His little town of Provo
Oh goody, another private “militia” is born.
The Utah Citizens’ Alarm is only a month old, and yet it already boasts 15,000-plus members.
The citizen militia’s recruits wear military fatigues and carry assault rifles. Their short-term goal, they say, is to act as a physical presence of intimidation to deter protesters from becoming violent and destroying the state of Utah. Their long-term goal: to arm and prepare the state of Utah against underground movements they believe will incite civil war.
But the physical presence of a “militia” wearing military fatigues and carrying assault rifles would not merely deter protesters from becoming violent and destroying Utah, it would deter them/us/me from protesting at all. If I saw a bunch of guys in fatigues carrying assault rifles at a protest I’d be out of there before I’d drawn another breath. I don’t see random self-appointed guys with guns as protective or safeguarding, I see them as a terrifying threat. I see the cops that way too, to a considerable extent (the guns have always made me nervous, my whole life), but at least I know they are answerable to higher ups and the organization and the courts. Volunteer cops carrying assault rifles, not so much.
The group was conceived in reaction to a Black Lives Matter protest against police brutality organized by different groups in Provo, Utah, on 29 June. That day, a white protester pulled out a gun and shot another white man, who was not protesting but driving his vehicle into the protest route. Two shots were fired, and one hit the driver in the arm. Protesters claim the shooting was in self-defence because the driver was hitting marchers; the police found this claim to be unsubstantiated.
When Casey Robertson, 47, watched a video of the incident, he felt outraged that this could happen in his “little town of Provo”.
…
Utah Citizens’ Alarm has since organized regular military-style trainings for its members. Robertson says he has been tipped off “by secret sources within the government and law enforcement” that underground organizations like antifa are being funded by Isis, and are using groups like BLM to wreak havoc in the community to destroy American cities and ideals. Even if none of these theories stand up to scrutiny, he is dead set on not letting it happen.
That is, he has been told a pack of lies by people who claim to be law enforcement, or he claims he has, but never mind that it’s a pack of lies, he is dead set on threatening protesters. Brilliant. Wonderful arrangement.
This already has a chilling effect on protests: organizers have begun cancelling protests out of fear of Utah Citizens’ Alarm coming and escalating the already heated emotions. So far, militia members remain unchallenged, using their second amendment rights to openly bear arms in public throughout the state.
What I’m saying. Of course it has a chilling effect.
Jason Stevens, of Utah’s American Civil Liberties Union, stressed the importance of the historical context in what happened in the civil rights movement of the 1960s when armed groups, militias, local chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, white citizens councils, organizations both official and unofficial took it upon themselves to defend what they saw as their rights and property with violent and systemic intimidation and threats to African Americans and others in those areas.
Yes, that is important. Timothy McVeigh is another important item in this list. Heavily armed right-wing terrorizers have a long history in the US, and no, of course we don’t see them as there to “protect” us.
Additionally, lines between the second and first amendment are complicated, especially as open-carry laws in Utah make it legal for groups of heavily armed individuals to gather in places where the first amendment is being honored, such as protests.
“If the right to bear arms is overriding the right to free speech, that may be cause for concern,” said Dr RonNell Andersen Jones, a law professor at the University of Utah. “Our constitutional doctrine hasn’t yet had the chance to really tussle with the question of what the presence of guns does to a free speech event. Short of more overt threats of violence, we usually protect protesters with guns in the same ways we protect protesters without them. But if the express goal of the armed individuals is to intimidate people who might otherwise share their views, that’s especially troubling.”
I don’t bother with that purported distinctions. If there are random freelancers with guns on the scene, I’m not staying. I assume I’m far from the only person who sees it that way. Yes, guys with guns will shut down free speech. You can count on it.
It’s possible one could find a group to help protect American freedom of expression in Utah from terrorist groups like the Y’all Qaeda.
I think the NFAC might be interested.
Ugh, I hate the term “Y’all Qaeda”. For one thing, “y’all” is characteristic of AAVE.
Maroon, my apologies. I lived in the South as a kid and associate y’all with rural white people. For your comfort, I can use “Vanilla ISIS” instead.
They’re an above ground movement inciting civil war. Gotcha.
