(I apologize in advance if talking about the podcast is discouraged. I don't know if that's a joke or if most hexbears feel that way). But anyway, next month marks the two-year anniversary of George Floyd's awful murder. Listening to the show in the summer of 2020, and later reading some stray commentary on this site, it seemed like the podcast kind of whiffed it on the protests. But idk, is that fair to say? I believe they participated in some marches in NYC, but I also remember Matt saying that "defund the police" was dead-on-arrival as a slogan, because cops will always be around as long as capitalism exists. I also remember there being a pretty rancid take about "working class" cops in a Taibbi episode, as well as an episode that dunked on a racial sensitivity/workplace training book. Fair enough about the capitalism opinion, and the book, which was no doubt written by a rich neolib that lacked any material analysis. I understand that CTH is a news commentary/comedy/dirtbag show co-hosted by white people, so it's not going to be the best resource on racial theory. I also understand that a big part of CTH is entertainment. But I'm curious if you have thoughts about Chapo's reaction to the 2020 protests. And thanks for sharing them.
I pretty much gave up on even symbolic participation in street marches after attending a few where the temperature was at or near one hundred and few if any of the well meaning people thought to bring water. Nothing is going to come from marching if people can't even think far enough ahead to look after hydration.
The way the march was set up is that we met up in front of the Hollywood and Highland Center on Hollywood Blvd.
We were told to come by around 12pm (in the middle of goddamn heatwave in summer) and were told that the speakers would be talking around then, so we showed up about 20 min early. The speakers didn't start until fucking 12:45 PM. The speakers were an embarrassing array of extinction rebellion nerds telling people about self suicide, RevCom weirdos talking about the immortal science of Bob Avakian, and a bunch of Libs talking about the cheeto in the dang white house.
Finally after what felt an hour we started the march. In which they forced us to walk on the right side of the street to allow street traffic to go through and as close to the sidewalk as possible :). Didn't want to be a bother afterall it was a Sunday and people were having brunch! Problem with this was, the march organizers decided to randomnly and for no reason just stop and wait for no reason or explanation.
Our ultimate destination was to get to De Longpre Park, which ordinarily would take maybe 15 minutes walking. It took us three hours. Oh and the fucking protest chants they were fucking AWFUL. The worst one was.
Stranger Danger! There's a fascist in the white house!
But it was like one of 5 they kept doing (while shushing people who said ACAB and Fuck the Police and Fuck 12)
Finally we get to the goddamn park and Im suffering from heatstroke and on the verge of fainting. Where they expected us to sit down and listen to more speeches about removing Donald Trump from the White House.
Me, my then BF, his sister and his friend went "aw hell nah" and fucking left. Took us 15 minutes to get back to the car.