Free Arturo

I understand the need to not give the jackboots an excuse, but WTF is this HOA nonsense at a protest?

They're doing it everywhere. So they can get pictures of everyone's face for their Palantir gestapo database
- Yeah, given the moment in the US, wearing a mask is just the prudent thing to do. The government's own agents are doing it.
- I dont actually think thats the reason. I think its a, misguided, attempt to be able to say "look, its a peaceful protest!"

There's not much that's more fascist than cops killing people and then prosecuting the surviving victims. Totally normal in USA.

Zero surprise that normies eat it up. We're indoctrinated into copaganda our while lives.

cops didn't fire the shots, volunteers did
- Not police, just peace police. ACAB.

This explains the convulated reporting I suppose

Yeah send Venmo money to this random QR code! Clowns.

Edit: reports say he was seen move away from the crowd, hid behind a low wall where he removed his rifle from his backpack, and "assumed a firing position" and moved back towards the crowd. No amount of Open Carry allows you to raise that rifle into a ready to shoot position without repercussions.

That smells like a "he's coming right for us" bullshit report.
- So how do you explain away the whole showing up with your rifle hidden in a backpack, and then hiding to take it out. Open carry all you want, why the fuck would you do that in the middle of a tense protest
Link to the reports? Any actual evidence or is it statement by the police?
- Police statements, which have now been utterly disproven by multiple angles of video footage coming out which show that Arturo was in full view of the protest the entire time and never raised his rifle.
  It also shows that peacekeepers never made any attempts to interact with him even once and as soon as Arturo began to rejoin the crowd after strapping up, one of them immediately fired on him, directly into the crowd and fatally hitting an innocent bystander.
  Thankfully, Arturo has been released and has not faced any charges. Hopefully it stays that way and the actual shooters face consequence.
Yeah send Venmo money to this random QR code!
Yeah actually, who does this actually get Venmo'ed to? The Mastodon post didn't really clarify that IMO.
Edit: so I haven't tried this myself, but according to Salt Lake County Corrections, you can donate online, but I'm not 100% sure we have enough information to do so. Also I imagine you'd have to give the State your personal info. Link is below for people who trust the cops more than the QR code. (Personally, my trust for the cops is negative so I trust the random QR code more.)
https://www.saltlakecounty.gov/sheriff/corrections/deposit/
The clip shows he's not in a ready to shoot position
- What clip, nothing in this post is a clip, nothing in the link is a clip its all images.
Nooooooo. It's a leftist DO NOT BRING FACTS AND LOGIC just support them blindly and "amplify the message" from somewhere you don't live or know jus because it aligns with your narrative.
Kinda crazy tbh. At least it's not Twitter I guess.
You clearly have not interacted with anarchists before

A single blurry still doesn't pose a convincing argument that he was or wasn't pointing the weapon towards the crowds.

I've not seen enough to conclude either way. So many contradicting things.

If you were wanting to assist with security, when someone obviously doing security addresses you then you'd try and comply, and explain your intent. But did the security actually address him? Or did he just run away from a gun pointed at him? Or did he have his gun pointed in the direction of the crowd while moving towards the crowd and ignoring security? Much of this doesn't make sense.

A single blurry still doesn't pose a convincing argument that he was or wasn't pointing the weapon towards the crowds.
We don't go around making plausible reasons and then asking the victim to prove them wrong. Maybe the killers are lying to cover their ass?
Facts on the ground is: Arturo didn't shoot anyone, had a right to carry, a bystander was killed by the "good guys" and Arturo was shot himself. Nothing in all of this proves that Arturo was a danger to anyone.
- "Innocent until proven guilty" mfs when the accused is a leftist
- Just because he didn't shoot anyone, doesn't mean his alleged actions wouldn't cause the same reaction or worse from any other reasonable person.
  Again, things aren't lining up with the two sides/stories.
Security was across the street and started shooting before he ever acknowledged them. They were far enough that it's conceivable he didn't hear them at all. He didn't run until they fired. This is all in the link they provided. It's a video, not a still.
If you want to know what actually happened, just listen to the cops and then believe the opposite.
- I like the spirit, but IMO we need more "on the ground" details to come to an actual conclusion. Cops suck but there are lots of ways to come up with "the opposite story".
  I'm working under "innocent until proven guilty" logic, but as of this posting I absolutely cannot make any positive conclusion about what happened other than the one second video clip posted in the comments.
The burden of proof is on the ones accusing and having people detained.
You don’t have to prove you didn’t do something. The state has to prove that you did do it. We should assume he is innocent in the absence of evidence.

