Came to express solidarity, ended up feeling like “spectators”.
Student activists from the University of Pennsylvania had high hopes when they rented a van for a 16-hour trip to St. Louis to participate in the widely hyped “Weekend of Resistance”—what they believed would be the beginning of their generation’s civil rights revolution. They expected to find protestors harassed by militarized police, gunshots fired at more innocent victims, in short, the civil rights crisis promised by the major news networks. But, as MSNBC reports, the student activists were sorely disappointed with the reality of the scene:
… it was nothing like the war zone they had seen splashed on their television screens exactly two months earlier.
Instead of armored vehicles blocking suburban intersections and stoking chaos in the streets, police squad cars were escorting peaceful marches that were careful organized and tailored during the day. Instead of training assault rifles on the faces of protesters, officers were standing idly by, at times even joking around with anyone within earshot.
The four-day “Weekend of Resistance” had been pushed by national groups for weeks. The civil rights organizations behind it set up a website, got the word out on social media, planned rallies and marches, and even arranged rides for people traveling in. But instead of the thousands who were supposed to show up last week, only a few hundred came. And many who did ended up feeling like outsiders looking in.
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