What A Difference A Week of Unconventional Warfare Can Make

[Mistwalker]

One day your standing on top of a building during the normal rush hour, just enjoying the sunny weather and eating your lunch while trying to not get chili stains on a light colored shirt. Looking around at the surrealism of the landscape, and musing over the absence of people and vehicles in an all-but-empty city park and the uncrowded streets below. Spending your evenings trying to understand all that is really going on.

Then a few days later your standing on top of the same building, musing on the shouts of the angry crowd in the park below, and the landscape being bathed in blue from the dozens of law enforcement vehicles that have the park surrounded. Spending your nights holding impromptu classes on how to cope with very specific situations with methods you learned while going through Advanced Infantry Training and N.B.C. school.

Truth really is so much stranger than fiction.

 

[TPVT]

geez. crazy. forgive my ignorance, but what city is this?

EDIT: is it atlanta? i just looked up suntrust bank headquarters.

 

[Mistwalker]

geez. crazy. forgive my ignorance, but what city is this?

EDIT: is it atlanta? i just looked up suntrust bank headquarters.

No it's Chattanooga TN, a city near the town i live in, and the one I work in most. So far. and it's because we're not an oppressed city even if the Mayor certainly seems to be an egotistical power tripping asshole, the agent provocateurs and inciters of violence have not been able to turn the crowds to violence no matter how hard they try, even attacking the police and law enforcement from the shadows trying to make it happen. All the ones I've seen doing that are white, and all the people who have been caught and arrested for perpetrating violence here are from out of town. The inciters are getting mad the protesters won't turn violent and have don't a little small scale destruction after dark but it's just little mischievous things that mostly doesn't even make the news. If i didn't have friends on the local police forces here that I've taught classes to and provided rescue and breaching equipment for telling me about it, I wouldn't even know about most of it.

Hugely different here than Atlanta. Where everyone went from being afraid of travelers on Memorial Day weekend when I was there conducting interviews and taking illustration images, to 6 days later going out and destroying huge parts of their own city. From all I've seen when I gone down there, their leadership leaves something to be desired. So the saboteurs and agent provocateurs were much more successful in inciting the riots, causing mayhem, wreaking havoc, and destroying things.

This was the all but empty Centennial Park Saturday May 23rd in Atlanta when all of the Atlantans I interviewed were pretty scared, very rude to all the travelers and tourists of all colors. They didn't want us there. They didn't want to have to be out working in public. There were no Atlantan's in the park that I could find, all I talked to were tourists just visiting for the weekend to ride Skyview etc.. The Atlantans were working the vending and Skyview etc. One actually panicked because I pulled out my Spyderco PM 3 and offered to open his box of cups he was struggling with if he would just lean it over the the window, so I could have my limeade sooner. I didn't even open the blade.

This was at a rest area on my way home afterward. Right after I had run off two guys with tire tool and a hammer who had parked beside my truck, lifted their hood shining a light feigning vehicle issues, then started trying to open my truck doors and looking in the windows.

This was in the area around Centennial Park 6 days later on May 29th

.

 

[TPVT]

gosh brian. strange days indeed.

 

[Mistwalker]

gosh brian. strange days indeed.

Very strange. I haven't actually been assaulted or anything. I had a group of youths attempt to intimidate me in Atlanta but I was able to convince them that attacking me might be unwise. When the guys at the rest area looked over at me after me advising them against messing with my truck, and realized I was better equipped for the confrontation than they were, I thought they were going to hurt themselves trying to get out of there. I just went back to work making notes, staying vigilant, and told the workers there what to look for before I left. They were in a grey charger with a white light bar on top like an escort car. And I haven't found any piles of bricks or anything here, but I have found rocks the size of large eggs and a little bigger obviously out of place and intentionally put in strategic locations close to protest areas. When I do I toss them behind bushes.

 

[Kismet]

Think it was Tiny Tim of Dicken's CHRISTMAS CAROL who said: "God bless us, everyone."

 

[Mistwalker]

Think it was Tiny Tim of Dicken's CHRISTMAS CAROL who said: "God bless us, everyone."

Amen

 

[Mistwalker]

gosh brian. strange days indeed.

It has been much more peaceful here than elsewhere thank goodness.

The most tense moment I had personally was night one when I was taking pictures from a second story vantage point. A guy in the parking lot across the street threw a few glass bottles at the State Troopers in the image. At first before they realized the direction direction of travel one of them turned around and shined his light at me...

...and there I stood wearing this Exotac T Shirt... with big orange flames on and says Fire Starter in big white letters. Luckily I had a camera in one hand and a phone in the other, and had no glass bottles in my general vicinity. But one of the Troopers on the other side of the road knew which direction they came from and they quit worrying about me and I went back to taking pictures.