Protest this, not that, no this thing

A couple of days ago I got into it on Twitter, as I am wont to do, with a couple of people after one guy posted “I'm still waiting for the outrage and protests by the radicals in San Francisco for the murder of 16 year old Victorria,” referring to the unbelievably tragic case of Victorria Moran-Hidalgo, a runaway from Modesto who was found dead of a suspected overdose in a South of Market alley.

Now, when people say “You protested this, which I don’t care about, but you should be protesting this, which I do care about,” what they’re actually doing is trying to attack people who protested X on the supposed ground that they’re hypocrites for not protesting Y. This is, of course, ludicrous; there are millions of things to protest and no one can protest them all. Some people in San Francisco protest in favor of more funding for public transit. Some people in Florida wave Nazi flags at the entrance to Disney World to protest in favor of Ron DeSantis. Nobody accused anyone at either of those protests of being a hypocrite for not being at the other one.

So anyway police have since arrested a guy who is accused of having sex with Moran-Hidlago shortly before her death, and this is the precipitating event that led to the post I mentioned above. I got into it with a guy who said we should be protesting “judges and the system” and I asked him if he’d organized any protests against “judges and the system” and he said yeah he had but it was “useless” and I asked him why he’s faulting other people for not protesting if it’s useless and I never heard from him again.

You used to see this argument deployed a lot during the George Floyd protests and it was usually something like “why don’t they protest when black people kill each other” and besides the fact that protests are usually about systemic injustices and not personal crime and also no one ever said “why don’t they protest when white people kill each other,” the fact is that the African-American community regularly holds protests and demonstrations on this very issue. Once again, the charge of “why don’t you protest Y” turns out to be either factually inaccurate, logicaly flawed, racist, or all three.

The real takeaway is you’re not going to change anyone’s mind on Twitter, but sometimes I’m bored and can’t help myself.

Non-shitty dept.

I had occasion to be in Los Angeles this week and upon my return to Garbage City I had the pleasure of being driven home by JULIAN, a boisterously friendly Brazilian who I had a lovely chat with. Wanna know what? If you’re feeling down about things, talk to a Brazilian. Now, I normally don’t love chitchat with my Lyft drivers, but it was impossible not to enjoy talking to Julian. (BTW, he recommended Florianópolis, which I have since learned is “the capital of southern Brazil’s Santa Catarina state” and “is made up mostly of 54km-long Santa Catarina Island.” One day!)

And in food news, do not sleep on the prix fixe menu at Violet’s! I had the pleasure of having it a few weeks ago and it is, rather unbelievably, $35 for three courses and only $18 more for wine pairings. That, my friends, is a San Francisco steal. And it’s a great room and feels like a bit of the Mission dropped into the sleepy Outer Richmond. Do try it.