As recently as a few months ago, I took my daughter to peaceful protests (more on that here), where she and other local children celebrated their early education on human rights and advocacy. “My sign said that children love everyone,” she continues to tell people in our suburban town (she’s paraphrasing, but not wrong).
Now, I go to protests alone. With pepper spray in my purse.
The reason? Outbreaks of violence. Not violence by anyone affiliated with the BLM movement, but by the opposition (counter-protesters, as they identify themselves). At the last two peaceful protests in Placer County, California, where I live, self-proclaimed Trump supporters have come to heckle, intimidate, and at times outright assault demonstrators aligned with Black Lives Matter. In fact, the counter-protesters have outnumbered the protesters themselves.
This uptick in aggression means that bringing children to a peaceful protest exposes them to immediate threat – from the same people who condemn the BLM movement for the destruction of property in Portland and Seattle.
I had the opportunity to interview Damion Saunders, the organizer of Allies for Black Lives: Placer County who was physically assaulted (leading to one arrest) at a protest on Sunday, September 27. Saunders explains, “We want peace; we want to feel safe in our own community. If I [assaulted someone] it would be all over the news and people would slander the movement. [But when I’m attacked], not one mention.”
When Saunders arrived on Sunday to lead a peaceful march, he realized he had been preceded by nearly a hundred counter-protesters with Trump flags, hats, and T-shirts. They showed up for the event hours before BLM allies, due to inaccurate reporting by the blog Right On Daily that BLM was coming to ‘march on’ a local megachurch. Saunders says he reached out to the church’s clergy the day before the event to assure them that this was not the case.
At a separate gathering on August 30, in Lincoln, CA, Saunders describes events confirmed by numerous witnesses: “They began yelling ‘White Power’…some of the gentlemen had big German Shepherds they were trying to scare us with. Things escalated while the police stood right there.”
Saunders was not the only one to experience imminent threats over the weekend. In the photo above, captured by Black Zebra Productions, a man openly carrying a massive knife heckles a teenage girl. Her mother, who wishes to remain anonymous, reports, “She was called the worst of names, cussed out, propositioned for sex, all by grown white men…police [did not intervene]. My daughter is 17.” The additional photo displays the same young girl with a friend of Mexican descent (the two again surrounded by men) who reported further racist and sexist verbal attacks.
Additional video footage on social media reveals further abuse this past Saturday. “If Donald Trump condones speaking to women this way -” starts a woman trying to protect three minors from the men verbally assaulting them, due to the fact that they carried Black Lives Matter signs.
“You ain’t women,” retorts the man, as a young (female) child, presumably his own, stands just behind him. Later in the video, a woman is seen hitting a young girl repeatedly on the head with an American flag.
Tonight, at the first presidential debate, I watched Chris Wallace ask Donald Trump why he ended racial sensitivity training for law enforcement. “I ended it because it’s racist,” he responded, without even pausing for breath. Later in the debate he refused to condemn right wing extremism: “This is a LEFT problem.”
Since 2016 we have seen how this administration has emboldened hatred nationwide. Now, in the town where I am raising my children, I see it with my own eyes.
