On the first day of the #PTSD intensive, we talked about the shooting. I had felt like I was done with that, that it didn't have anything left for me. But there was something still that filled me with rage... that is still confusing and enraging.
It wasn't actually being shot. I wasn't even the possibility of death. I had been prepared to die. I always knew that was possible. It was something else.
I remember Marc Hokoana's face as he pepper sprayed pacifists, smiling and taunting, joyfully hurting people who he knew were refusing to respond. I remember their flags, the kek flag, literally a Nazi battle flag replaced in 4chan colors with the clover 4chan logo instead of the swastika. How many people have been tortured, have died? How much suffering, that these people not only welcomed but celebrated, joyfully participated in.
The cruelty was the point. It was the plan, the plan he posted to Facebook, the same plan as they have always had, of torturing people until someone responds and then murdering them. Inflicting trauma, responding with overwhelming force, showing how "big and strong" they are because they can always escalate.
Try to stop someone from peppers praying people, they shoot you. Shoot back, like Michael Reinoehl, and they send a death squad for you. But we keep standing up, so they keep escalating to the slightest imagined infraction. Now they just murder you for being in a car, for filming at a protest, for existing.
The bar for what justifies murder or torture will continue to move lower until there is no one left, or until they can no longer escalate.
The feeling of helplessness is still not the biggest thing though. It's the joy with which they inflict this on us. That's it. That's the thing.
CW: gun violence, abuse dynamics