Tim Stevens on Pittsburgh protest instigators

The Washington Post’s “In some protests, local officials say white instigators are causing mayhem”

Isaac Stanley-Becker  6/2/2020

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“Don’t spray stuff on here when they’re going to blame black people for this,” a black woman admonished two vandals outside of a Starbucks in Los Angeles.

In East Liberty, a gentrifying neighborhood of Pittsburgh, a young black protester delivered a case of bottled water to a phalanx of police officers standing guard at a demonstration on Sunday outside of a Target store.

With all this stuff going on, I just wanted to spread the positivity,” said Alexander Cash, 23, who lost his job at a nearby Residence Inn because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. “It doesn’t matter if it’s one or 45 cops standing there. I can walk up to them and still be peaceful.”

That sort of caution was being undermined by intentionally destabilizing acts, warned Tim Stevens, a longtime civil rights activist in Pittsburgh.

“People who do not have the social justice commitment at heart, people who really don’t care about George Floyd — they care only about an opportunity to cause disruption — how many of those people were in Pittsburgh over the weekend?” he asked. “How many were out across America?”

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Read the full article here on the Washington Post.