Month: June 2020

It’s fashionable to be cynical about things like this, but I think these images are meaningful. Trump and the Republicans have been tearing the nation apart. And yes, all those people bear some responsibility for where we are right no. But in this moment of passionate social unrest, most people are pulling together. Maybe I’m just a squish but I welcome that.

Will any of that result in true reform? I don’t know. I hope so. But symbolism matters and I’d much rather have these Democrats taking a knee and Mitt Romney marching with protesters and conservative military leaders speaking out against Trump than the other way around. At some point, we have to get to the point where we can all live in this country together and work out our differences without this level of polarization.

I have built my (latest) career around social media and I live in it. It’s a huge part of my life and I value it tremendously. But it is also a vehicle for the kind of mob action that shows “Lord of the Flies” was much too kind about that side of human nature.

This is a terrible story:

By the standards of the pandemic, Thursday had been a normal day for Peter Weinberg. A 49-year-old finance marketing executive, he worked from his home in Bethesda, Maryland, right outside of the District of Columbia, staying busy with Zoom meetings and the new rituals of our socially isolated world.

Then, around 10 p.m., he received an irate message on LinkedIn from someone he didn’t know. He brushed it off, thinking it was probably just spam. Then he got another. And another. The third message was particular strange, as it mentioned something about the cops coming to find him. Perplexed, he watched as the messages continued to pile up. They were all so similar: angry, threatening, accusatory. His profile views suddenly soared into the thousands.

He began to panic. He decided to check Twitter. Although he’d had an account for more than a decade, Weinberg didn’t use the social platform very much. He mostly followed mainstream news outlets, politicians from across the ideological spectrum, entrepreneurs, and financial analysts. He had what you might call “low engagement.” But not anymore.

In his mentions, disaster was rapidly unfolding. People accused him of assaulting a child. Of being a racist. They shared a selfie he’d taken in sunglasses and his bike helmet and analyzed it alongside blurry images of another man in sunglasses and a bike helmet.

The other guy had been captured on video hitting children and ramming his bike into an adult after becoming enraged that they were posting fliers around the Capital Crescent Trail in support of George Floyd, the unarmed black man killed by white police officers in Minneapolis on Memorial Day.

Weinberg hadn’t seen the viral story about the trail where he regularly biked. He didn’t know that, for several days, the video had circulated online as law enforcement crowdsourced help in locating the suspect. Now that he had seen it, he didn’t think he looked anything like this guy. And he didn’t understand why anyone thought he was him.

“You assaulted a little girl and other innocents because of your political beliefs,” one Twitter user messaged him. “Hey so are you the piece of shit who assaulted a child in Maryland today on the bicycle trail?” asked another. “Hey you racist bitch….we’re coming for you.” “You deserve to pay.” “Ur going down u disgusting piece of shit.” “Nice job assaulting a small child today. You need to be fired from your job immediately.” “YOU UGLY RACIST BITCH.”

As he attempted to piece together what was happening, Weinberg called the number for a detective provided by the Maryland-National Capital Park Police. “We are seeking the public’s assistance in identifying the below individual in reference to an assault that took place this morning on the Capital Crescent trail. Please contact Det. Lopez with any information,” read a tweet sent June 2 from the department and shared more than 55,000 times.

But the Park Police had made an error. “Correction, the incident occurred yesterday morning, 6/1/2020,” they wrote in a follow up tweet. As with most such clarifications, it had only a fraction of the reach: a mere 2,000 shares.

It was based on that initial, false information that Weinberg had become a suspect for the internet mob. To his surprise, the app that he used to record his regular rides from Bethesda into Georgetown via the Capital Crescent Trail shared that information publicly, not just with his network of friends and followers. Someone had located a record of his ride on the path on June 2, matched it to the location of the assault from the video, matched his profile picture — white guy, aviator-style sunglasses, helmet obscuring much of his head — to the man in the video, and shared the hunch publicly.

It took off. Weinberg didn’t know what “doxing” meant, but it was happening to him: Someone posted his address. Detective Lopez didn’t answer his call, but soon someone with the police department contacted Weinberg to let him know that officers would be patrolling the area around his home because he might be in danger.

