Garsya / Depositphotos.com
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – The mainstream media won’t tell you this, but I will. Protests after the shooting of Renee Nicole Good have been small. They are nothing like the George Floyd protests from 2020. Yet from the news coverage, you’d think they’re about the same.
George Floyd’s death was an outrage. A Minneapolis police officer keep his knee of Floyd’s neck for 16 minutes while life drained out of him. I don’t care that George Floyd was a criminal, or that he was a drug addict or that other health complications may have contributed to his death. That was horrible policing. Much of the narrative that followed – that marauding white cops hunt blacks on the streets across the county – is grossly exaggerated. But the spark that lit that fire was George Floyd’s death. Anyone who saw that video would come to the same conclusion – cops can’t do that.
But the Renee Nicole Good videos are different. There are many videos; they all show her driving towards the ICE officer who fatally shot her. She was a trained activist. She had been blocking the street. This was not someone who was simply driving away from the situation. She was there to interfere; she was there to create a confrontation.
Most people who watched the videos have come to that conclusion. So the fires of protest are subdued. Of course they are larger in Minneapolis. Schools were closed after the shooting, so the entire education apparatus was able to take to the streets. There were large protests in Portland – where two other people were shot by ICE agents. Local police there were slow to tell the public that the shooting victims were tren de agua members who tired to ram their car into officers.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said there were demonstrations outside the ICE office in their city. Only a few dozen showed up. Our news wires said there were protests in Madison, 20 or 30 strong. WJFW-TV in Rhinelander said there were protests in several northwoods communities. The video footage they showed from Merrill showed 7 people.
Why?
Because people are motivated to respond to legitimate outrages. And this isn’t it.
Chris Conley
Comments