Cover Story
Protesters: The issue is not vandalism, it is police brutality against Black and brown people
Protesters in Louisville say they don’t want vandalism to be the headline, but it has become one. For a second night, street protests in Louisville turned to vandalism as police moved in Friday evening with tear gas and pepper pellets aimed at an estimated 1,000 protesters. Louisville police, Mayor Greg Fischer and Gov. Andy Beshear…
How To Support Racial Justice And Diversity This Week In Louisville
TUESDAY, June 9 Want to Help End White Silence? Zoom Free | 5:30 p.m. This free talk from Louisville Showing Up for Racial Justice is for white people who want to learn how to truly help Black people and other people of color. “We cannot undermine white supremacy without engaging more white folks to work…
Watch the video for Prayer Line’s song ‘Chopping Mall’
The horror-rock band Prayer Line has released a video for their song “Chopping Mall.” It’s a distorted and psychedelic music video that splices in scenes from the 1986 sci-fi cult film of the same name, a movie where security robots turn rogue and attack teenagers inside a mall. The song was originally featured on Prayer…
We Screwed Up, And We Are Profoundly Sorry
We ran a headline on a social media post Friday that was insensitive, tone-deaf and insulting to Black people and everyone who has been on the streets risking lives. We are sorry, and we will work to make sure it does not happen again. One of our staff wrote the headline, and I did not…
5 Things To Do In Louisville This Weekend (6/5)
ALL WEEKEND Protests for Black Lives Louisville Free | Times vary Protests asking for justice for Breonna Taylor, David McAtee and other Black people killed and brutalized by police continue this weekend. Every day, protesters gather at Jefferson Square downtown from noon to 7 p.m., dispersing from there afterward. But, there are other marches planned…
How to Support LEO
For the first time in our 30-year history, LEO Weekly is asking readers for financial help. Since our first publication in 1990 LEO has been free to pick up and has relied on advertising to support operations. Pre-pandemic, we were already running on a very lean budget. Since the pandemic, our operating budget has been…
Racism: ‘If we don’t get it at this point, we really are in trouble’
In 1965, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knelt and led 250 marchers in prayer after they were arrested for trying to get African Americans registered to vote in Selma, Alabama. In 2016, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee on the sideline to call attention to police killings of African Americans. He was blackballed from the National Football League. The two events…
Savage Love: Blinders
Q: Here goes: I’m a 32-year-old gay male, and I have trouble staying out of my head during sex. I feel like there may be many issues. The one non-issue is everything works fine on my own. When I’m single or “available,” I am OK. Let’s be honest: I’m a slut, and I enjoy it. But when I invest in…
Thorns & Roses: The Worst, Best and Most Absurd (6/4)
Thorn: No soldiers in The West End Send soldiers, weekend soldiers at that, into The West End to break up a parking lot party? What could go wrong? Someone was killed — David McAtee, a beloved, neighborhood barbecue seller. Cops now claim a video shows him shooting. It may be he had a gun and…
A poem from Frank X Walker: NaPoMo Bonus #24
To the White Women Who Formed a Line Between Black Protestors and Police Thanks, but you owed us that. Almost every slave ship captain, Confederate officer, Grand Cyclops, Tulsa rioter, lynch mobber, redliner, biased judge, and killer cop started out as your baby boy. Almost anything good about men is often a credit to their…
Breonna Taylor, Kenneth Walker, David Mcatee, Covid-19 and anti-blackness
On the evening of May 31, LMPD and the National Guard drove into the Russell neighborhood of West Louisville. They had no good reason to be there, and no protesting was taking place. In downtown and East Louisville the night before, groups were dispersed after curfew with loudspeakers and pepper bullets and tear gas and…
What is your responsibility? For too many white people, doing nothing seems to be the answer.
What are we white people to do in the wake of the latest, highly publicized string of brutal wrongs people who look like us continue to do to innocent Black people? Recent tragic episodes range from a white woman calling police with the lie that an innocent Black birdwatcher is assaulting her in New York’s…
Make the police, justice system less racist
There is so much to say. Too much for this column. But there is no time to waste. I’ve been writing columns for a long time. Usually, I try not to write something that others have written. Today, I realize that in some situations, that’s not the right attitude. Some points have to be made…
Rethinking the police: no traffic stops, no-knock warrants
Justice for Breonna isn’t enough. To stop the unjust, unnecessary killings of Black Americans, what is needed is fundamental change in the powers and responsibilities of police, as well as our expectations of them. Simply, state and local police should no longer have the authority to engage civilians. What does that mean? Just keep the peace. No…
Tuesday’s protest: A peaceful march, no tear gas, no confrontations
Tuesday’s protest didn’t end until after midnight, and there was no clash with the police, no tear gas and no arrests. It was a night of changed tactics from the authorities, as the LMPD and the National Guard remained largely invisible, generally staying several blocks from the crowd, not engaging or enforcing the curfew. The…
Questions, anger surround David McAtee’s death in confrontation with police and Guard
[Editor’s Note: On Tuesday, The Louisville Metropolitan Police Department released footage that they said showed David McAtee firing first at police and the National Guard before being shot. You can watch the video here. Based on the footage, LEO cannot confirm if McAtee fired and, if he did, whether he fired first.] Why were Louisville police…
From peaceful protest to tragedy: Notes from Sunday in Louisville
Forty minutes before the 9 p.m. curfew Sunday, police dispensed tear gas, dispersing a crowd of hundreds in Jefferson Square Park downtown. Early Monday morning, the LMPD and the National Guard moved in to clear a group of people from a parking lot at 26th Street and Broadway, more than 20 blocks from where the…
Police in Lexington kneel, pray with protesters, Louisville man who sells barbecue dies as police try to clear crowd
[Ed. note: This story has been updated to reflect that authorities say David McAtee is shown on video firing a shot before he was killed.] While Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer has pleaded for peaceful protest, he has allowed National Guard into the city and tacitly endorsed baton-wielding, tear gas-throwing, armored cops. For four days and…
West of Ninth: David McAtee, in his words
Louisville police and National Guard were called to disperse a group of people at 26th Street and Broadway shortly after midnight Monday. This was not near the protests downtown. It seemed their only crime was breaking the 9 p.m. curfew. Police claim they were fired upon, and now they claim the shooter was David McAtee,…
Protesters don’t like curfew, National Guard, but they still came out
Less than an hour and a half before curfew on Saturday night, a Louisville protester was skeptical of the 9 p.m. curfew rule the city enacted to stem the vandalism and looting that occurred downtown Saturday evening. “I don’t know,” he said. “Is he [the officer who shot Breonna Taylor] going to get indicted at…
Marching for justice for Breonna Taylor… or 400 years later, justice is still Black and white
The removal of a hand from the King Louis XVI statue during Thursday night’s street protests over Breonna Taylor’s killing may very well carry the weight of premonition for Louisville and America. This King Louis was famously beheaded in the French Revolution, erasing with him the vestiges of monarchy from that country. Louisville was named…
