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Feb 6, 2022Liked by Matt Asher

As a Melbournian, this one hits close to home. I live about 10 minutes from the Shrine of Remembrance where those protests took place.

For those interested. I'll give you one personal experience (I have many more to tell) of mine. It involves a small protest I attended in Melbourne. Protesters were angry but peaceful (i.e. sometimes shouting at police and calling them cowards etc.). The police turnout was large, almost outnumbering the protesters in this case. As a group of 5 or 6, they would lock on to an individual in the crowd, then go up and fine or arrest them.

It was hard to tell what the person was getting in trouble for without getting up close and listening in on each conversation. At one point I left the crowd to film some cops fining/arresting someone. I stood about 20 metres away. 6 or so cops seemed to notice me. They whispered to each other and then started moving in my direction.

Hoping I was wrong, I stopped filming, and began to casually walk away, back into the crowd. Looking over my should, they were speeding up towards me. I walked on an angle to figure out if it was me they were following. It was. They changed their angle in line with me and sped up further.

At this point, I though, "fuck". These were fully armed men who I'd just seen mishandling a bunch of people for no reason, and now they were coming for me. So I ran. And they ran. Fortunately I'm fit. They weren't fit, and they had a lot of extra weight with all their gear. After 30 metres or so they gave up and I managed to get out of the suburb. But it scared the crap out of me. I've never had any run-ins with the police, no criminal record etc.

Why did they choose me? My best guess is that didn't have a mask on (most people at the protest didn'), so I was an easy target. I was also tall, stood out, and was wearing a leather jacket.

But that's just one story. Needless to say, if pressure by the US government on the Australian goverment to be more free, has the effect of producing more freedom (or at least updating the common knowledge that what our government is doing is really bad), then I'm on board.

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Feb 4, 2022Liked by Matt Asher

I like both editorials. Both are ideas worth keeping alive.

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