VISIT DOWNTOWN LOUISVILLE: WE PROBABLY WON’T SHOOT YOU!
Is this our city’s next tourism slogan? Image makers are furiously weaving their woke principles to the city’s desperation for downtown activity.
The pandemic started the freefall but unhinged protesters set Louisville on a course to become Kentucky’s biggest ghost town.
The idiotic “driver hits Louisville protester” headline (on the video below) should actually read: “Woke thugs attack driver as one moron protester is deservedly run over”
Welcome to Louisville. We used to be fun!
After that driver wisely drove away from her terrorizers, one chased her to the next red light and pointed a gun at her before she sped away.
Louisville is a friendly town!
Did you notice the other car parked to intentionally block traffic at 6th and Liberty streets? That’s protesters attempting to shut down an intersection so that self-proclaimed marginalized people can scream about grievances to trapped drivers. In this case, a man pointed a gun at the woman driver.
Because woke school is always open and shall not be ignored.
After a year of protests that led to murders, attempted murders of police officers, mass shootings, looting, molotov cocktails, carjackings, and beatings of drivers just passing through, the image of downtown Louisville is deeply damaged.
Louisville Downtown Partnership executive director Rebecca Matheny has a tough job ahead. “If you don’t have a strong and vibrant downtown, then you don’t have a strong and vibrant city.”
Thriving businesses fund any city. Sales taxes on goods and services, levies on hotel rooms, restaurant meals, concert and show tickets, and a myriad of other legal purchases fuel growth.
Now Louisville just needs customers. Paying customers. People with discretionary income who make the choice to support Louisville enterprises. So by all means, let’s promote our vast entertainment offerings.
But hold your horses. Louisville’s highest officeholders are operating on wokeness instead of capitalist principles. Commerce be damned. People need their voices heard! Black Lives Matter demands that businesses accept their list of demands or they will make trouble!
Wait for it. The city does not react to a mob demanding payments from local business owners? Nope.
Isn’t this extortion? Nope…not if it’s woke! It’s re-education and reparations.
Mayor Greg Fischer and his Louisville Forward team are apparently focused on blaming white privilege for the city’s woes, nodding affirmation to protesters using destruction and force to advance their causes over the entire community’s financial stability.
From an April 18, 2021 Courier Journal piece on how to restart the city’s heartbeat:
“Downtown is not dangerous,” we are told in spite of Louisville’s record homicide rates, brazen acts of violence in the name of racial reckoning over the past 10 years, and Black Lives Matter making demands of business owners for forced donations – skewed hiring practices – banning of dress codes.
Why should a restaurant owner have any say in whether the maitre d decides to wear clothes? Dress codes are racist and oppressive! This maitre d wants to be nekkid and there’s nothing you can do about it, boss supremacist!
Louisville is suffering from a record number of shuttered businesses but let’s make it harder for entrepreneurs to thrive! Let’s allow BLM to tell them how to conduct business or else!
Officials are blaming COVID-19 for business failures but government PPP funds have sustained those who can wait out the pandemic. That swelling number of vaccinated people heading out to spend money? Yep, they are indeed venturing out to packed restaurants in other parts of the metro area but not downtown.
Hmmm. What could possibly be the difference?
The threat of violence is 99% of the difference. Just say it out loud. Louisville is perceived as a dangerous city, and downtown’s heartbeat will not be pumping at its full pace for years to come. If ever.
International news spotlighted Louisville for months as a violent, protest ravaged city controlled by mobs angered by the shooting of Breonna Taylor. She was shot in her home when Louisville cops bungled a midnight no-knock warrant.
Taylor hung out with drug dealers, primarily Jamarcus Glover, and visited him in jail to discuss money matters related to his “trap” house (drug den).
Breonna Taylor – jailhouse calls reveal connections to drug dealers Aug 25 2020
Taylor did not deserve to die. Her other boyfriend Kenneth Walker was with her on the night of the police raid and he shot at the cops. Police returned fire, killing Taylor. One police officer was shot in the leg by Walker.