Detective Lopez reached him around 11 p.m. and they agreed to meet the next morning. At 11:47, Weinberg tweeted, “I recently learned I have been misidentified in connection with a deeply disturbing attack. Please know this was not me. I have been in touch with the authorities and will continue to help any way possible.”

His fiancée in New York, he spent the night alone, refreshing Twitter, watching helplessly as people tried to destroy his life. And Weinberg wasn’t even the only one: Another man, a former Maryland cop, was wrongly accused, too. The tweet accusing him was retweeted and liked more than half a million times.

At 7 a.m., Weinberg brought his bicycle and his helmet with him to the police station. Detective Lopez told him he was free to go and the department would issue a report excluding him as a suspect.

On Twitter, Maryland attorney general Brian Frosh sent Weinberg a message. “I am sorry for what you are going through. Police have a suspect. Can I post something that would help?” Hours before Weinberg was falsely accused, Frosh had asked all of Twitter for help finding the man in the video. “If anyone can identify this man, please let me know,” he said, and nearly 50,000 people retweeted him.

“I could use any help you can give. Can we speak quickly?” Weinberg said.

On the phone, Frosh — who did not return a request for comment from Intelligencer— was empathetic. He acknowledged that he had, in some way, contributed to Weinberg’s circumstances. He sent a tweet confirming that there was a suspect and “it is not Mr. Weinberg.” (228 retweets.)

On Friday, police arrested Anthony Brennan III, a 60-year-old from Kensington, Maryland, and charged him with three counts of second-degree assault.

Weinberg told a reporter he was “dizzy” after what he went through.

“You may hear more from me in time as I reflect on this experience,” he tweeted. “For now I will say this. We must align in the fight for justice and equality — but not at the cost of due process and the right to privacy and safety.”

As for the woman who shared his home address: She deleted it and posted an apology, writing that in all of her eagerness to see justice served, she was swept up in the mob that so gleefully shared misinformation, depriving someone of their own right to justice. Her correction was shared by fewer than a dozen people.

This isn’t the end of the world. This guy still has his job and nothing actually terrible happened to him. But honestly, this type of “crowd-sourcing” is wrong and the cops should have known better. I’m sure people meant well but it’s wrong.

At some point we’re going to have to deal with the dark side of social media. And I have no idea how to do that. I’m not sure anyone does.

I’m sure Trump thinks this fellow is a very fine person just trying to protect his “heritage.”

Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor said Monday that the Hanover County man arrested Sunday for driving his truck into a crowd of protesters “is an admitted leader of the Ku Klux Klan and a propagandist for Confederate ideology.”

Harry H. Rogers, 36, has been charged with attempted malicious wounding, felony vandalism, and assault and battery. He is being held without bond.

In her statement, Taylor said Rogers was driving recklessly down Lakeside Avenue in the median on Sunday, drove up to protesters, revved his engine and drove through the crowd. One person was evaluated for injuries.

“While I am grateful that the victim’s injuries do not appear to be serious, an attack on peaceful protesters is heinous and despicable and we will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law,” Taylor said.

She added: “The accused, by his own admission and by a cursory glance at social media, is an admitted leader of the Ku Klux Klan and a propagandist for Confederate ideology.”

Taylor said her office is investigating whether hate crime charges “are appropriate.”

Rogers’ girlfriend, who declined to give her name because she has received death threats, said Rogers had gone to the A.P. Hill statue after hearing about protests there. She said he has been concerned about damage or removal of the statues, and wanted to “observe” the protests and call police if anyone defaced the monument.

“He did not go there with violent tendencies,” she said in an interview at the home she shares with Rogers. They have been dating for a year.

She says her boyfriend told her that a protester reached into the truck and hit her 14 year old son so the poor KKK Grand KliegleDragon (or whatever he calls himself) was just trying to get away when he rammed his car into the crowd.

Since she is the girlfriend of the local leader of the KKK, I’m thinking she might not be a person of good character and her credibility is somewhat lacking.

Here’s another very fine person:

Authorities say a man drove a car at George Floyd protesters in Seattle Sunday night, hit a barricade then exited the vehicle brandishing a pistol.

At least one person was injured.

The Seattle Fire Department said the victim was a 27-year-old male who was shot and taken to a hospital in stable condition.

