Posted on 03/07/2016 12:29:38 PM PST by Jack Black
A preview of the mayhem that is likely to envelop the 2016 GOP Convention in Cleveland will be seen this Friday when Trump holds a rally in Chicago. The Facebook page soliciting 'non-violent protesters' to attend the rally has over 7000 people promising to attend, and another 7000 are "interested".
The escalation of disruption and the provocation of violence has been on view over the last few weeks, in several Trump rallies. The Black Lives Matter activists have been the most visible disruptors, but there are others as well. The BLM movement was involved in fulminating full on riots (arson, looting) in several cities last summer. This is familiar territory for them.
But they are far from the only group that can be expected to protest at the GOP Convention. The usual Soros funded rent-a-mob types, SEUI members, recycled "Occupy" protesters, angry Sanders supporters and the vanguard of violence among leftists groups, the 'black block' anarchists can all be expected to turn out in force to protest the GOP convention, regardless of who the Convention is set to nominate.
The Cleveland Police are doing their best to prepare for these events as local papers have reported: Cleveland seeking to buy riot gear for Republican National Convention and Cleveland police begin special riot training. These news reports cite the number 2,000 as the number of "riot suits" being bought for the Convention.
To understand what the leftist agitators have in mind one needs to recall the 1968 Democratic convention when the Yippies, a far left group of radicals set out to create complete havoc in the streets of Chicago, to protest the failure of the Democratic Party to nominate an anti-war candidate. This event has an almost spiritual significance to the left, it is remembered as one of their greatest victories, and a high water mark for the anti-war left. This, despite the fact that it virtually assured the election of Richard Nixon in a landslide. No one ever said the Left were concerned with outcomes over feel-good theatrics.
By most accounts the disruption in Chicago was the work of no more than 1000 activists. It seems likely that today's social-media fueled left will easily be able to exceed this number, perhaps by an order of magnitude. And it seems likely that given the recent behavior of the left, both in Ferguson and at Trump events that violent mayhem is almost a certainty.
Mayor Daley, the long time mayor of Chicago was a law-and-order mayor who had a no-nonsense policy towards the protesters. Arrests were made in the days leading up to the larger protests, and those were greeted with riot-troops and tear gas. The riots were portrayed at the time as "police riots", that is the police decided to beat up the hapless hippies for no reason. In fact the opposite is true. The organizers used incredible provocations, such as throwing plastic bags of urine and feces at the police to force their hand.
It's unclear if the Cleveland police are made of stern enough stuff to prevent large scale rioting in their city. According to Wikipedia the force consists of only about 1500 officers. Even assuming they can augment this with suburban forces, it's a far cry from Chicago's 12,000 officers. Even the Ohio State Highway Patrol has only 1,500 additional officers, many of whom have little experience in riots being specialized officers who do truck inspections or motorcycle cops focused on traffic enforcement.
The mayor of Cleveland is Frank G. Jackson, a liberal Democrat whose background includes community organizing. He has worked to address minority complaints with the Cleveland police practices, and his city has been the site of several highly charged shootings of blacks. All of which may not bode well for the police having the required mind set and support to mount an aggressive defense of order in the face of violent rioters.
One wishes it were not so, but it seems inevitable that Cleveland will be the site of serious riots at this summer's GOP convention in Cleveland.
Oh...wow. I went and read about it.
My older brother was a college student at Case Western in Cleveland, but staying at home to save money. He and my Dad had some very interesting conversations at the dinner table right after the Kent State event.
I was very young during that time so I’m kinda blank on that whole period. I see such sadness in my older relatives eyes when they talk about the Vietnam War.
I am not anti-war... but I am absolutely against sacrificing the youth of our great nation to any war that our government gets us into when they never had a plan to win it.
PGR88 is absolutely correct in post 7.
BLM may ‘riot’, but it will be amongst themselves ;-)
-JT
That was correct.
Good post.
Ping for a prescient post.
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