It's so hard to turn away sometimes

July 22, 2020 - 5:46pm - by Alyson Shane

As far as news consumption goes I guess you could say I obsess a little bit, but I'm a wonky person who likes to be well-informed and finds politics and rhetoric interesting and important and so I listen to multiple podcasts, like

Up First
What a Day
The New York Times Daily
The NPR Politics Podcast
Pod Save America
Pod Save the World
America Dissected
FiveThirtyEight Politics

just to name a few

and every day I read articles from the New York Times, the CBC, The National Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Los Angeles Times

just to name a few

and as a Canadian who attended a Black Lives Matter protest that was 20,000 people strong and managed to go off peacefully and without a hitch being bombarded by media coverage of how badly things are going in America is

horrifying, to say the least

and this morning on NPR I heard about the 52-year old Navy vet named who showed up and was beaten by police for

literally just standing there
trying to talk to the officers

and that was scary and awful but then I came across a video of what happened on my Twitter feed and I wasn't prepared for what I saw

you don't have to watch the whole interview (though you should) but at least watch the part that starts around 1:00 where a federal officer just WAILS on him for several seconds before they douse HIS FACE in pepper spray

and yes I've read news reports and listened to pundits talk about it but somehow still wasn't prepared to see it play out on camera, and as I scrolled through the Portland news in my feed and watched videos of federal agents in riot gear shoving people and beating them up and barrelling into groups of moms peacefully protesting, tears started rolling down my face and I became a big, blubbering mess

because I'm terrified for the people in Portland and Chicago and Detroit and for

all of America, really

because this is what the slide into fascism looks like.

Being Canadian and watching this go down just south of the border is complicated because, on one hand, thank god that's not happening in my city, in my country, thank god I don't have to put on a helmet and a mask every night and go out and march until the morning light just to get police to stop killing black people

but on the other hand I can't do anything. All I can do is sit in front of my screen and cry and get upset and blog and hope against hope that things turn out ok in America

but I'm not holding my breath.

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