I’m not sure if he was just protecing his “heritage” as well, but let’s just say it wouldn’t surprise me.

As protesters gather daily near the White House and the coronavirus pandemic rages on, the American public is souring on President Donald Trump.

A new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS finds Trump’s approval rating down 7 points in the last month as the President falls further behind presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, whose support now stands at its highest level in CNN polling.

The survey also finds a growing majority of Americans feel racism is a big problem in the country today and that the criminal justice system in America favors whites over blacks.

More than 8 in 10 also say that the peaceful protests that have spread throughout the nation following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers are justified.

Americans now consider race relations as important a campaign issue as the economy and health care, according to the survey.

View Trump and Biden head-to-head polling

Overall 38% approve of the way Trump is handling the presidency, while 57% disapprove. That’s his worst approval rating since January 2019, and roughly on par with approval ratings for Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush at this point in their reelection years.

Both went on to lose the presidency after one term.In the race for the White House, among registered voters, Trump stands 14 points behind Biden, who officially secured enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination in CNN’s delegate estimate on Saturday.

The 41% who say they back the President is the lowest in CNN’s tracking on this question back to April 2019, and Biden’s 55% support is his highest mark yet.

Remember: even Herbert Hoover won 38.8% in the depth of the Great Depression.

Update:

For all the recent 2020 focus on young voters, seniors and African-American turnout, don’t forget about the gender gap.

Because our new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that this gap is more like a canyon — and it could very well be President Trump’s biggest disadvantage in November.

Overall, our poll shows Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden leading Trump by 7 points among registered voters, 49 percent to 42 percent, which is unchanged from April.

But looking inside of these numbers, Biden is ahead of Trump by 21 points (!!!) among women, 56 percent to 35 percent. That’s compared with Hillary Clinton’s 13-point advantage with women, per the 2016 exit poll.

And Trump is up among men by 8 points, 50 percent to 42 percent — it was 11 points in the 2016 exit poll.

What’s more, Biden holds a 25-point lead among women with college degrees, while Trump is ahead by just 5 points among women without college degrees.

Bottom line: If Trump is really losing all female voters by anywhere close to 20 points, it’s going to be hard for him to win the 2020 presidential election, especially if he maintains his ’16 support among men.

As our colleague Dante Chinni reminds us, women make up a larger portion of the electorate (53 percent in ’16) than men do (47 percent).

Just saying …

Despite Trump’s crowing, the economy’s not improving and the death toll is still rising. None of this is over soon

Last Friday, Donald Trump woke up to the first good news he’s had in weeks. The job numbers for May were better than expected. Forecasters had been predicting that the unemployment rate would hit the 20% mark but instead it dropped slightly, to a still catastrophic 13.3% from 14.7 the month before. There is some controversy about whether or not the numbers for both months are actually higher than that, but any way you slice it May was better than April and that’s certainly preferable to the other way around.

Why the predictions would had May being worse than April is a mystery to me, frankly. States around the country were starting to open up in the middle of the month and plenty of people were being hired back at small businesses that had temporarily closed down, as each state and locality permitted. As we’ve all seen in the news, in some places hair salons, barbers and tattoo parlors are now up and running.

In any case, Trump strutted and crowed as if the country had completely recovered and he was personally responsible:

Greatest Top Five Monthly Jobs Gains in HISTORY. We are #1! pic.twitter.com/Cs8NEFbHG0

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2020

I haven’t heard reports that he signed that graph and sent it around to his friends, as he did with the stock ticker for a single day’s rally — right after a 20% decline that was the fastest in history — but I wouldn’t be surprised. Yes, the jobs gain in the month of May was historic. So were the job losses in April.

Only Donald Trump would have the chutzpah to brag about a 13.3% unemployment rate. By Sunday night he was tweeting this:

I built the greatest economy in the World, the best the U.S. has ever had. I am doing it again!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 7, 2020

His greatest economy wasn’t that great. And his promise to “do it again” will very likely come true. The economy will naturally begin to improve from the depth of the national lockdowns for the COVID-19 pandemic this spring. But since he so badly botched the pandemic response and failed to contain or properly mitigate the effects of the virus, the comeback will probably be tepid. Polling released this weekend by NBC and the Wall Street Journal contains some bad news on that front:

Two-thirds of American voters say they would not feel comfortable flying on a plane or attending a large gathering due to continued worry about the spread of the coronavirus, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds. Half of all voters are also uneasy about dining at restaurants, and half of parents say they are uncomfortable sending their children back to school or daycare in August.

