At the Croton Black Lives Matter Rally

2nd. UPDATE; I want to make clear that the first update in no way is to be taken as an insinuation that the BLM Rally or the organizers of the rally had anything to do with the act of vandalization I mentioned.  I apologize to those families and organizers if it was taken that way; I know one of the families quite well and have a very high regard for all of them. It pains me that the update could be looked at as an insinuation of the organizers or the rally, which was very well done and appropriate. I should have recognized that it could be seen as an insinuation, but I did not, and I apologize for not seeing that. My bad.

UPDATE: There was a little vandalism after the rally. Overnight a house in our neighborhood with lots of pro-Trump signs - well the signs disappeared. And someone hit the house across the street from them with an egg - even though they had no signs at all. Haven't really heard of anything else. 

The rally was Friday, at Vasallo Park from 3- 5 PM. I was there from about 3:30 to 4:40. I expect it ran over time.

It was interesting, well organized, and relatively low key, with a very good size crowd - probably close to 500. Pictures below. One of the main organizers was the daughter of a friend of mine. 

I didn't hear any "defund the police" or similar nonsense. The speakers I heard, with one exception (Colin Smith, County Legislator from Peekskill - he tried too hard - was weak - a screamer - sounded phony) were thoughtful, although mostly without any substantive ideas. An exception to that was  Mondaire Jones, who is running for Congress in the Democrat Primary. He offered some substance, some of which I agreed with and some I didn't. One woman speaker from Peekskill gave us a dose of critical theory - for instance "It's not enough to not be a racist you have to be anti-racist". OK. I think for many of the people there  - it was almost entirely white folks - it was cathartic.

Here are some photos - I'm told by a local person living near Vasallo that many at the rally were from out of the area. I recognized hardly anyone (FULL DISCLOSURE: I'm told that in fact most of the attendees were from the area) .

 

Here's Mondaire Jones

 

 

 

Comments

[Earl DePass]

Nice honest reflection Tom. Thank you.
What we have in Croton is special.

[Jessica]

I'm happy everyone was being respectful of one another and had a carthartic moment with good weather. Thanks for the pictures Tom. Great report and documentation too.

[Earl DePass]

Tom, I am taking back my previous post stating you made an honest reflection since you updated the original post to insinuate that the rally had something to do with vandalism on your property. Shame on you!

I take your insinuation personally because your are intentionally trying to criminalize my children, and the other great Croton kids,who organized this event by associating them with an alleged act of vandalization.

In fact, the kids worked closely with John Nikotopoulos and the Croton PD to make the event the peaceful event that it was.

Associating our youth with criminality is not mere folly.

I demand a public apology on your part be posted on this website and be sent to all the recipients of your email. I also want you to apologize to the juvenile organizers of this event and their parents.

You are someone I looked up to and brake bread with, and you are a leader in my Parish community. Repentance is in order. Don't you agree?

I also want to confirm that most of the attendees were locals. You posted you did not recognize many people. Is it because the faces were mostly young, and yiu are old, and stay your bubble? There is an ugly rumor going around that most of the attendees were not from Croton to try to discredit the efforts of our Croton High Schoolers.

The entire Croton Black Lives Matter event has been archived on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXBKaxxWA0HDExEmWN1lHIsRx9JeT6WAr 

[the Kahuna of Kersplash - Sweat]

Dear Brother Faranda,
Sorry to hear that you now have to deal with this cursed plague in your own backyard. It has now become quite obvious that BLM has precious little to do with race. For them, race is just a wedge issue which allows them to get into a position to accomplish a much, much larger goal. I suspect that many of the poor, naive and gullible folks who have been duped into marching under BLM's banner are completely unaware that it's actually a clever communist front, originally started by lesbians at war with God, and in league with the minions of satan, and that they're being used as useful idiots, by global elites, to advance an agenda different and alien from that which the great founders of this country envisioned, and to replace it with a tyrannical, godless system in which many of our former God-given rights and freedoms will be stripped away. Truth be told, BLM is actually racist itself, imprudently judging a whole race, i.e. whites, solely by the color of their skin, instead of by their individual merits, as the Great Dr. Martin Luther King taught.Their main goal is to destroy our country, and overturn the Judeo-Christian foundation upon which it was built. They are anti-Catholic, anti-traditional family, pro-abortion, pro-gender dysphoria, and pro LGBTQ. They are presently - allied with other violent individuals and groups such as Antifa - trying to bring about a cultural revolution, in this country and the world, similar to that which happened in Mao's China, Lenin's Russia, and Hitler's Germany. Sadly, human beings seldom learn from history, and are doomed to repeat it over and over again, only with a different cast of characters every time it happens anew. Such is now the case in our time.