I can think of several good reasons why protesting is a really bad idea right now:

• The virus doesn't care if your cause is just.
• If you end up going to jail, that's another hotspot.
• It provides cover for violence.
• The courts are going to do whatever they do at their own pace anyway.
• The long-term work of police reform isn't even going to begin until the crisis is over.

And yet, despite all these good reasons, I don't see leaders, black or otherwise, clearly saying that people should stay home. For example, Obama's statement is carefully neutral on this. It seems to be taboo?

But I'm out of touch. What am I missing?

There's a lot of unrest in the US lately, with protests going on in several cities.

How do you feel about the state of things in the US, regarding racism, police brutality, etc...? What's your viewpoint on the protests? How do you see the situation evolving? Some fear deadly confrontation between military police and civilians.

Have you had the misfortune of having a negative encounter with police officers? Care to tell your story? Have you participated yourself in one of these protests? What was your experience like? If you haven't, do you keep yourself informed? Where do you primarily find news? What's the general mood in your neighborhood, in your community, in your city?

We've seen protests pop up a lot more in recent years in various parts of the world - eg. Hong Kong, Lebanon, France, etc... Do you feel that this is symptomatic of a larger, global unease? Or can the US protests be considered wholly specific?

The main advantage of this is that updates can be organized and followed daily like on the COVID threads (which is especially useful if you don't live in the US and can't keep track of what's going on) and the main disadvantage is that unlike COVID, we have no idea if this will go on long enough or be dynamic enough to truly merit that. (Although in @dubteedub's COVID post he doesn't discount doing updates every 3 days, which we could do although that conflicts with 7-day weeks)

There are many thoughtful posters on Tildes that are much more eloquent than I. In the discussion of recent events I find myself struggling to successfully illustrate these issues.

Any help would be appreciated.

Decided I'd post a text post and provide links to all the content, since there's so much and it's all quite diverse. I'll update this post throughout the day with more content:

• NASA Press Release: NASA Astronauts Launch from America in Historic Test Flight of SpaceX Crew Dragon
• Live stream & launch video, courtesy SpaceX & NASA. This is going to be live all the way through to docking with the ISS.
• NASA Spaceflight (Good resource, quite in-depth): SpaceX Dragon’s historic launch dodges weather to launch and end the gap
• SpaceNews: Crew Dragon in orbit after historic launch, by Jeff Foust
• The Verge: A cute stuffed dinosaur hitched a ride on SpaceX’s historic launch
• The Verge: Watch NASA astronauts fly SpaceX’s Crew Dragon using touchscreens