The Melbourne rally and march was really enormous.
I stayed on the outskirts to keep about 8m away as most protestors were far closer than 1m. Unfortunately masks do make people feel too “safe”. So I missed out on the speeches, perhaps fortunately. But I did not miss out on the size or nature of the crowd as it went past while I waited to join in at the end.
It took more than two hours to go past! The usual suspects were hardly noticeable in such a large crowd of mainly young people, enthusiastic and lively.
The mass media campaign against it was a dismal flop and they are now just admitting that there were more than ten thousand present. There certainly were. I cannot estimate but two hours stretched across Bourke St is bigger than anything since the Vietnam moratoriums and a LOT more than just ten thousand.
Youth are on the move again.
Inevitably it simply was not possible for protestors to be properly organised for social distancing the first time. But it clearly is just the first time as lots of people who turned up will now know how strong they are compared with the mass media’s lies.
So it will be necessary to seriously prepare for spreading people out at far less than 1 person per four square metre. The same preparations can ensure the police remain just as absent from disrupting future smaller protests as they wisely were from this one. A self-disciplined crowd spread out can be even harder to suppress than one that blocked the entire CBD for two hours because it was just too big to avoid doing so.
The police prevented trams going down Collins Street for many more hours, perhaps out of frustration, more likely just stupidity. But it was obvious to anybody that this blockage was caused by a police van parked on the tram tracks rather than the protestors departing from the demo.
No doubt when the infection rate rises from the successful media campaign to loosen restrictions prematurely they will blame the protestors. But that won’t impress many.
With even the Courts and police knowing better than to try and suppress huge mass demonstrations reflecting popular feeling, the demands for suppression from the newspapers of Channel 9 and Murdoch have just highlighted both their hypocrisy and their impotence.
An international solidarity movement has just been born. It took a LOT longer to reach this level in the 1960s.
C21st Left 
If I may just say something more about the OJ Simpson trial. The prosecution had no confession, no eye witnesses and no murder weapon so they had to rely on circumstantial forensic evidence which mainly consisted of OJ’s blood drops at the scene, the gloves worn by the murderer, the blood found in OJs car and on his sock. Now if you accept that Fuhrman was planting evidence which even the prosecution came to believe then you have to remove the bits of evidence that Fuhrman found which is the car blood, the glove in OJ’s garden and the socks yes Fuhrman found the socks. Lets just mention that famously the gloves didn’t fit and no one noticed the cut on OJ’s finger.
But there is room for agreement the blood drops at the crime scene were from OJ the jury just had to decide, was it blood from OJ’s finger or was the blood planted?
The nurse that took OJ’s blood at the goal was asked how much blood did he take and he said 8 ml but when they checked the vial it contained 6 ml. No record exists as to how much blood was taken and the blood wasnt immediately sent to the evidence holding facility but was given to a detective who carried it around with with him for some time.
The trial did divide people along race lines it came only a couple of years after the Rodney King affair, same city same police force where the police beat Rodney with batons and kicked him over 60 times. The jury found all those police officers innocent of the charges. Justice isnt blind it clearly sees black and white.
I think its a bit rich to argue that people are clinging to false victimhood when you look at King’s treatment and the continuing outrage about OJ who was “obviously guilty” and only got off because the jury was racially biased in his favour.
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I’m planning to watch the movie tonight on SBS about the Rodney King beating, Burn Mother Fxxxx Burn (World Movies, 9:30)
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