There is a long history of peaceful protests in America. But there is an even longer history of protests that deploy violence, threats, and intimidation. /1 https://twitter.com/rtwingthinker/status/1266715219935584257

What do you think your history books in K-12 were talking about when they described the loyalists being tarred and feathered during the American Revolution?!? /2 @WGNNews

What do you think the Sons of Liberty in Boston we’re doing when the British fired on Crispis Attucks and the others? /3 @WGNNews

They were doing this /4 https://images.app.goo.gl/ny9bR3ZDxgwkPF3w7

My point was only to say that when people are angry, distrust the system, and institutions breakdown, it is hard for people to contain their rage and property damage often happens. /5 @WGNNews

Also, to point out that the reason we have such a misunderstanding of point this fundamental point is because Black Americans invented the nonviolent protest tradition in this country in their pursuit of racial justice. /6 @WGNNews

The ubiquitous images of Black Americans doing this in pursuit of racial justice has left us all with the distorted view that it is the only way protests for racial justice will happen. /7 https://images.app.goo.gl/pS6rzzEN35DjtdJq8

This was never the normal way Americans protested, which is why it was so innovative, and the reason that it worked at the time! #DrKing acknowledged at the time when he talked about the so called “riots” of the 1960s. /8 @WGNNews

It is also interesting that we ignore the fact that the peaceful protesters of the 1960s were met with nothing but intimidation, insults, and violence from both the police and the typical citizen they encountered. /9 https://images.app.goo.gl/gw7U2VdzrotPvtER7

It’s also true that whether properly is destroyed is not the only metric of whether a movement is nonviolent. If you show up with your long guns to “take over” a government building, you are threatening violence /10 https://images.app.goo.gl/Rt8YKoPAVbXQb3fy9

If you are untested for #COVID19 and you show up, unmasked to yell in the face of police you are actually being violent by laws in many states /11. https://images.app.goo.gl/8Zhhkjv6QgfqJaFy5

@WGNNews what’s interesting about the “why are they destroying property crowd” is that our surveys tell us that peaceful protests like this make them just as mad as what’s been happening in #Minneapolis /12 https://images.app.goo.gl/wuNZkxT5g8Xqctro7

Can you explain that to me? @rtwingthinker