So Much for Green

We're under "yellow" here in Pittsburgh right now.  This coming week we are scheduled to go to "green."  Interestingly "green" doesn't mean "normal" which, to me at least, seems like poor planning.  So the day started off pretty optimistic.  I even took Gib5on to the comic book store.

Tonight I got this:

There were protests downtown today.  Based on Facebook it seemed like things started around lunchtime and continued through the afternoon.  After a couple of hours something in the tone changed and things got a little out of control.  A police car was burned and several businesses were broken into and looted.

The Mayor declared a curfew for tonight and tomorrow night.  As the parent of young children during a pandemic lock-down - even under yellow - the curfew makes almost no difference in our house.  We'll be staying in for the night the same way we would have been staying in for the night anyway.

The crowd this afternoon was pretty big.  They shut down several main streets downtown and wound up closing or causing the closure of several of the bridges necessary to access downtown.  Watching on TV the escalation in Pittsburgh isn't in the same class as what we see on TV from LA or Chicago or Minneapolis.  Still, it was a whole lot of people.  I imagine we'll see the same thing tomorrow.

My Facebook, and a little less my Twitter are blowing up with people posting photos from protests and articles about law enforcement and protest.  Most of what I read are people expressing frustration at the peaceful demonstrations being derailed by some small segment of protesters bent on causing problems.  There is a lot of speculation that there are "instigators" who are not protestors at all but rather people just there trying to provoke an escalation.

Here in Pittsburgh the car that was set aflame is being reported to be the work of a quartet of black clad young white people.  The Police Chief is calling them Anarchists.  Normally I would attribute that kind of accusation as being from someone with a right leaning bent that wanted to shift blame from radical right leaning agitators.  There are certainly charges being levels on social media saying that the rabble rousers are in fact ultra right activists or even police.  There is though a small amount of traffic in my feeds that suggests at least that both might be true.  Some people significantly left of center are speaking out suggesting that the escalations are a good thing and that the more the violence spreads the more positive effect there will be.  I haven't really seen that before.  I think that perhaps we could do well enough with the peaceful protests.  Apparently there isn't universal agreement on that point.

Around the time the curfew began we were hearing a lot of sirens outside.  I imagine the PPD was having to pull officers from multiple zones to try to clear the Downtown and Lower Hill area.  It has been quiet since.  The 10:00 and 11:00 news reports didn't show much activity.  That unfortunately is not what I am seeing on national news in other cities.  Here's hoping the night passes uneventfully.  Wherever you are: stay safe.