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Feature
PROTESTS Continued from pg 11
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 ȵag but big problems with being asked to wear a mask in public, and isn’t shy to mention that he carries a gun.
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“Why do I carry? Because people are crazy and you never bring a Nnife to a gun fightȋ he Zrote 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 Zas 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 &onstitutionȇs Thirteenth Amendment, can be made to work for corporations for free.
“So someone asked me to watch the 1etȵi[ 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
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 Zanted to Zrap 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 Ȋ7he &onfidence of a Self-Entitled White Man” — a 30-day trial for only $19.99. RFT called the number, and a man 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.”
Leticia 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 derogatory 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 ȵedgling 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.” 'orseyȇs 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 Zas the first protest ,ȇve 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”
event, Dorsey says his protest was not meant to be about policing at all — he just wanted to prove that racism was alive and well in the small town.
He says he saw pushback online from some in the community immediately upon announcing his plans.
Ȋ:henever , first posted that , was doing this protest in Fredericktown, so many people were saying, like, ‘Racism is not a problem in this town,’ and that I’m ‘just bringing racism and hate to this town,’” Dorsey says. “And they think that since Fredericktown is just a small community, they think that they’re better than everyone and racism is not a problem and everything. Whereas I’ve been living here for sixteen years and I’ve been kicked out of stores. I’ve just been treated differently in this town solely based on my skin color. And if you look at me you couldn’t even tell if I was mixed, if it wasn’t for my hair. But I still get treated differently.
“So many people were saying that racism is not a problem,” he continues. “But then I do this protest and I have two to 300 people on the other side literally calling me the N-word the whole entire time. How can you say that racism’s not a problem in this town when people are just blatantly being dumb?”
The group plans to continue organizing protests in their communities for the foreseeable future. Hindrichs says they hope to eventually branch out into more community outreach endeavors, such as gathering school supplies for needy kids in the area and doing food drives. But meanwhile, they hope to educate people about the role racism plays in American society in general, and southeast Missouri in particular.
“I would say that our original mission statement, and what we hope for in the future, is just to be able to reach out to our community and educate on these systematic injustices and how they affect not only Black and indigenous people of color in our area, but how they also affect us and how we educate and how we raise our children and how we see other people around us,” she says. “And that’s always been a big thing for us, is to get that education out there about things that people don’t always know, or they just kind of ignore because it doesn’t affect them.”
By all accounts, the protest in Fredericktown on July 10 was a much tamer affair than the one held in June.
Far fewer counterprotesters showed up at the scene, though the number of guns remained roughly the same, mostly in the hands of the Three Percenters and the Boogaloo Bois — both groups appeared to have brought in more of their members in response to what they’d seen last time.
There were still some tense and disheartening moments. Hamlin says he saw a man dressed in an $mericanȵag shirt bend doZn and address his young children, gesturing to the protesters and saying, “Look how stupid Black people are.” That same man also tried to get his Nids to ȵip off a photographer, Hamlin says. In a video Hamlin shared with the RFT, the man can be seen mocking protesters’ chants while his excruciatingly bored children stand at his feet. One grabs him by the arm at one point and tries to pull him away to leave.
Dorsey says he had a drink thrown at him by a belligerently drunk man who was being escorted away from the scene.
“From what I’ve been told he had passed out or something. But the whole entire time he was just yelling at us,” Dorsey says. “He was saying ‘Blacks are wack,’ and he kept saying stuff like that. And he’s being escorted to leave, and I just see him gearing up to throw the drink, his arm’s cocked back, and something inside of me said, ‘That’s coming right at me.’ And I haven’t said anything to this man. And he threw it at me, and luckily I kicked it down — I kicked it out of the air and it bounced back up and I caught it and I just gave it to the cops.”
Continued on pg 14
PROTESTS Continued from pg 13
Dorsey also spotted a couple of neZ rather headscratching ȵags waved by some at the event, including a black and blue Confederate ȵag Zith a blue line through the middle of it, as well as a half-American half&onfederate ȵag hybrid.