The survey, which was conducted as many states eased some restrictions on businesses designed to blunt the virus’s spread, found that 66 percent of Americans say they are uncomfortable attending a public gathering or an event with a large group, with 43 percent saying they are “very” uncomfortable. Just 17 percent say they would be “very comfortable” at a large event.

This finding may seem odd considering that we’ve seen massive daily gatherings in the streets of America over the past week, but it really isn’t.

The Black Lives Matter protests are huge and have spread to virtually every part of the country — but are largely composed of young people, with relatively few people over 40. That’s actually unusual. Big demonstrations are naturally driven by younger activists, but there is often a large contingent of middle-aged or older adults. Despite the generational divide on politics, at least 40% of older voters are liberal, and anyone who attends protests is familiar that some folks from the 1960s are still willing to show up.

But under current circumstances, it’s understandable that older people would mostly stay away. Of course younger people can contract or transmit the coronavirus but in most cases are unlikely to become gravely ill. The death rate for people under 35 is extremely low. So they see the risk as worth it and, needless to say, the matter of police violence is an urgent public health and social justice matter of a different sort. They are taking the risk because they are looking at the long arc of their own future.

Most protesters appear to be as careful as one can be in this unusual situation. It’s a different calculation for older people. Many of them are sympathetic to the cause. That same poll from NBC News and the Journal shows that voters, by a ratio of more than two to one, say they’re more worried about the death of George Floyd and police violence than they are about the protests. (Only 27% of the country clearly support Trump and his “Law and Order” approach.) In other words, there are plenty of older people and those in high-risk groups who might otherwise march in solidarity, but they can see that the cause is extremely well represented among the young and healthy and feel confident that the point is being made, even if they continue to observe public health guidelines that will keep them out of the hospital.

Make no mistake, however — this is still a perilous situation. Dr. Anthony Fauci and other epidemiologists are highly concerned about the protests spreading the virus, particularly among vulnerable populations of people of color who are already hit hard by the pandemic. Combined with businesses opening up all over the country, this means that the 60% of people who already feel uncomfortable going out are likely to stay that. Which means in turn that the economy will remain in a precarious state for the foreseeable future.

The economic recovery won’t happen on any large scale as long as so many people don’t feel confident they can safely travel, shop, dine out, go to the movies or otherwise partake in society anywhere close to the way they did before the pandemic. As long as fully half the population is staying home, this economic crisis will continue.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that levels of social unrest will is reflect that reality before too long. Special federal unemployment benefits enacted earlier in the pandemic are set to run out in July and Republicans are already balking at extending them. There is little chance they’ll do it now that the White House has decided that 13% unemployment is a tremendous success.

Why wouldn’t Trump want to keep the federal government spending money in an effort to boost his prospects for re-election? It appears he and his Republican accomplices are once again living in denial and relying on magical thinking. That’s likely to be just as successful as his delusions about miracle cures have been with the pandemic.

Just a month ago, Trump — who had already revised his estimation of the pandemic’s death toll multiple times — said he believed it could reach 100,000 when all was said and done. We have now surpassed 112,000 deaths, with the end nowhere in sight. It’s safe to say that Trump’s rosy economic estimates are almost certain to be just as accurate.

“I’m at the community meeting at Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis, where City Council members just unveiled a mission statement for reimagining policing,” Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar tweeted Sunday night.

Two weeks after George Floyd’s death in police hands sparked worldwide protests, nine members of the Minneapolis City Council announced they would disband the existing force and reconstitute it aligned along a community-based, public safety model. A white police officer pressed his knee onto the 46-year-old black man’s neck for nearly nine minutes, killing him.

I’m at the community meeting at Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis, where City Council members just unveiled a mission statement for reimagining policing. ✊🏽 pic.twitter.com/MhVlOpajpU

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) June 7, 2020

The Guardian reports:

“In Minneapolis and in cities across the US, it is clear that our system of policing is not keeping our communities safe,” said Lisa Bender, the Minneapolis city council president, at the event. “Our efforts at incremental reform have failed, period. Our commitment is to do what’s necessary to keep every single member of our community safe and to tell the truth: that the Minneapolis police are not doing that. Our commitment is to end policing as we know it and to recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe.”

