Yeah, what the fuck?

Edit: I went to a socially distanced goodbye party for my friend and came back to a bunch of deleted comments

  • determinism [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    It was a complete novelty when I first heard about them a few months ago in Portalnd, then I heard about a few in my city.

    Caravans apparently have a history in this country which I was not aware of.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_massacre

    As the marchers collected, a caravan of ten cars (and a van) filled with an estimated 40 KKK and American Nazi Party members drove back and forth in front of the housing project. Several marchers beat the cars with picket sticks or threw rocks at them. In response, the KKK and ANP members got out of their cars, took shotguns, rifles and pistols from the trunks, and fired into the crowd of protesters. Some of the latter were armed with handguns, which they fired during the brief conflict.[1] It is not entirely clear who fired the first shot.[1] Witnesses reported that KKK member Mark Sherer fired first, into the air.[10]

    ...

    By the late 1970s, most police departments had become familiar with handling demonstrations, especially in cities such as Greensboro where numerous civil rights events had taken place since 1960. CWP march organizers had filed their plans for this march with the police and gained permission to hold it. Police generally covered such formal events in order to prevent outbreaks of violence; few officers were present during this march. A police photographer and a detective followed the Klan and neo-Nazi caravan to the site, but they did not attempt to intervene in events.

    Edward Dawson, a Klansman-turned FBI/police informant,[2] was riding in the lead car of the caravan.[11] He had been an FBI informant since 1969 as part of the agency's COINTELPRO program. He was among the founders of the North Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan when the North Carolina chapter of the United Klans of America split.[14] By 1979 he was working as an informant for the Greensboro Police Department. He was given a copy of the march route by the police and informed them of the potential for violence.[9] Because the police were absent, the attackers escaped with relative ease.