“And you guys get mad at us for holding an upsidedoZn ȵagȋ 'orsey says. Ȋ7hatȇs Must contradicting everything you guys say about the ȵag.ȋ
But, all things considered, it was far less intense than the June protest. +indrichs says there Zas also less screaming between the two groups. 6he says 026$ organi]ers took steps in advance to ward off confrontation, instructing protesters not to respond to every insult hurled in their direction, and to instead focus on the tasN at hand.
“If somebody calls you a bitch, then you taNe it. <ou donȇt have to have those argumentsȋ she says. “And I think when we got that message through to people, that we are there to relay a message and sometimes Zhat Zeȇre doing in between that is not productive, then it started to get better and there were less confrontations. $nd there Zas more ability to cross the line and reach out to people and talN to people.ȋ 026$ organi]ers came armed with talking points and pamphlets to distribute as Zell. 'orsey says they designated a tree in the area to be the spot that people who wanted to debate could go to do so. 7hat Zay instead of Must shouting across the street at one another, people could get together and talN their differences out.
“And people were actually having debates and listening to one another and actually kind of coming togetherȋ 'orsey says.
Johnson was on the scene again as Zell +amlin confirms but this time he didnȇt bring a 3$ system — instead, he had some conversations with some of the protesters, no longer attempting to drown them out Zith his oZn speaNers. $ feZ posts on -ohnsonȇs )acebook page, in reply to someone who was asking how the protest went, shed some light on his view of those discussions.
Ȋ7hey Zere pretty peaceful. , had several great conversations. Wish I had more answers but it Zas productiveȋ he Zrote in one post, before noting a conversation Zith one specific Zoman in another post. Ȋ, told her , Zould be praying for her. 6he Zas a sZeet girl. 7heir hearts seem to be in the right place. 6ome good people in the movement. , Must donȇt line up Zith them politically.ȋ ,n +amlinȇs vieZ a crucial difference betZeen -ulyȇs protest and -uneȇs is that -ulyȇs protest didnȇt have a large group of counterprotesters high on right-wing fantasies of lawless protesters spoiling for a fight. 0any of the townsfolk that had attended the first event saZ that the protesters Zerenȇt rioting or hurting anyone +amlin figures so they opted to stay home.
“I do believe that maybe some of them legitimately thought that there could have been some sort of riot or whatever, depending on what it is they see, but I do think a lot of them literally Must Nind of came out to be combativeȋ +amlin says of -uneȇs protest. Ȋ:hether or not they wanted to save their town, they Must Zanted to be combative. But none of the protesters wanted to be combative. $nd , thinN that that also helped a lot of the counterprotest lose steam, was knowing that if they came out, no matter how aggressive they were gonna be, nobody was gonna respond to that. 6o anybody Zho Zas looNing for maybe an altercation or a fight most of those people didnȇt come bacN because they NneZ it Zasnȇt gonna happen.ȋ 'orseyȇs assessment is largely the same.
“I think it was more that they reali]ed Ze Zerenȇt there to cause a riot; we were there to make a change and educate peopleȋ he says. Ȋ$nd , guess theyȇre liNe Ȇ2. maybe theyȇre not as bad as Ze thought.ȇ 6o , guess people came into the mindset of wanting to listen and maybe change.ȋ :ith -ulyȇs protest so carefully regulated and organi]ed as 026$ continues to hone its tactics +indrichs agrees that they were simply better able to get people to listen to Zhat they had to say. $nd thatȇs already paying dividends. +indrichs says the group has since had a number of people reach out to them through the groupȇs )acebook page, as well as some of the pages of the individual organi]- ers to learn more of Zhat theyȇre all about.
Ȋ$nd , thinN thatȇs great because it gets us out of that situation of high stress, tensions being thick, and I think with how the protest went it was easier for people to reach out to us afterwards without feeling threatenedȋ she says. $ll told itȇs heartening for 'orsey a young organi]er Zho Must Zants the best for his hometoZn.
Ȋ, feel liNe change is comingȋ he says. Ȋ$nd , thinN people are finally listening instead of Must Zriting us off.ȋ n
