Pray Beth is safe

[MandysMom]

I believe she is in Keystone and protestors just blocked road in and pulled 3 vans across road and blew the tires and it appears protesters are coming out of the trees, as the number has grown rapidly, way more than 3 vans can hold. BLM pLus native Americans and others screaming and waving signs. Deputies on scene. Deputies way out numbered. Only network on scene with live coverage is RSBN.
Pray Beth and crew stay safe.
Velda

[snowball]

wow hopefully all is well with her and those who work at the store
sheila

[Bethers]

Oh my gosh, it was nothing like you're describing. But that's the news for you. They blocked the road with a few old vans. A few arrested. They had to get tow trucks to move the vans out of the road. The rest then left peacefully. They spent money in the store previously. Not bad people.

Fireworks should be starting momentarily.

[MandysMom]

Beth I watched it happen live, as the station we were watching, the reporters were driving up the road with camera on when it began. They were the car at the front. They were not old vans, they were late model white vans. The first arrested was a black Man wearing BLM garb. Second was a Woman causing trouble. Then another man. Near the end a woman punched out a Trump supporter after grabbing his sign. He never raised a hand. She tried to run but police caught her and cuffed her for assault. I agree the Native Americans were peaceful, but there were agitators among them. I heard and saw as the tires went bang, slashed they said, but I've never heard of a slashed tire going boom. Slashing happens here sometimes in some areas and no one reports hearing anything. This was a well,organized event as they' discovered the vans had jacks under them which been disabled (yes i saw that too live asnofficersvtried tonget jacks out) to make them harder to remove and rims damaged so they couldn't just reinstall tire. Luckily Deputies and National Guard were near so they could quickly get it under control. Gee Beth, forgive me for being concerned, not knowing at the time how it would end or how close you were.
Velda

[Redetotry]

Did the protests happen away from where you were Beth? Several reports are showing Hwy 16A or Iron Mountain Road blocked.

[BirdbyBird]

Beth, thanks for sharing from your row observations of the protest. So glad that there were no major issues or injuries. American's rights to protest is one of those rights the 4th stands for. Guess I am showing my age as growing up in the 60's. Speaking up and standing up.... matters and, yes, sometimes it gets messy but if I remember there were arrests back in the Civil Right's era, Women Right to Vote, Vietnam era.....so arrests are not always a negative thing in and of themselves.......

[Bethers]

I will not argue. The vans were old and yes disabled. The police knew about the protest in advance and were there before it started. You think the news stations got there first? The protesters were peaceful, with maybe a could exceptions. Let's talk about the other side... Blocking traffic most of the day riding horses with flags up and down the road. I'm here. I was watching. Every protester I saw was wearing a mask. It was rare to see a supporter with a mask. Both sides were in the store all day with zero problems.

The actual protest being talked about by Velda was about 1/4 to 1/2 a mile down the road from the store. It was where the police and MR already had the road closed to MR. It was closed so only ticket holders could be allowed to proceed. It wasn't blocked by protesters until most ticket holders should have already been through.

Like Tina, I was involved with protests... From 68 into the 70's. When you say a protester hits out without provocation, it's possible. But all provocation isn't physical.

And that, no matter where anyone stands, is where I see things being here.

[Redetotry]

I have no problem with peaceful protestors but they do worry me now with the virus situation I'm so glad they were wearing mask. I was just wanting to know if what the news was showing really did happen away from where you were Beth because if not, I was never going to believe a news report again. It is so sad what has happened with our trust in the news.

I was working on campus during the Vietnam war protests. Protestors burned down one of the main campus buildings. Several of the churches beautiful stained glass windows were broken and most of the stores in town were damaged. We went to work past the National Guard. Crowds of protestors were gassed every night in town. The school decided to close early to stop further damage and also in part because word got out that a vigilante group from a nearby area, well know throughout history as having a 'bloody reputation' had organized and were coming to stop the hippies. The Anteater, as he was known, who came into town to organize the protests decided it was time to ride on to another town. It was quite a disturbing experience.

[Bethers]

Here's part of the local reports which I find exceptionally accurate. It was a Native American protest, not a BLM protest.
"About 150 protesters used vans and their bodies Friday afternoon to shut down the road and a checkpoint to Mount Rushmore to protest the president and monument while calling for the Black Hills to be returned to the Lakota people."
"Law enforcement coming from the east later made their way onto the west side of the vans and two tow trucks came to take the vehicles away around 6:15 p.m. Police then gave a warning, saying that they will begin arrests in 30 minutes. Many protesters left and officers helped those with cars turn around and leave until there were just about 15 people prepared to be arrested."
My words... The ones who stayed were prepared to be arrested.
Back to the reports:
"Tilsen, founder of the Rapid City-based NDN Collective, was one of about 15 people who were purposely and peacefully arrested as an act of civil disobedience in order to bring attention to their cause."
"He and others were taken to the Pennington County Jail around 7:15 p.m., more than three hours after the blockade began and 2.5 hours after law enforcement declared the group an unlawful assembly for blocking traffic."