wait, so somebody shot him and he's being charged with murder?

This is a normal thing in fascist USA. The cops murder people and then prosecute the surviving victims for it.
- Right. Those bullet thieves are usually guilty though.
Yes, because his actions made someone fearful for their lives, or the lives of bystanders. That's all you need in most states for it to be self defense on the part of the peacekeeper. The actions of this supposed anarchist created the conditions that got someone killed, so he was charged with their deaths.
Why is that strange? Do you not live in a place with laws?
- How does being shot make you the murderer and what law is that following

https://imgur.com/a/z3J25EB

Video of the incident that shows the "peacekeepers" and cops made up their story.

strategy of tension ass shit

Yeah maybe accepting libs as allies is a mistake.
- Yeah maybe accepting libs as allies is a mistake.
  Who coulda thunk it?

At the least, it's reasonable to expect someone who claims to be an "armed peacekeeper" to check their background before shooting. I don't know if that firearms sin is worth criminal charges or not, but it's bad practice.

Why is the name of the victim everywhere but the killer gets anonymity?

Id guess 50501 contracted with off duty cops.

I've kept quiet about this online so far, but my local 50501/no kings organizers are dangerously uninformed about organizing protests and haven't taken any of the experienced local organizer's advice about security at these events. They're literally primarily organized on a "liberal women's" Facebook group. At least in my area, experienced community organizers have been staying well clear of their mess. Let them gather all the white liberals from the suburbs to go kettle themselves on a pedestrian bridge and yell at cars passing them by. They'll learn why the experienced community defenders don't want anything to do with them after it's too late, but it's not like any of us are surprised by right wingers coopting and declawing a protest movement.

That's the signal I keep hearing as well

Glad I took the advice of my brown activist friends and didn't support 50501. They're a sketch organization from the start.

I'm remembering back to the story just a couple of days ago and I'm thinking about all the commenters who immediately accepted the story of the 'peacekeeper' guy - and the official line from the police - that Arturo was raising his weapon and heading towards the crowd, so the 'peacekeeper' shot "in defence of the crowd". Many commenters repeated the line he had been, "likely about to do a mass murder - it's very sad that a bystander died, but they just prevented a shooting spree". Anyone saying 'wtf why is the actual killer not arrested' and suggesting that we only had one side of the story (the killer's, who the cops were suspiciously immediately siding with) and that there is no proof beyond biased witness claims yet - was being downvoted.

Remember this shit next time you take the word of the police at face value when very few facts are available.

Unpopular opinion from someone who hasn't daily-carried a fully-automatic rifle since leaving the job that required it: if you have a gun, expect to be shot (at). I'm sorry about people being injured and a person's name being sullied in the process, but I stand by my comment. Untrained randos don't need to stomp around porting ARs. That's it; unleash the downvotes.

if you have a gun, expect to be shot (at)
Yeah so the Black Panthers deserved to be shot at because they open-carried to demonstrate their power? Bad take. Needs more information.
- Expect =/= deserve
  The black panthers open carried in part to expose the hypocrisy of a system that was already indiscriminantly violent towards black people
- Yeah so the Black Panthers deserved to be shot at because they open-carried to demonstrate their power?
  Yep.
  Bad take.
  Only if guns are your culture. For the rest of us, there is no safety in a war zone, cosplay or not.
Surprisingly, I agree with you. I think jackbooting around with an AR, lefty or not, is generally stupid.
I actually agree with you - I believe that you only pick up a gun when you have a pretty good idea what (or who) you'll be shooting at very soon.
But then again I did grow up in a fascist state - so that might have something to do with it.

