Car pushes protesters as Mayor Bowser gets another Defund MPD home demo

Video of the car incident 1 min 52 sec

On the 23ed of July, Black Lives Matter activists arrived outside Mayor Bowser's house for yet another residential protest demanding she defund MPD. The protest was largely an educational session on how cops don't make Black people any safer. As a real-world example of this, cops did nothing about it when an impatient driver tried to forcibly push through protesters as the rally began.

This educational protest turned out to be a bit more educational than expected. Students would recognize it as containing a lab(field) as well as a lecture element. One of Bowser's neighbors had just unparked his car, and may well have been let out in seconds if he hadn't tried to take matters into his own hands and drive his car directly into protesters at slow-walk speed. If anyone had gone down, they would have risked having a foot or worse run over by a wheel. Cops went to the scene but as expected did nothing. It was protesters themselves that stopped the car. In other words, data directly from the field shows police flunking and protesters passing the "who keeps us safe" test, in a real-world example of "who keeps us safe? WE keep us safe!

One of the speakers added that even when shootings take place in the neighborhoods, MPD does absolutely nothing that can actually stop the shootings, so money should be redirected to something that can. Black Lives Matter has tried for years to get Bowser to fully fund the NEAR act, which includes community-based violence intervention programs that have worked in other cities. The NEAR act was passed by the DC Council and is law, yet Bowser is leaving tools that could make a real difference in shootings on the shelf to rust away from disuse. A speaker pointed out that the NEAR act was passed as an alternative to a draconian crime bill Mayor Bowser had introduced. The NEAR Act passed instead, so she leaves it unused. This is the sort of thing most people would expect from Trump.

Speaking of things one would expect from Trump, Bowser's MPD cops were reportedly threatening to take people's bicycles on Black Lives Matter Plaza on July 23. Word reached those in the Bowser home demo that cops at BLM Plaza were telling people they had 15 minutes to move the bikes or lose them. Back in 2002, cops tried to hold 37 protester bikes after kettling an IMF/World Bank protest Critical Mass, only to have to release all of them after threats were made that 37 yuppie bikes would be stolen as replacements.