Hundreds of chanting protestors returned to the home of a wealthy St. Louis couple, threatening, “If we don’t get no justice, then they don’t get no peace.”
It’s a little wordy and the grammar is off, but chanters gotta chant.
Here’s a clip:
Protesters march past the Portland Place neighborhood in the Central West End. #protests2020 #CWE #marchtothemayorshouse #proteststl #BlackLivesMatter #portlandplace #McCloskeys pic.twitter.com/qkkrVEfb1E
— Jennifer Sarti (@JenniferSarti10) July 4, 2020
The St. Louis couple — Mark and Patricia McCloskey — are successful defense attorneys living in Central West End’s posh Portland Place neighborhood. They originally gained notoriety last week after brandishing firearms at rioters who literally gate-crashed their gated community.
Protestors (if that’s the right word) returned to the scene of the break-in, or nearly so, on Friday evening.
Only this time, instead of violently breaking into a private residential street, protestors marched along Kingshighway, a major north-south thoroughfare (but not actually a highway) passing right by the St. Louis couple’s mansion.
“Chanting protesters on Friday stopped at the gate just outside the McCloskeys’ home for about 15 minutes,” according to the Associated Press.
The AP also reported that “one protester briefly straddled an iron gate as if he was going to jump over, but did not.”
That particular protestor may have had good cause to reconsider a second break-in.
This time, instead of being greeted by a frightened couple, protestors saw a home guarded by private security, “as around a dozen ‘men in plain clothes’ were seen surrounding the property,” according to a Summit News report.
VIDEO: Anti-Cop Protesters Crash Gates and St. Louis Couple Goes to Guns
I used to live maybe a whole mile from where this happened, on Lindell Boulevard a bit east of Kingshighway, and have nothing but fond memories of the area. I remember it as an eclectic, almost-entirely peaceful mix of rich and middle class and poor, of black and white, and of gay and straight. But that was 30 years ago.
Peace was not on protestors’ minds on Friday. Let’s go back to that AP report:
The racially diverse crowd on Friday carried signs reading “Black Lives Matter,” “Defund the Police” and “No Justice, No Peace,” and chanted slogans including, “when Black lives are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back,” and “this is what democracy looks like.”
“Racially diverse” probably means “mostly white,” as the video seems to show. In other words, black Americans with real concerns about police violence are still having their movement hijacked by white progressives.
As for the St. Louis couple, defense attorneys who do a lot of pro bono work seem like a strange object for the mob’s obsession. Unless, of course, the mob just hates rich, white Americans — which would seem to be the case here.
But what should really set you off isn’t that the crowd was trying to make life miserable for a St. Louis couple who had done nothing to offend them, aside from existing and having had the temerity to defend their own property.
It’s the chant, “this is what democracy looks like.”
I guess that’s true since the mob is the purest form of democracy: A temporary and unhindered majority imposing its will on a helpless minority.
But this country is a constitutional republic with a few, necessary democratic trappings. As such, the rights of the minority — the individual being the smallest minority — receive constitutional protections of their rights.
Starting with the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The right of the people is to peaceably assemble, not to bring street “justice” to a family neighborhood. The right of the people is to petition the government to redress their grievances, not to make demands on a private couple.
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