump-Biden debate and a drug-addicted friend who needed to go to rehab.
Ever since Huber’s death, Gittings’ social media feed had been overwhelmed with people writing to either praise Huber as a hero or castigate him as a criminal. One man she didn’t know had sent a message containing taunts about her dead boyfriend, along with a picture of himself exposing his genitals.
“I’m so sorry about your small penis,” Gittings had responded.
She took a drag on a cigarette and began scrolling through her Twitter feed.
“So @hannahgitts thinks she is going to cash in on her ‘boyfriends’ death,” someone had written minutes earlier. “Nothing more than a money-grubbing opportunist. Maybe he shouldn’t have been a communist attacking people and he would be alive.”
Her friends tried to reassure her, telling her the commenter was out of line.
“I don’t give a s---,” she told them. “Anthony would’ve thought it was so funny how many people are calling him a communist.”
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