I’m sure these fine citizens would be the first to welcome identically outfitted and equipped Black protesters to similarly excersize their First and Second Ammendment rights, ammirite? Didn’t the NRA get money from Russia?
Maybe if the ACLU were to just repeatedly tweet
BLACK LIVES MATTER!
BLACK LIVES MATTER!
BLACK LIVES MATTER!
BLACK LIVES MATTER!
BLACK LIVES MATTER!
BLACK LIVES MATTER!
BLACK LIVES MATTER!
then everything would be fine. This strategy is working so well with their trans rights campaign…
The Second Amendment was never intended to be used to nullify the First, or any other of the Amendments. The gun-happy, ignorant yahoos out there don’t get that. The climate that Donnie Dipshit has created, along with social media hate and how many morons we have in this country, could cause a lot of death and destruction if it stays on this path. When a disaster like Covid should be uniting us all, like many disasters have done in the past in this country, the climate of hate is heading us in the other direction. It’s a bad situation.
Papito,
I get that, but in general I object to making fun of people based on their dialect, and in particular (speaking as someone who grew up in a “you guys” area but has been living in “y’all” country for about 25 years) making fun of “y’all”, which I find an excellent response to the lacuna in the lexicon of English that was created by the demise of “thou”.
Don’t change based on my sensibilities, though; change (or don’t) based on your own judgment.
What a Maroon, I can understand your distaste, but as someone who grew up in “y’all” country, and absolutely hate the sound of the southern accent because I associate it with pain inflicted on me by all the people that adopted said accent, I can’t hear y’all without cringing in fear.
We are all a product of our environments, no?
To be pedantic for a second, we would still have the lacuna even if “thou” had survived, just as French, German, Italian etc do. Why? Because “you” and its equivalents (vous, zie, etc) are BOTH plural AND formal. Thou, tu, du etc are both singular and intimate/informal/place-putting.
iknklast,
Of course, that kind of reaction is visceral and understandable, and, well, in response, I can’t find a way to make my point without sounding dismissive or condescending, but anyway we all do it to some degree, but that doesn’t mean we’re always right. (I mean, not everyone with a Boston accent is a lovable scamp, even though it always makes me think of kids like Jimmy Finnerty when I hear one.)
Ophelia,
Yeah, but that’s a different lacuna. More formal forms of English have no way of distinguishing plural/singular or formal/informal. Spanish does it better, though the details differ depending on the form of Spanish. In Spain, tú is singular/informal, Usted singular/formal (and not terribly common), vosotros/as is plural/informal, and Ustedes is plural/formal (and practically never used). When I learned Spanish in high school, they always included the vosotros form in the verbal paradigms*, but they told us those were optional. So of course I didn’t bother to learn them. Then I got to Spain and vosotros was all around; I still have to think consciously about those endings. (Interestingly, the vosotros forms seem to have been used as the formal singular up to a few centuries ago, if the movies and shows I’ve seen are accurate.)
Papito, this is the real reason you don’t use “Y’all Qaeda”; you’ll never stop me once I get started.
*But never vos.
Maroon, thou art nuts if thou thinkst “ustedes” be practically never used.
In the greater part of the Americas (i.e. most of the Spanish-speaking world) ustedes is the only second person plural ever used. To most people, “vosotros” sounds archaic and wicked twee, like three musketeers or something. We see it in Spanish dramas and that’s it. Meanwhile, “usted” is a word you use with basically everybody who isn’t already a friend of yours, except kids. But I didn’t learn Spanish in high school, so maybe that’s different.
Yeah, it’s very different in Spain, all like “vos estais” and “th” and “me cago en la hostia” and a tortilla is all full of potatoes and all that. Los spaniards te digo son funny.
But “Ustedes Qaeda” doesn’t have that ring to it, so I’m going with (ice ice baby) Vanilla Isis. Because that makes me want to doggerel up a whole song.
Though I’m with iknklast, I didn’t do so well in the South, so I’m okay with throwing back whenever I can, complain though ye may, gents. “Y’all” sounds muy burro to me.
Papito,
I was talking specifically about Spain, because that’s the Spanish I speak. I know it’s different in other parts of the Spanish speaking world.