“Black Lives Matter” has announced that they intend to protest at, and attempt to block, the Twin Cities Marathon.<\/p>\n
Let’s make sure this is clear; after months of protesting at things that the DFL elites in Kenwood and Summit Avenue revile (the Mall of America) or are outside their frame of reference\u00a0(the State Fair, the Green Line during a Vikings game) or that isn’t part of their lives (or rush hour on I94 in the Midway, I35W in South Minneapolis, or Snelling Avenue), they may have finally gone a bridge too far; they’re not just inconveniencing the proles this time; they’re going to mess with one of those things of which white, upper-middle-class, MPR-listening, St. Olaf-alumniing, Volvo-driving, Whole-Foods-shopping Minnesota is most proud; an institution that is one of the A-list faces of the part of Minnesota that wants to look at the rest of the world and say “yeah, we’re a little like New York!”.<\/p>\n
As I started thinking about writing, I got an email from a regular reader:<\/p>\n
I’ve been minimally following the BLM plans to protest the marathon.\u00a0 I know people who run the marathon who have never supported BLM, so their reaction is obviously anger.\u00a0 However, secretly I kind of like that the group is finally disrupting something other than poor and working class people getting to and from work.\u00a0 Especially when I read comments on Facebook that suggest the mindset of “why are you protesting us?\u00a0 We support you.” to which BLM protesters respond with something like “if you support us, what have you done to make real changes?” (not exact quotes, but enough similar sentiments on the Facebook pages that [the operator of a local political discussion listserver]\u00a0linked to) Liberal types who tend to think they’re helping by voting for all of the stuff that Liberals like probably are scratching their heads at that, which at least makes this protest fun to follow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It’s more than just Schadenfreude, of course…<\/p>\n
…although there’s plenty of that, too.<\/p>\n
For example: \u00a0what must it be like to be Betsy Hodges or Chris Coleman, right now? \u00a0They’ve bent over 90 degrees past backwards for BLM – who, being liberal and (partly) black, they consider their electoral property –\u00a0<\/em>allowing them to block city streets numerous times without the protest permit every other group would need to bet, much less blocking interstate highways and mass transit\u00a0over and over again. \u00a0And now – after all those favors – BLM ungratefully wants to screw with one of Hodges and Coleman’s marquee events?<\/p>\n
Will either of them decide to “get tough”, as the eyes of the marathon-running world are on them?<\/p>\n
But beyond that? \u00a0As the emailer pointed out – how will “progressive” Minnesota react to their own hypocrisy being sent up on a world stage?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Black Lives Matter” has announced that they intend to protest at, and attempt to block, the Twin Cities Marathon. Let’s make sure this is clear; after months of protesting at things that the DFL elites in Kenwood and Summit Avenue revile (the Mall of America) or are outside their frame of reference\u00a0(the State Fair, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[321,54,18,77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-left","category-ebony-and-ivory","category-pc","category-the-rare-sports-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55395,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55394\/revisions\/55395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}