PROTESTS
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QAnon conspiracies that allege widespread child sexual abuse by celebrities, Democrats and members of the media — an unsubstantiated fringe theory that claims Trump is working behind the scenes to lock up all of the perpetrators and free the children. He frequently derides protesters and the Black Lives Matter movement, appears to have no problem with the onfederate ag but big problems with being asked to wear a mask in public, and isn’t shy to mention that he carries a gun. “Why do I carry? Because people are crazy and you never bring a nife to a gun fight he rote when sharing a story about a stabbing spree on a New York subway. “Act fast and toss brass.” According to Dorsey and Hamlin, Johnson had his own PA system at the June 24 protest, and he shared many of his views with those assembled. “He listed a lot of — most of what he was saying was more QAnon stuff but it as definitely geared in a way to rile up the protesters for sure,” Hamlin says. “I don’t believe necessarily that the man is as misogynistic as some of the things he was saying,” Hamlin adds. “The one thing that really stuck with me,” Dorsey says, “he was like, ‘Why doesn’t everyone just stop and we all can get ice cream?’ And he said, ‘You guys can get the chocolate and we can get the vanilla.’” In a post on June 26 — just two days after those dueling protests in Fredericktown — Johnson seems to offer a more thoughtful take on race relations in America than those related to ice cream. He mentions that he was asked to watch Ava DuVernay’s awardwinning 2016 documentary 13th, which makes the case that slavery was never really abolished but instead kept alive through mass incarceration which targets black people and makes them prisoners. They then, through very specific language in the onstitution s Thirteenth Amendment, can be made to work for corporations for free. “So someone asked me to watch the et i documentary 13th. Has anyone else watched this yet? The nation is stained with a past that was not fair to POC and I will say it was down right intolerant of individuals who were not white,” he writes. “I understand that the war on drugs could be seen as a war on blacks. Some drugs had heftier sentences while other drugs had
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Drag queen Cheyenne Devereaux is one of a few St. Louisans that have joined the rural Missouri protests. | ADAM HAMLIN lighter sentences. The idea was that the drugs that blacks used were criminalized heavier than those that were taken by whites [which] didn’t carry as hefty of a prison term. “I sat there thinking about it. I actually stopped watching the film and really anted to rap my head around the idea,” he continues. “It wasn’t just republicans who did it but it was also democrats. I sat there thinking what is the purpose of imprisoning, was it really about color or is it about class? Poor people tend to use drugs like meth, heroin, crack, and opioids but wealthy tend to use drugs like cocaine. I am not taking away from what they said but I often wonder if we are not divided by color but by wealth?” One other post on Johnson’s Facebook page lists a number with a Fredericktown area code and a photo of Johnson. It is styled to look like the “order now” screen of an infomercial. or sale is he onfidence of a Self-Entitled White Man” — a 30-day trial for only $19.99. RFT called the number, and a man
AUGUST 5-11, 2020
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identifying himself as John said in a prerecorded voicemail message that he is the author of a book by that same name, which you can order by sending money to a Fredericktown address he lists. It’s surely a joke — some more shit disturbed, some might say. RFT left repeated messages after the beep in an effort to contact Johnson, but we received no response. Before the beep, though, Johnson wraps up the recording with his own message: “You have a great day, and remember — all lives matter.”
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eticia Hindrichs didn’t grow up in Fredericktown, but she didn’t come from terribly far away. “I grew up in a town a little bit further east of Fredericktown called Ste. Genevieve,” she says, mentioning yet another southeast Missouri town with an overwhelmingly white population of around 4,000 people. “And I am a brown kid that grew up in that town, and I can tell you that blatant racism my whole life has been a thing. I’ve gotten derogato-
ry terms thrown at me, I’ve gotten just not the consideration of my white friends beyond that. And then even going to Fredericktown — I played softball all through high school, and going to Fredericktown to do that, I was dealing with those same things there.” Hindrichs, 28, is one of the activists behind a edgling group called Missouri Social Activism, or MOSA. The group consists of ten organizers, all from the area, that operate a private Facebook group with a membership of about 500. To date, they’ve organized six protests in southeast Missouri — two in Farmington, two in Fredericktown and two in Park Hills. Hindrichs says they usually bring out about 50 or so people. Their motivations are pretty simple. “I think it’s just a general consensus that racism is bad, systematic racism is bad,” Hindrichs explains. “And I know some of the people in our group haven’t quite caught on to what all that entails, but I think it was just that emotional response to what happened with Minneapolis, what’s going on all over the country, and we knew that we needed to stand up and do something. And eventually we found each other in the local groups, talking shit to other racists, you know. We talked within a group chat, and that’s when we decided we needed to move forward with organizing things in that area.” orsey s first e perience at a protest was a MOSA-organized event. Previously, he’d had little interest in politics or activism, but after attending one of the protests in Farmington, he sooned joined as one of the group’s organizers. “Before all of this I always just kinda kept to myself. I didn’t really care about the media or politics or anything,” Dorsey says. “But I was at work and I seen on Facebook that they were hosting a Black Lives Matter protest in Farmington. And for some reason something inside of me said that I need to go. So I got off work, went straight up there, protested, and apparently I did really well, because so many people came up to me and were like, ‘We want you to lead the next one.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing; this as the first protest ve ever been to.’ I don’t normally speak out in front of people. But apparently I’m a natural.” Dorsey decided that he wanted the first protest he organi ed to be in his hometown of Fredericktown. Though the counterprotest that was organized in response was billed as a “Back the Blue”