Note to self: aim and fire your weapon after being shot.

DAMN. Yeah that story slipped past me. Thanks for the post.

The witnesses to the event were frightened for their lives and said he raised his gun. Even if he wasn't intending to do a mass shooting, which I am still unconvinced of, his actions were dangerously stupid and he absolutely should be held responsible for creating a situation in which another person felt they needed to use lethal force.

The witnesses to the event were frightened for their lives and said he raised his gun.
Do you know just how unreliable witness reports in traumatic situations are? We have no clue what actually happened.
- We have the video of him running towards the crowd with his gun in a ready position. Whether he’s a leftist or not, his actions were unbelievably stupid and put the lives of everyone around him in danger. Him being shot was totally reasonable, the only tragedy here is that an innocent person died.

Right, a famously conservative state and their police department are part of a liberal plot. Makes sense.

Liberal politicians, despite their bellyaching, always end up funding the police and standing up for them when push comes to shove.
I don't even think it's a "liberal plot". It's just shitty police work on top of the mistake of one trigger-happy peacekeeper. But it's absolutely ridiculous to think that Democratic and Republican parties are practically different when it comes to funding the police.
- Liberal politicians, despite their bellyaching, always end up funding the police and standing up for them when push comes to shove.
  That's irrelevant to the conversation, though. It would be a conservative DA pressing charges and deciding not to charge the peace keeper.
  Honestly I'm surprised they didn't let the guy who got shot go and throw the peacekeeper in prison right off the bat.
Libs are right wing. We literally got trump because the alternative was also fascist.
- Liberals and fascists are both right-wing, but liberals are not fascist.
- No, we got Trump cuz the armpit cracker bugged the election. Watch 53min in the "inauguration" speech where he braggs to say exactly that.
  Everything you think you know about politics is literally a 3rd world CIA trick. Who gonna be shooting themselves in the head with that remarkable Double Agent move like Gary Webb?
- K

Ok but if he was armed and this ICE guy took shots at him why didn't he fire back? That's the whole point of him having a gun in the first place, right?

Maybe he panicked? Maybe he didn't want to hit bystanders. None of us have been shot before, but from all I know, all rational thought easily goes out the window.
- It certainly stings a bit more than a light tickle, to be sure
It's really hard to act predictably when there's people pointing guns at each other.
Like really really difficult. You don't have any context for decisions, and everything feels kind of surreal. Anyone who says they know how they would act for sure is probably lying. Anyone who says they know for sure how someone else would act is probably talking shit.
Edit: and this isn't even factoring in panic. Which some people do. It's a whole thing. It's maybe why some people get weird and romantic and addicted about it; the kind of ambient possibility that opens up when things are on the knife's edge of violence. Like it cuts through all the scripts and bullshit.
It has its own scripts of course, if anyone competent is involved. But for someone who has never even considered going off script before, i can see how an unhealthy fascination could arise.
Maybe also why all the innovations in fighting come from queers.
- the kind of ambient possibility that opens up when things are on the knife’s edge of violence
  Well that perfectly sums up my idle thoughts for the ~20 months I spent on pumps between Iraq and Afghanistan.
  Maybe also why all the innovations in fighting come from queers.
  I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here.
What ice guy?
- I just assume every jackbooted thug in the states at the moment belongs to ICE

I don’t see any explanation of why he was trying to blend in with the crowd while injured and hiding his weapon in his backpack. Why didn’t he work with the protest group to get on their protection detail.

Please do not victim blame. People act strange when being shot at sometimes. He was within his rights to carry and not work with official organizations.
- He raised his firearm at the crowd and ran towards them when he was ordered to drop his weapon. He's not victim, he's an idiot at best, and a terrorist at worst.
Really?