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I don’t know how you disprove claims that a tiny group of agitators are largely responsible for this wave of unrest. But it doesn’t track at all with my experience of being on the ground in Denver the last two nights https://twitter.com/dcwoodruff/status/1266766409247293442">https://twitter.com/dcwoodruf...
The pattern that has very quickly been established, which should be familiar from events in Ferguson, Baltimore, etc., is that earlier protests start out relatively calm and things gradually get more intense as night falls, with both cops & demonstrators escalating the situation
These events attract hundreds, at times thousands of people, all with their own motivations for being there, beliefs about tactics, etc. As things deteriorate you see clashes between protesters over how to act. It’s a broad spectrum and people don’t fit neatly into categories
As the night wears on, yes, the crowd thins out, and yes, I think it’s true that the most focused, organized, issue-oriented BLM activists go home. But the idea that everyone who’s left is a just an opportunistic, thrill-seeking Black Bloc knucklehead is just not accurate
What I saw as it neared midnight last night is that there were still hundreds of people, mostly very young, multiracial, in small scattered groups around Civic Center, fully participating in what was going on, setting fires, smashing windows and cars, etc.
Again, these are large gatherings made up of many diverse individual people so it’s impossible to generalize too broadly. But the crowd at this point was pretty united. When a window got smashed or a squad car got hit with a water bottle, pretty much everyone cheered.
I’m not telling anyone what to think about this, just telling you what I saw, which doesn’t really match with the “outside agitator” or (in Mayor Hancock’s words) “another element” narrative that is rapidly taking shape