Mayor Fischer did not back the Louisville Metro Police Department, forcing command staff to soften their approach to protesters spitting in their faces, screaming profanities, and even shooting two cops.
Others used the Breonna Taylor protests as cover to inflict mayhem on downtown Louisville, the West End, Old Louisville, and Highlands neighborhoods.
Federal indictments came for many of those who allegedly took part in looting pharmacies, carjacking, arson, and gun charges. Here are mug shots for a few of those who were charged by authorities.
From left to right: Brian Dean, Damion Hayes, Tevin Patton, Jean-Pierre Crowdus and Frederick Eaves. (Vontreil Bailey and Channel Lewis not pictured) (Source: LMDC)
For a city of less than a million people, Louisville generates more mayhem than it should. Worldwide media coverage of Breonna Taylor protest outrage continues to dampen Louisville’s appeal as a tourist destination.
Last summer, Atlanta activist Grandmaster Jay of the NFAC militia shouted through a protest bullhorn that if the Louisville police officers involved in Taylor’s killing were not sent to prison, then “we will burn the mother f***** down!”
Terroristic threatening, anyone? Not for a woke cause.
NFAC leader Grandmaster Jay just led everyone in a call and response. He said that if they don’t get the truth in the Breonna Taylor case, they’re going to “burn this motherfucker down.” #Louisville
— Hayes Gardner (@HayesGardner) July 25, 2020
That made global news. What didn’t make global news is whether Grandmaster Jay’s grandstanding was an orchestrated threat to induce the city to pay Breonna Taylor’s family $12 million. A separate GoFundMe page generated another $6.8 million for Taylor’s family.
Taylor’s mother Tamika Palmer recently slammed Black Lives Matter Louisville and woke state representative Attica Scott as “frauds,” insinuating that they glommed onto Breonna’s memory without providing real help.
Of course, no amount of money replaces losing a family member. Breonna’s death is a tragedy and it has inspired appropriate changes in the delivery of warrants.
But come on downtown, people! It’s as happy as Disneyland! Forget about those attacks by roving bands of punks in 2014 at Waterfront Park and through downtown. They beat up a grandfather on the bridge and pummeled a mother stopped at a red light with her kids in the car!
That’s 7 years ago! Today’s kids are punching people to awaken their wokeness. THANK YOU, SIR, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER!
2021’s emotional outbursts are just protesters rightfully expressing their exclusion! They’re being woke and they hope to beat wokeness into others who may be here as tourists!
Bring your 8-year-olds to the downtown cheerleading competition while so-called activists verbally abuse your children and tell them that they were born as racists! That sounds like great family fun!
BLM in Louisville winning the hearts and minds of little girls. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/M4pFFoEnP3
— Starscream CIA-Simulation Warlord 🇺🇸🦈🇺🇸 (@zerosum24) March 6, 2021
If you are an event planner choosing between Louisville, Nashville, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Lexington, St. Louis, or any other city in this region, one glance at the video of protesters cursing at 8-year-olds would strike Louisville off the list of potential convention sites.
“Come to LOO-uh-vul, y’all! Our angry citizens may punch you in the face so visit our bourbon distilleries early in the day…then you won’t feel the pain from woke protester fists!”
The primary exclusion issue in Louisville is the exclusion of safety and security. People won’t risk getting punched or robbed or carjacked as long as a weak mayor bows down to protest mobs instead of enforcing the law.
Adding additional negative optics is a recent arrest where one cop punched a protester multiple times. Dee Garrett, who carries a cross, could very well have been praying the rosary but LMPD says Garrett had created reason to arrest him for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
Many American media outlets amplify pro-activist stories juxtaposed with cops-are-evil narratives. Let’s see if this video of an LMPD officer punching Garrett becomes fuel for further damage to Louisville’s reputation.
Woke Louisville police chief Erika Shields has opened an investigation into the officer’s behavior without forwarding the cop’s explanation for having to punch at the man being arrested. Can we see/hear what’s on the body cam footage, please?
Chief Shields released a statement saying the incident “raises serious questions and is not consistent with LMPD training.”
Of course a cop should not punch a person being arrested unless the resistance creates imminent danger to the officer or anyone else affected.
