Protests are scheduled for Friday in nearly 40 major U.S. cities in what's being called #FridayofSolidarity. The hacktivist group "Anonymous" is calling for non-violent demonstrations with the tagline, "Day of Rage." That sounds about as non-violent as the martial law which will likely follow.
Each city's protest is scheduled to begin in unison: 7PM ET, 6PM CT, 5PM MT, and 4PM PT.
Full list of locations: http://pastebin.com/t51Y8x8c
Regardless of where you stand with BLM's agenda, you might want to sit this one out. The chances of these protests remaining non-violent get smaller by the hour. In the past week, this country has watched its fight against police brutality and racism turn for many into an open war on both police officers and White people at large. As powerful and beautiful as it would be to see non-violent demonstrators come together in so many cities across the country, that image is only getting harder to believe in.
Friday's events will very likely, very quickly turn into more than just a "day of rage." It's already been a week of rage, months of frustration, years of disbelief, and decades of growing chaos, but what's at stake this Friday is much worse. The Civil Rights Movement, and the India Liberation Movement triumphed under the guidance of leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi: leaders who championed non-violence and made the tactic an attractive alternative to violence.
Of course that's not easy to do nowadays with our political leaders doing more to keep us divided and hating each other than united and working together. Instead of going out on Friday and venting our rage, we might do much better to turn off the TV, stop listening to the talking heads perpetrating this dividing hatred, and instead go back and listen to some of those old speeches made by leaders who gave us faith in non-violence: in that beautiful image of protests across the country uniting us against a common enemy, not each other.
Be safe Friday.