Desiree Barnes: 'And you f*cking think THIS is a protest!' Plea to looters, NYC riots - 2020

Freelance videographer Dan LaDue shot video and posted to @newyorkcity on Instagram

1 June 2020, New York City, USA

These are fucking people who live in public housing. And you just made a fucking melee.
You took down bus routes. There are people who live in this neighbourhood who have to go back uptown to work.

And you are here, profiting off our fucking pain.

So you fucking protestors, every single last one of you. You think about what it’s like to be a black woman in this fucking neighbourhood, who lives with people public housing, who now has fucking shit to walk through.

Who bag your groceries, who drop off your food, who defend you, who go uptown to a fucking hospital, to serve his community.

So if you’re out here, be fucking responsible.

Have a fucking plan .

You can protest all you want but the shit I just saw take place, I know there are people out here, homeless people who fucking rely on those banks to charge their phones. And you think it’s okay to take down a neighborhood. You don’t see corporations here. There are human beings that live in this goddamn neighborhood.

You do this shit in Harlem, you do this shit in Brooklyn.

And I swear on everything. These people in this neighbourhood deserve better. And I’m not talking about the gentrification, I’m not talking about the fucking students who come here and pay cash to go to NYU,.
I am talking about the people who go to a methadone clinic down the goddamn street.

And you fucking think this is a protest?

I gave my fucking blood sweat and tears for this country. I served this country for ten goddamn years. So when you think about this anger and this fucking rage, ‘cause there is a way to get answers.

Every single last one of you better be fucking registered to vote. Every single last one of you.

Yes ma’am.
We are.

So do me favour, for every single last person out here protesting, remember, there’s three homeless men who rely on that as a charging station. And what, what … will it even work now?

For the sake of what, so you can go back home to your fucking comforts. Sit in your house and think that you did some fucking work today?

There are people out here who work in these bodegas. Who are security officers. Who are maybe not descendants of slavery, but who came over here as immigrants to do their jobs. And you’ve created an unsafe, goddamned environment!

And I am tired of it!

I don’t care how you decide to organise and protest, but you don’t fucking riot.
You don’t burn crap in my goddamned neighbourhood.

I am a resident here, and you will fucking realise this resident doesn’t look like any of you.
‘Cause she is black. She has a fucking right to be mad! But when you come in here with your fucking privilege, and you take down resources that my community needs, these houses, these buildings are dilapidated, because of fucking - we don’t have patrons here!

There are immigrants who fucking built a fucking eyebrow threading studio, and we got spray paint on their crap.

So you wanna fucking do something? Make sure you’re registered to vote. Don’t start another goddamned fire, and you better pass it on to all your fucking friends.

You stay out of our fucking neighbourhoods, and you take this shit, to the corporations. You take it to Washington!

But you don’t fucking come on this block, period.

This is a fucking neighbourhood, with immigrants. And you can treat it as such.

Lawrence O'Donnell: 'The original sin of this country is that we invaders shot and murdered our way across the land killing every Native American that we could', The Last Word, 'Dakota' - 2016

24 August 2016, The Last Word, NBC nightly news show, USA

Dakota means friend…friendly. The people who gave that name to the Dakotas have, sadly, never been treated as friends. The people whose language was used to name the Dakotas and Minnesota, Iowa, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Massachusetts and other states, the Native American tribes, the people who were here before us… long before us, have never been treated as friends. They have been treated as enemies..more harshly than any other enemy. In any of this countrys’ wars. After all of our major wars we signed peace treaties and live by those treaties. After world war II when we made peace with Germany we then did everything we possibly could to rebuild Germany. No Native American tribe has ever been treated as well as we treated Germans after World War II.

The original sin of this country is that we invaders shot and murdered our way across the land killing every Native American that we could, and making treaties with the rest. This country was founded on genocide before the word genocide was invented. Before there was a War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague. When we finally stopped actively killing Native Americans for the crime of living here before us, we then proceeded to violate every treaty we made with the Tribes. Every. Single. Treaty. We piled crime on top of crime against a people whose offense against us was simply that they lived where we wanted to live. We don’t feel the guilt of the crimes because we pretend they happened a very long time ago, in ancient history. And we actively suppress the memories of those crimes.. but there are people alive today whose grandparents were in the business of killing the Native Americans. That’s how recent these crimes are.

Every once in a while there is a painful and morally embarrassing reminder, as there is this week in North Dakota near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation where hundreds of people have gathered and camped out in opposition to an interstate pipeline being built from North Dakota to Illinois. The protest in being led by this countrys’ original environmentalists. Native Americans. For hundreds of years they were our only environmentalists. The only people who thought that land and rivers should be preserved in their natural state. The only people who thought a mountain or a prairie or a river could be a sacred place.

Yesterday a federal judge heard arguments from the tribes against the federal governments approval of the pipeline and said he will deliver his decision on whether the pipeline can proceed next month. There are now over ninety tribes gathered in protest of that pipeline. That protest will surely continue even if the judge allows construction to proceed. And so we face the prospect next month of the descendants of the first people to ever set foot on that land,.. being arrested by the descendants of the invaders who seized that land. Arrested for trespassing. That we still have Native Americans left in this country to be arrested for trespassing on their own land is testament, not to the mercy of the genocidal invaders who seized and occupied their land, but to the stunning strength and the five hundred years of endurance and the undying dignity of the people who were here long before us. The people who have always known; what is truly sacred in this world.