"I'm kinda surprised LMPD hasn't done anything yet..." BOOM! Should have known better than to open my mouth, hadn't even managed to spit the punctuation out when all hell broke loose.
As of 2130 it has officially been three years since my first taste of tear gas. Three years ago I was standing on the corner of 6th and Liberty talking to a couple friends when 'LMPD violated the rights of people engaged in protected speech critical of policing.' That last bit's the DOJ's words, not mine.
Somehow that night manages to seem like it was just yesterday and ages ago simultaneously. We played 'follow the police helicopter' until we found the party. Maybe party is the wrong word, there was a palpable sense of anger that was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. Only other time I was in a crowd that felt like that was the night the Attorney General announced there'd be no charges for Breonna Taylor's death, both nights the city caught fire.
It's kind of wild looking back, we were green as grass. No clue what we were doing, no clue what we were in for. Just madder than hell with a sense that we had to be there. Got an education in a hurry though.
A few years before, me and a coworker had been left a little too unsupervised and we wrapped a few ounces of crushed red pepper flakes in tin foil and stuffed it in the back of the pizza oven right before second shift got there. By the time we were able to clock out our eyes and sinuses were doing a good imitation of being on fire. Tear gas was a lot like that, except hundredfold.
Won't be able to do many more anniversary posts, I've just about edited all the usable photos from that night. The photo above was way too underexposed, I was able to get this out of it in Photoshop but it's way too noisy for anything other than show-and-tell. Included it because it gives you a sense of all the weird light that added to the apocalyptic feel of that evening.
Thank y'all for indulging me on this walk down Flashbang Lane. Now who else on here has had run-ins with CS gas and 'unlawful assemblies'?
