Bourne BLM Protest

Buzzards Bay was the host for Thursday's Black Lives Matter protest rally.

The event was organized by 2 activists from Sturgis.

The audience trended young. It was like a slightly ominous pep rally.

Exemplary motivation, however....

The rally was based in Buzzards Bay Park.

There were hundreds of kids. I want to say a thousand, but amateurs always overestimate, and I'm an amateur.

The crowd wasn't all kids.

When a rioter at a BLM rally has to smash MLK's words to get into your store, the paint is mightier than the plywood.

Please note that these cops aren't beating anyone down or anything. I walked the grounds constantly, and saw not one moment of a Bourne cop being anything but nice to the kids.

It seemed like a good bunch of kids, especially this one handing out free water.

Attempts to estimate crowd size should note there were dozens of cars full of kids repeatedly circumnavigating the protest.

To the children's credit, the cars I observed had the passenger cheerleading while the driver was concentrating. I look for stuff like that, reporters are ghouls. One moment's distracted kid driving through a protest can become the next moment's accidental Chancellorsville, and I like to have the camera aiming the right way when sh*t like that goes down.

There is some irony in rolling through the BLM Protest about oppression while you and the other white Cape Cod rich kids cram into a 2020 BMW Thanksdad,...but they do seem to have their hearts in the right place, and I did not take up this vocation to make fun of good kids.

Bourne PD was the only law I saw, and the Statie barracks were 300 yards away. I thought this was a sniper, but it got less sinister when I zoomed in later below.

They did a 8:23 moment of kneeling silence, although I'd have whittled away the kneeling part, considering that whole Minneapolis thing.

See? Much less sinister... unless some sniper is celebrating Take Your Daughter To Work Day, at which point it becomes considerably more sinister.

Cute kids

The moment of silence was part George Floyd, part Colin Kaepernick and part Smith/Carlos. It was as silent as I have ever seen that many kids be, and I was a high school teacher for a while. You could hear thoughts.

Poster board companies, crippled by Coronavirus school closings, saw a brief comeback yesterday.

I may be wrong, but this may be one of the event organizers.

Our photographer lands a selfie.

Chief Woodside was out among the protesters, shaking hands and helping de-escalate things.

Main Street was blocked off.

The kids did march to the police station, but no rioting happened.