121/2022 blog

On physical protest and violence

The recent protests in China that turned violent reminded me of a chat with a social-media contact in China in which I said U.S. police had recently physically. brutalized me repeatedly for no good reason.

She responded, “It happens everywhere.”

It brought to mind a recent movie in which a man travelling by foot from Southern California to Mexico to meet a daughter he has just learned he has there from a fling with a now-deceased Mexican woman ends up in a near-border California town where the people hunt and try to kill him because he is alcoholic.

After escaping the town, he meets briefly a group of illegal immigrants on the way to the border and says something like “be careful: there are some bad people ahead,” The immigrant leader replies, “There are bad people everywhere.”