The veto-proof council majority provided no timeline. Any drastic change to the department might have to go to a public vote to change the city charter which “would require a public vote or full approval of the entire city council along with the mayor.” Mayor Jacob Frey opposes the move and was booed at a Saturday protest for refusing to commit to defunding the MPD.

“We are going to dramatically rethink how we approach public safety and emergency response,” Ward 5 City Council Member, Jeremiah Ellison, tweeted Thursday. Sunday afternoon, the body began the process.

“Reimagining policing” is less sticky than the “defund the police” message advanced by many street protesters, but has the advantage of not sounding like a call for anarchy. Standing on a stage bearing a “defund” banner, the council instead made clear they believe it is time to rebuild the local force from the ground up. A growing online database of videos of police violence supports that.

The “warrior cop” ethos, backed by surplus military equipment, has not turned the U.S. into a police state yet. But images from the last week and a half of protests across the country demonstrate how far down that road we have gone.

Any notion that we can control human behavior with a simplistic carrots-and-sticks approach is weighted heavily towards sticks when rules are set by people seemingly reared with a “spare the rod” ethos. “Sweeter carrots and sharper sticks” don’t always work as common sense suggests. Sometimes they work just the opposite.

Moneys that might make communities healthier are going to keeping unhealthy communities under control. People with substance abuse and mental health issues are being expensively housed in our prisons rather than provided more humane treatment outside the criminal justice system. Reliance on force-first policing instead leads to lopsided budgets like Baltimore’s.

Budgets like this reflect seveerly misplaced priorities. An ounce of prevention was once thought common sense as well.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.

I guess you take comfort where you can:

Under siege for his management of a deadly pandemic, a cratered U.S. economy, and mass protests across the country, top advisers to President Donald Trump are finding solace in one question: How the hell is he not even more unpopular?

Though poll after poll shows the president in a historically bad position for an incumbent in an election year, inside the White House and on the campaign a feeling of relief has begun setting in that it’s not worse. As they see it, any one of the events of the past few months would have tanked a prior president’s standing. They endured a global pandemic, a historic rise in unemployment, and a sweeping revolt against the criminal justice system in quick succession. And, through it all, many of them feel bruised but politically intact. 

“Obviously you would prefer to see Trump winning big in every swing state right now but if you put things into context and consider that we have 40 million Americans unemployed, a deadly virus, and race riots [and] protests unfolding currently, and he’s still within the margin of error in every battleground state, it’s tough to feel like the sky is falling,” said a source close to the White House. “It’s hard to imagine the environment getting tougher for him than it is today, so if I were the Biden campaign, especially as the economy improves, I would be very concerned that the president is still clearly in the game.”

“Our guy screws up everything he touches and is clearly the worst president in American history, and yet he still has a shot! Is this a great country or what?”

Keep in mind that all the other world leaders (except Bolsonaro and Putin) have seen their approval numbers go up as they faced the pandemic and economic crises. And if Trump were an even halfway decent president he could have made some strides during this latest social unrest. But he did the opposite of what any smart president would do in these situations.

The silver lining is that it didn’t hurt him with the cult either, at least not substantially. He literally can do no wrong as far as they are concerned.

James Bennet, the editorial editor of the Times “resigned” today. He had a remarkably bizarre and sloppy career.

For example, in 2019 Bennet published an op-ed from Senator Tom Cotton proposing the US buy Greenland (not a link to the op-ed, you think I’d link to anything Cotton wrote?). To call this a cockamamie scheme is to dignify it and the fool who wrote it. Bennet had no business publishing such crap.

And just recently, Bennet published another piece of nonsense from Cotton. But this time, it was highly dangerous nonsense because Cotton proposed using American troops against peaceful people protesting George Floyd’s death.

And the kicker?