There should be multiple body cameras recording on the various officers involved in this arrest. That evidence can either exonerate the cop or convict him of abuse. Let’s see what’s on the tape(s).
No one deserves to be abused. No one. Not protesters. Not cops. Not business owners. Not citizens just trying to move around their city. Not 8-year-olds pummeled with amplified vulgar threats from self-righteous woke activists.
Police should be able to arrest lawbreakers. The justice system should prosecute those who murder, assault, rob, rape, loot, pillage, burn, or otherwise destroy what was once a vibrant city. Sure, Oprah will pay their bail money and a woke lawyer will defend them pro bono but at least they’ll get a court date and a chance to be prosecuted.
A downtown revitalization group is set to deliver a plan by late May to “reimagine” activity in Louisville‘s central business district.
Get ready for a glowing report about downtown Louisville being safe, tidy, and a great place to live (especially if your life’s primary focus is equity). That means you must accept that daily murders, aggressive unsheltered panhandlers, and abusive “protesters” can stop your vehicle and demand that you “say her name” or face their group wrath, all just part of correcting injustices created by white supremacy.
But…but…but…we just wanted to have a meal to support a downtown restaurant. SAY HER NAME or face consequences, Karen!
That’s why people are having meals and gathering in other parts of town. Because downtown Louisville got woke and now it’s broke.
Tax revenues in the currently ghosted downtown Louisville are next to nothing. And we’ve got bills to pay.
The KFC Yum Center has been refinanced to the point that it will eventually default on its loan by unsustainable principle payment demands. The Omni Hotel is a $112+ million financial boondoggle that will ultimately fall back onto taxpayers for bailout. Fourth Street Live is whimpering to a halt from pandemic inactivity. It was already stiff-armed by locals after a multitude of violent activities scattered the crowds.
Downtown needs safety, security, and authoritative police presence, not woke social workers “suggesting” that people resist violence. No more talk of paying “interrupters” to dissuade angry young people from killing others.
By the way, if “interrupters” are actually thwarting potential murders, would Louisville’s current homicide total be 153 instead of the actual 53? Or maybe 253? Or 553 so far this year? How much insanity is running unchecked in this city?
Detroit went through all of this 50 years ago and lost half of its population. Is that how Louisville leaders “reimagine” us?
Community activist Christopher 2x tells me that kindergarten aged children are showing signs of violent pathology! Kindergarteners! 2X says our community healing focus starts with retraining babies not to embrace killing!
Where is parenting? Where is personal accountability? Where is sanity?
Don’t worry. LOO-uh-vul leaders are woke. They think that screaming mobs of antiracism protesters will amplify Louisville as a compassionate city. That racial equity will somehow bring in the tourism dollars! Yeah, OK. How’s Portland doing with that concept?
So we expect nearly a billion dollars a year in tourism to a city that has ignored psychotic graffiti images on highway signs for more than 5 years. It just stays there, screaming that Louisville is a city without pride, leadership, or fear of prosecution for lawlessness.
King Louis XVI wouldn’t take this crap. He’d sharpen up that guillotine and ‘ol LOO-uh-vul would stop slouching into anarchy.
But we are currently led by King Fishy. He just wants to hug a protester and tell these white privilege business owners (many of whom are not white) to just have their insurance company keep fixing the shattered windows and torched infrastructure.
Compassion will provide justice…not our racist “laws.” Woke people know that laws are general suggestions and should not be applied to people who exuberantly honor the memory of Breonna Taylor by looting, shooting, and carjacking. Let’s be compassionate and understanding while these violent activists destroy the city’s potential for economic growth that assists all citizens.
It’s the woke thing to do.
From the Courier Journal piece on reviving downtown:
Sounds like we’re doing great! Dear Nashville, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Lexington, St. Louis, and other convention spots…ENJOY our missed opportunities to host conventions! They’ll happily spend their money in your city where they’re not likely to get punched in the face while waiting at a stop light.
Louisville is home to two Ford plants. If they really want to boost profits, they should just manufacture tail lights. That’s all Louisville sees these days.