Hundreds of protesters gathered in St. Louis to march towards Mayor Lyda Krewson’s home demanding her resignation after she read the names and street addresses of protesters who are calling on the city to defund the police department during a Facebook Live press briefing last Friday. It was a peaceful march but that didn’t stop a white couple from stepping outside of their home to wave guns at protesters.
Let’s start with Krewson doxxing folks who want to defund her little police department.
From NBC News:
Democratic Mayor Lyda Krewson was answering questions during a Facebook Live briefing Friday afternoon, which she has held regularly during the coronavirus pandemic, when someone asked about a meeting she had with demonstrators outside City Hall earlier in the day.
The mayor responded that the conversation “wasn’t really a two-way conversation… because there was a very loud response from the demonstrators,” NBC’s affiliate in St. Louis, Missouri KSDK reported.
But protesters had given her written outlines of their proposals for how the city could better allocate money that now goes to the police department, and Krewson stepped away from the camera to grab the papers from her desk as the briefing was still streaming live.
The mayor started reading the suggestions out loud, including giving out the first and last names of the writers, as well as the streets where they live. In some instances, she gave people’s exact addresses, KSDK reported. Many of the proposals suggested that the city should budget zero dollars for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.
After receiving a ton of well-earned backlash, Krewson deleted the post and released a statement apologizing “for identifying individuals who presented letters to me at City Hall as I was answering a routine question during one of my updates earlier today.”
“While this is public information, I did not intend to cause distress or harm to anyone. The post has been removed,” the statement said.
Unfortunately for Krewson, her apology fell in the “too little, too late” category for a lot of people who believe reading the names and addresses of protesters was an intimidation tactic, which brings us back to the protest calling for her resignation and “Ken and Karen” (as they’ve been dubbed on Twitter) brandishing firearms for seemingly no goddamn reason whatsoever.
Apparently, Boris and Natasha (who have not aged well) just knew Rocky and Bullwinkle were in that Black Lives Matter crowd somewhere and were seeking revenge for all their schemes being foiled—either that or these are just more crazy-ass white people who love their guns as much as they hate racial justice demonstrations.
In the video—which President Trump retweeted without comment (but because we’re talking about gun-toting white people threatening protesters, it’s a safe bet y’all’s president was tweeting his approval)—it doesn’t appear that anyone in the crowd was attempting to damage the couple’s property. In fact, people can be heard urging protesters to simply ignore them and move on.
According to The Riverfront Times, Ken and Karen have been identified as personal injury lawyers Mark and Patricia McCloskey.
One would think that personal injury lawyers would know better than to recklessly point guns every which way including near each other, but then again, white people white peopling isn’t typically an activity where public safety is placed high on the priority list.
Fortunately, no one was shot or injured during the protest.