The compulsion to confess?
A Black Lives Matter activist who was part of the Ferguson riots posted a visual guide to urban riot wear in both English and Arabic on Twitter.
The tweet is significant because it was posted by Ashley Yates, who uses the handle @BrownBlaze on Twitter. Yates is a prominent protest organizer in the Black Lives Matter movement who is an advocate for violence. The Guardian quoted her in 2014 during her involvement with the Ferguson protest:
“If they can’t serve justice in this, the people have every right to go out and express their rage in a manner that is equal to what we have suffered,” said Ashley Yates, a co-founder of Millennial Activists United, who was arrested last week while protesting in Ferguson.
Yates learned organizing when she was the political chair of the Legion of Black Collegians at the University of Missouri Columbia; the group who was behind last year’s campus uprising there. Yates was not with the group at the time of that protest, however.
Under the title “Necessary Clothing and Accessories” the guide makes suggestions including:
Sweatshirt or leather jacket with a hood. This helps shield your face from teargas.
Spray paint so that if the authorities attack us, we can spray paint the visors of their helmets and the windshields of their armored trucks, blocking their vision and hindering their movement.
Protective glasses. (Can be bought at any metalworking or paint shop.)
The lid of the pot. You can use this shield when the state security beats you or shoots rubber bullets.
Scarf to protect your mouth and lungs from teargas.
Thick rubber gloves in order to protect your hands from the heat of teargas containers.
Shoes that make it easy to run and move quickly.
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College protest clothing used to be, a bandana, a tie-dye t-shirt, no bra, and grungy jeans. And the protest guidance was, go limp and make the police carry you away. Now it’s aloha achtung Brotherhood. I guess with all the gangs in high schools, it follows that gangs would be formed in college. No real vetting of foreign students doesn’t help either.