Two years ago today I got my first taste of tear gas. Two years ago today 'police riot' ceased to be just an intellectual concept for me.
It's weird to see all the shields and such, I forget the guns came later.
May 29th was a Friday, and the start of the longest weekend ever. It was actually the second night of protests here but I missed the memo on the first night. By the time the night was over we'd have the National Guard and a curfew here in Louisville.
I'd had a suspicion that it was going to get lively that night and the number of helicopters circling overhead as we hiked into downtown only served to reinforce that suspicion.
It was weird, the crowd was sort of milling about, nobody quite sure what to do or what was going on. At the same time there was a palpable sense of anger in the air, like a fire starved of oxygen just waiting for a fresh draft.
Helicopter in the sky at night,
how I hate you with all my might
Holding signs and chanting, the crowd wasn't really doing much besides alternating between directing them at the courthouse and the jail.
"Hands up, don't shoot!"
(Spoiler alert: It doesn't work, LMPD will still shoot you.)
Based on the timestamps, only 51 minutes elapsed between the first photo and this next one but it seemed a good bit longer. One minute I'm talking to a friend I'd run into and the next all hell breaks loose.
Flashbangs, tear gas, and pepper balls fill the air, people scatter.
About this point the adrenaline kicked in and the rest of the night is more a collection of flashes of memory than a coherent whole.
More than anything a sense of insanity and absurdity permeates everything.
When we'd had our fill of CS we slipped out of downtown and made for home to recover and try to process what'd just happened. Still working on that...
For those of you unfamiliar, LMPD murdered Breonna Taylor on March 13, 2020 but it wasn't until May 28th that her boyfriend's 911 call was released and blew up LMPD's cover story. Coming on top of George Floyd's murder, people took to the streets and LMPD unleashed a brutal, militarized response, eventually backed by the National Guard. By the time this night was over it seemed like the police and declared war on the city and the city wasn't backing down. Protests would continue on a daily basis into October and the Guard would be deployed two more times.
We still don't have justice for Breonna so this still isn't over. Until it is, #sayhername!