I can feel it (Part 2)

Violet and Nick repost aerial video of the masses who were not as lucky to disperse as fast as they had. Hundreds of #BlackLivesMatter supporters had been pepper sprayed and sent screaming and scrambling off of the freeway. It was a travesty. Injustice, piled upon injustice.

Violet and Nick recover with a big breakfast and make new signs to take to the protests. Steve and Charlotte join them among the crowds of protestors. They listen all day to the speeches and they march through the streets until the time of the curfew to begins. All day the protests go forward without incident. You could feel the togetherness and fellowship among the people during the day, gathering to make a difference for a better world.

Unfortunately, at night, it was necessary for most businesses to board up their windows; when the night time when the riots began. Loud bangs and explosions can be heard across the city as well as right around the corner from the apartment. Pandora gets scared and pees. Nick takes her for a walk and Violet cleans up the mess.

Violet then chimes in on Twitter about the explosion sounds and about her experiences over the last few days. She encourages her supporters to give money to the #BLM movement, and to come out the next day to the protests.

Many conservative cis white males attack her online over it to the point that some of her supporters came to her defense. Including calls for violence on both sides, which she condemns, both times. There were many who said they would go to support with her, and ask where to meet up the next day. Apparently the Art Museum steps are to be the next day's meeting place.

***

The LGBT+ community arrives along with #BLM. While they didn't want to muddy the waters, the inequities suffered by the LGBT+ community felt were synchronous with that of #BLM. They were both human rights abuses and further, the UN declares that because of these abuses, it was right to break the lockdown, wearing masks, to protest these injustices.

For days it goes on like this. Demanding much needed change all day, and hiding from riotous actions and the long arm of the law all night. Tonight, the national guard moves into the city upon the president's orders. I-95 exits are shut down by them, including the Vine Street Expressway. Which felt like some serious irony to Nick and Violet as they held up at home making pasta for dinner.

"They gas citizens for shutting down the Expressway and then close it themselves, to keep us from closing it." Violet points out.

"Right, reminds me of when I was a kid. Ever hear about the MOVE bombing?" Nick asks.

"No, what happened?" She asks.

"The city started by dumping water on the roof of the house all day long, with multiple fire trucks. The city was in the grips of a drought, and they had ordinances in place that made it so people couldn't even water their lawns." Nick pauses for a breath from his vape before he continues, Violet was clearly hanging on the silence for him to continue the story. "Later that night, the city police force, under the direction of Mayor Wilson Goode, used a helicopter to drop a bomb on the house full of 11 people, 6 or 7 of them were children and multiple city blocks in Ogontz, burned to the ground, and they had to then use even more water to put out the blaze." Nick finishes matter of factly. He didn't like the story, the deaths; but it was true. 11 men, women, and children had perished in the ensuing inferno. "Why?" Violet asked after processing it all.

"The stories I heard is that they didn't send their kids to school, and they didn't pay bills because they worked something out with neighbors for showering their kids,and they were surviving off the grid, in the inner city. They were free, and the city burned them alive for it." Nick saw how this story affectes her.

She couldn't believe such a thing could have happened less than two decades before she was born, and she had never heard of it. Even having been living in the city for her whole life.

The sadness in her eyes, over these people, she didn't even know, who had died long before she was even born, it was an empathy Nick cherishes seeing in Violet. Her spirit was so wild, she couldn't imagine being destroyed for it and she hated the idea of it, not for anyone. The look on her face was that of an angry mother protecting her young, coated in purple and yellow around her slowly healing eye.

Violet hadn't shown the world her injury and these protests were more for her than just something to do while she healed. It was wonderful to see someone so young, care so much about making a better world. She was inspiring to Nick.

***

During the next few days, some accords were made with promises from the city to hear grievances on a different day, later in the month. #BLM leaders and the city's leadership would have a day in the park together, to aid the progress of the talks about the issues underlying the last week of civil unrest.

No one felt like they won, but the riots ended.