"Boogaloo", that's the code word being used by the very real white supremacist agitators, for "race war". I read reports this morning about them mingling with anti-police brutality protestors, trying to provoke the cops into violence that would have fallen disproportionately on the real demonstrators. Complicating things is that many of these white supremacists are anti-police out of resentment that the police have reacted to their own riots, so for them it's a two-fer. They wear Hawaiian shirts at demonstrations to identify themselves, which bums me out, since I have a closet full.

Here in Sacramento the reports say consistently that the cops resorted to violence first, unleashing their entire arsenal of "nonlethal" weapons. They sent one kid to the hospital with severe head wounds, firing rubber bullets at eye-level, apparently in a deliberate effort to blind people. Tear gas, pepper spray, beanbag and pepper rounds, and the traditional club, were on full display.

I walked through Capitol Park and around the Capitol this morning. Lots of graffiti on benches and monuments. There were groups of white people scrubbing off the "BLM" and George Floyd slogans, which I interpreted as an attempt to erase the speech of the Black protestors. I had mixed feelings about that, since Capitol Park is ten acres of manicured lawn and trees, chock full of monuments to firefighters and soldiers killed in action, warships named "California", but also a "World Peace Rose Garden"...bu nowhere are there monuments to the victims of police brutality. I think adhoc memorials like those deserve a little more respect (though they ultimate must be cleaned off, but not so brutally fast).

The Capitol building was fenced off along the street. Cops in twos and threes in black combat gear clustered in the shadows under the trees, staring back at us gawkers with blank hostility, ready to resume rioting at the slightest provocation. At the southern boundary, two Black guys were inside the fence picking up trash next to a group of cops. A jogger ran by and yelled "you're on the wrong side of the fence, bros!". Couldn't help myself, flashed a thumbs-up. The janitors looked embarrassed, and I wondered if they were prisoners dragooned into cleanup.

And so it goes. Back in 1965 my Dad loaded the family into the car and drove to Watts the day after the riots ended. Cops with rifles stood on the streets, watching the white gawkers drive the perimeter, while angry young Black men stood on the sidewalks, resentful at being gawked at like animals in cages.

America just hasn't changed all that much in half a century.