America

Stay on the sidewalk.
There is no sidewalk.
Oh well, you’re going to jail.

[Update – merci to JL for links to a couple of official bail funds:

Baton Rouge arrestees – https://www.crowdrise.com/baton-rouge-bail-fund, run by the

Chicago arrestees – https://t.co/OU9KFdlYYo]

McKesson was taken into custody around 11 p.m. in what two fellow activists who witnessed it described as a physically violent arrest.

“The officers won’t give their names,” said Brittany Packnett, one of Mckesson’s co-founders of the group Campaign Zero, a prominent activist collective. “He was clearly targeted.”

Packnett said McKesson was using his smartphone to live stream the ongoing protests when police began forcibly dispersing the crowds. As McKesson and a group of about eight people walked down the street an officer approached him and told him that he had been “flagged” and that if he left the sidewalk again he would be arrested.

Moments later, she said, two officers forcefully arrested McKesson.

“They tackled him, one officer hit the top of his body and another officer the bottom,” Packnett said.

Hopefully the immediate and intense scrutiny of the arrest will help protect McKesson and the 33 other people who were arrested from the worst excesses of Louisiana’s police/prison system. But I don’t think I’ll be able to dredge up some cautiously not pessimism until I know more.