Despite Bennet knowing full well that Cotton was a delusional idiot, despite knowing this was the hottest button subject in the news at the time, Bennet didn’t even bother to read the op-ed, let alone get it properly fact-checked. There was a revolt at the Times over it:

As of Thursday evening, over 800 staff members had signed a letter protesting its publication, addressed to high-ranking editors in the opinion and news divisions, as well as New York Times Company executives. 

Let me be clear. The Times has great reporters (some of whom are my friends, full disclosure) and has broken more important stories than almost any paper. But across far-too-many departments at the paper, when the subject is American politics, they have a propensity to screw up badly. They fall over and over again for right wing cons and scams. And this has caused incalculable harm.

MARGARET BRENNAN: The methods they used you think were appropriate, is that what you're saying?

BARR: When they met resistance, yes. They announced three times. They didn't move.https://t.co/JALyBSw09X pic.twitter.com/qWPtq0pU3g

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) June 7, 2020

This fatuous gasbag thinks he can get away with this “you can believe me or you can believe your lying eyes” nonsense? I guess so. After all, he got away with his slippery answer to Kamala Harris when she asked him if anyone in the White House had told him to investigate Trump’s political enemies.

He didn’t stop there:

"Pepper spray is not a chemical irritant. It's not chemical" — AG Barr uses painstaking distinctions to defend the use of force against protesters near the White House last Monday pic.twitter.com/CQbtqLwfIk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 7, 2020

Fergawdsakes..

NEWS: AG Bill Barr tells @margbrennan “you don’t need to reduce immunity… to go after the bad cops” because it would result “in police pulling back.” https://t.co/AjYu0KVsDK pic.twitter.com/uJsSUjYQGW

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) June 7, 2020

This is Barr pushing “The Ferguson Effect” the idea that cops will not do their jobs if they are forced to be accountable for not doing their jobs.

This is an old right wing trope. They used it back when we were trying to get the CIA tp stop torturing people. “They won’ protect America if they have to stop torturing people” apparently because their feelingswould be hurt or something.

Barr is really invested in this narrative and it’s resulted in him failing to do anything on a federal level to stop police abuse and, in fact, encourage it. He’s a menace .

The following is almost certainly another one of his deliberately shady comments. He was on the record back in 1992 wanting Bush to send in troops to the LA Riots although he was happy to round up a bunch of desk jockeys and prison guards from various departments and send them out in to the streets.

NEWS: AG Bill Barr tells @margbrennan the Insurrection Act – to send active duty troops into U.S. cities – should only be used “as a last resort,” and that @EsperDoD said in an Oval Office meeting Monday that he “didn’t think it was necessary.” pic.twitter.com/glG046D5u9

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) June 7, 2020

“I think there's racism in the United States,” AG Bill Barr tells @margbrennan.

“But I don't think that the law enforcement system is systemically racist. https://t.co/dq311AV3bv pic.twitter.com/H2W54re4tt

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) June 7, 2020

AG Bill Barr says while there are "instances" of bad cops, the country needs to be "careful" that assuming an entire "organization is rotten" pic.twitter.com/JP1GnMorJY

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) June 7, 2020

On @FaceTheNation–@margbrennan: There were chemical irritants the park police has said–
BARR: No, there were not chemical irritants. Pepper spray is not a chemical irritant. It's not chemical.
MB: Pepper spray, you’re saying is what was used–
BARR: Pepper balls. Pepper balls.

— Clare Hymes (@ClareHymes22) June 7, 2020

I like this. They interviewed one of the organizers who said they wanted to organize a protest in which people at more risk for COVID could participate.

The protest ride is being led by the Compton Cowboys an African American equestrian group in LA. This is so cool:

compton cowboys riding through the streets of compton today. they’ve organized a city wide ride with black cowboys and cowgirls from all over Southern California. pic.twitter.com/8djIQuP3dL

— walter (@WTHDZ) June 7, 2020

100 deep. 400 more expected. pic.twitter.com/fqzQnMNwOd

— walter (@WTHDZ) June 7, 2020

Aerial view shows thousands of people marching in a "peace ride" hosted by the Compton Cowboys in Los Angeles, California, as demonstrations have erupted worldwide since the death of George Floyd in police custody. https://t.co/imgxyjBVtJ pic.twitter.com/ddUSSp7XPB

— ABC News (@ABC) June 7, 2020

You just have to love the creativity, solidarity and diversity.