We Came to the Forest

The number of reviews from people who didn’t listen to more than 10 minutes 🙄or who complain that the protesters don’t have their political ideology (MAGAT), or who don’t know what victim means, or who don’t understand nuance or that reporting doesn’t mean “defending”, or who don’t know actual American history and want everyone else to leave … well, the # is astounding. The relief is that the worst of these is dying off pretty quickly if not soon enough. So the podcast was done well enough, I’d say, but it was hard for me to completely see the POV of the protesters. I do wonder what it would have been like to have the other POV reported side by side.

This podcast blew me away! It is incredible what can happen in America that doesn’t get covered widely by news outlets. Even if you do not agree with a protestor’s political position they still have a right to protest. What sticks with me beyond the tragic details are the true hearts and feelings of these maligned main actors. Also that these actions in the sixties would have been called ‘peaceful protest’ not ‘terrorism’. And the commentary that any violation of any citizens’ rights is wrong and will only lead to further violations of larger and less marginalized groups.

Personally I really liked this, I thought it did a good job of showing different POVs. Clearly it was biased towards the protestors, telling their POV, but I thought it also did a good job of highlighting some of their missteps and the racial tensions and how they can be perceived as out of touch. I also have a personal bias towards the liberal side so I’m sure that factored into how I experienced this podcast. Even with that, honestly I kind of symbolically rolled my eyes a lot - the fact that they’re white and gender bending (foreign to the majority of the black community in the US) and the community seems to be against them too, clearly unorganized, clearly taking a lot of wrong steps and playing right into the hands of people that want to demonize them, makes it hard to fully be on their side. I’m so glad they had Matthew on there because he felt more grounded than anyone, until the end. I kind of want to send this to my GenZ sister who is a lot more progressive than me and see what she thinks, but she doesn’t listen to podcasts… I will say I’ve been amazed at and disheartened by the complete 180 from 2020 to now and I don’t know how to get that momentum back. Clearly we need different tactics. I’m also a supremely practical person and I’d like progressives to be a little more centered in reality; but then again idealists are the ones who change the world.

Thought the story was interesting. Was a little miffed by the protestor behavior which was a drag…