Music Monday: “What’s Going On”

It’s the chorus that sticks with me right now. I just keep singing it over and over in my head:

Picket lines and picket signs
Don’t punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what’s going on
What’s going on
Yeah, what’s going on
Ah, what’s going on

But overall, it is hard to know what’s going on today. The plot got lost as those who wanted to incite violence wound up taking over the throne, and folks at the national media networks focused on the the looting.

Some of the peaceful demonstrations turned violent because there were outside agitators there. Some of them turned violent, well, because the police were there in MRAPS and riot gear.

Plenty of police chiefs went on the record after the footage of George Floyd being murdered went viral and said that they were horrified by what happened to him. That it shouldn’t have happened. That that is not what officers are trained to do.

And yet. Here we are today. With curfews starting at mid-day in some places.

With 4,400 people or so arrested because of riots and looting…and also for sometimes just walking the wrong way while trying to leave a protest.

People getting teargassed during a fucking pandemic no less, where the virus loves to enter the respiratory system.

People literally getting their eyes shot out and shot in the throat with rubber bullets (misnamed non-lethal or less lethal rounds).

Father, father
We don’t need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some lovin’ here today, oh oh oh

I wish, Marvin. I wish.