My words again. There were both some protesters and some counter-protesters arrested during some heated interactions.

To understand the protest:

"Demonstrators held signs against Trump and the Keystone XL Pipeline. Others called for the federal government to uphold the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie and return the Black Hills to the Lakota people.

"Great men do the right thing, honor the treaties," one sign read. "The most dangerous immigrants arrived in 1492," "Protect SoDak's First People," and "Land back," other signs read. "

Never did I not feel safe here yesterday. Except for the hordes of people, no social distancing and almost no masks on anyone here for the fireworks. In that sense, I'm worried.

[retiredhappy]

The slant of the news media depends on WHICH news station you are watching. The united states government tried to give the Lakota nation a lot of money for the Black Hills but the People turned them down. That land is sacred to them and they want it back, NOT MONEY. The US government has screwed the Indians since they arrived on this continent. I don't believe they have honored even ONE treaty they signed with the Indian Nations and yet our constitution is based on the Iroquois nation type of government. Think about that! I, too, remember the protests in the 60's on civil rights. We thought we had made some progress but now I'm beginning to wonder. Its seems that bigotry and racism is worse now than in the 60's. The way trump supporters are behaving brings shame to our country. The world is watching and is NOT seeing much good coming from this country and certainly no leadership. OK, now I'll get off my bandstand.

[Cudedog]

I know that there are a lot of book readers here on Beth's forum.

For those who like to read, I have a book recommendation that goes along very well with the 4th of July holiday (and of the current discussion) as we celebrate independence at Rushmore.

The book is "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee", by Dee Brown. First published in 1971, the book has never gone out of print and is published in over 17 different languages.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. Great reading for a 4th of July weekend. You can download the Kindle version to your computer or notebook from Amazon and start reading immediately.

A great read.

Stay safe, everyone.

Anne

[Bethers]

Anne, I read that book in 1972 or maybe 73. It was eye opening and my take on our countries history changed drastically. I agree it's a must read. I actually need to re-read it.

[JudyJB]

Here is my story about the news--In 1967, my then-husband and I went to Europe for the summer and had ordered a new car in Rotterdam from the father of someone we knew. We lived in a northern suburb of Detroit, literally 6 miles north of the soon-to-be-infamous "8 Mile Road" city border. That was the summer of the Detroit riots, if you remember. Well, this was before cable or even much international TV, so we got our news from newspapers, nearly entirely, as did others in Europe.

A lot of people we met would ask us questions about the dangers of Detroit because they had seen photographs in the newspaper or on TV with headlines about the city being "On Fire" or "Burning." In reality, the riots were mostly confined to an area about 4 blocks wide and maybe 12 blocks long. But the maps of Detroit shown by the news had only the mile roads shown, not smaller blocks. And in spots on the maps, there would be graphic flames shown. If you thought those mile roads were blocks, and you did not know how big Detroit and its suburbs were, you would have thought the whole city looked like Berlin during the WWII bombings, which of course is what Europeans still remembered in 1967.

This was made even worse by the fact that the federal government for some strange reason sent in paratroopers to help quell the riots. Of course, they were reserve units and came in on buses, but the Europeans imagined them dropping in from the sky like they had in WWII!! So now we had a city in flames and taken over by an army!!

The person we bought our car from and a lot of people were panicked because they had relatives living in Detroit or the Detroit area. We were constantly reminding people that places like Royal Oak or where we lived were very far from those big flames shown on the news maps!

When we got back home from our 6-week trip, we drove around the city trying to find all the damage we had read about while we were gone. In fact, we had a very hard time finding it. Downtown was almost completely untouched, as were the suburbs. There were occasional burned buildings on a couple of the main streets going into the city, but it was nothing like we expected.

I doubt if the news reporters were really trying to mislead anyone in 1967, but when you print a map and show flame icons on it and do not tell people how big the area is in the map, it is misleading. And you know that guy who is standing in the middle of the wind and rain in the hurricane? He purposely chose the windiest and rainiest place he could find to show how bad things were. Ditto for road damage from high water and tornadoes going through farmland, etc.

The point is that you cannot assume what you see on a TV news program is the way things were all over or typical of what happened. They take photos of the worst and most shocking so they can get their readers to keep watching!! It's called making a living and getting a raise in salary!!

[Bethers]

Great analogy and very well said, Judy. And the news in 1967 was much closer to task than today's biased reports.

[BarbaraRose]

Beth, I am glad things weren't as bad as described or shown on the news. Was 45 still there when that happened?