Second Night Of Protests Following Louisville Decision

It’s not overly surprising. 2020 may well go down as the Year of the Protest. It seems someone is protesting something somewhere every day now.

But enough about Portland.

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As things stand, many people feel there’s another reason to protest. For them, the Breonna Taylor decision was a travesty of justice, a coverup that has failed to see the guilty prosecuted. So it’s not shocking that, in 2020, people have taken to the streets.

They did it again last night.

Police in Louisville, Kentucky, say at least 24 people were arrested from a protest in the city on Thursday.

A statement says charges included unlawful assembly, failure to disperse and riot in the first degree.

Authorities allege the protesters broke windows at a restaurant, damaged city buses, tried to set a fire and threw a flare into the street.

Among those arrested Thursday night was state Rep. Attica Scott, a Louisville Democrat who has served in the legislature since 2017 and has pushed for legislation outlawing no-knock warrants.

However, the media isn’t showing nearly as much damage as we’ve seen in past riots. Whether that’s because there simply isn’t as much or they’re just trying to not show it is anyone’s guess unless you’ve been there.

Yet protests aren’t confined to Louisville.

In Los Angeles, one protester was struck by a vehicle.

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A truck drove through a group of protesters in Hollywood on Thursday night, striking at least one person as it sped through the crowd, according to the police and news footage from the scene.

Demonstrators had gathered at 7 p.m. at Hollywood Forever Cemetery before marching through the streets of Hollywood.

On Thursday, the group in Hollywood was walking down Sunset Boulevard, video posted to Twitter and YouTube shows, when a dark-colored pickup accelerated among the protesters, striking one directly and hurtling the person backward. The truck then sped down Sunset Boulevard, nearly hitting other people who leaped out of the way, the footage shows.

Capt. Steve Lurie, who leads the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood Division, said officers stopped and identified the motorist, although they didn’t immediately arrest him. The motorist told them that protesters had attacked his car first, according to Lurie, who added that officers have noted damage to the car.

Christian Monterrosa, a freelance photojournalist who was following the protest, said the truck was traveling against the flow of the crowd — west, when the group was walking east — when protesters began crowding the vehicle, trying to bring it to a stop.

“I would say the truck instigated the incident, definitely,” Monterrosa said, noting that other motorists had yielded to the demonstrators.

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Of course, I wouldn’t accept Monterrosa’s take on the situation in the least. I mean, I don’t know that he’s lying, but I also don’t know how much he actually understands about the situation in totality.

If, of course, this was an intentional act, the driver should be charged. However, if someone’s just traveling down a major street in their city and they find themselves in the middle of a protest, what the hell are they supposed to do? Just let their stuff get wrecked and destroyed?

We’re going to have to wait for this one to shake out.

Regardless, we’re having more and more protests and it doesn’t look like they’ll take the weekend off, either.

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