On Saturday, a California group which calls itself Caravan4Justice held a protest against police brutality after the Breonna Taylor verdict was handed down in Kentucky.  A counter-demonstration occurred as well, full of people waving “Trump 2020” flags and donning red “Make America Great Again” hats.

During the protest – which apparently the police said was illegal, due to lack of proper permits – the MAGA group crossed a multi-lane highway in order to confront the Caravan4Justice Group. 

Note: don’t do this. It’s a sure way to instigate violence.  We shouldn’t be violent.  We mustn’t be violent.  We have to be better.  However, this is no way justifies what happened next.

As they were crossing over, Tatiana Turner – one of the Caravan4Justice protesters – drove her car into the protesters. She hit two people and was charged with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon.  A man and a woman were taken to the hospital and will survive the attack.

Thank goodness.

It’s not even clear if the man and the woman who were hit were counter-protesters or protesters, since the groups had converged.  However, we must condemn in the strongest possible language protesters who apparently believe they are above the law.

Since George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis police on May 25, there have been 66 car attacks across the nation.  Four were accidental. Seven were done by law enforcement officers, including two in New York which were defended as an appropriate use of force because police vehicles were under attack. Prosecutors have brought charges in approximately 24 of the remaining cases.

It’s become such a phenomenon, it’s a meme – commonly shared under the disgusting hashtag, “All Lives Splatter.”

In June, a Richmond, Virginia driver (who told the police he was a high-ranking Ku Klux Klan official) tried to intimidate protesters with his truck when he hit one demonstrator’s bicycle. He was charged with assault.  In Seattle, a police officer was put on administrative leave after posting a picture of a vehicle hitting someone, along with the “All Lives Splatter” language.

The most high-profile car attack happened at the white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, when James Alex Fields Jr. drove his Dodge Charger into a crowd of protesters, killing Heather Heyer, a counterprotester.

This has to stop – whether it’s protesters, counter-protesters, or just people filled with rage over not being able to use the streets.  America, we must rise above our divisions, respect the right to protest, and come to each other with reasoned arguments….  Not with a deadly car and nothing but hate.

Hat Tip: The New York Times and ZeroHedge

Image Credit: Wikipedia

About The Author

Mark was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and served as the national coordinator. He left the organization to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide. Mark appears regularly on television in outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He’s highly sought after for the tea party perspective from print and electronic media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Examiner, Politico and the The Hill. Mark blogs at MarkMeckler.com, and his opinion editorials regularly run in many of the leading political newspapers both on and offline. Mark has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He practiced real estate and business law for almost a decade. For the last eleven years of his legal career he specialized in Internet advertising law. When not fighting for the future of our nation, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.

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