Protesters Flood Streets in Belarus but Lukashenko Refuses to Bend

Friends,

This is what authoritarianism looks like—which is exactly the direction that we are headed, putting our democracy at great risk with the current president. 

Let's all make sure to vote in November.  And don't vote twice, as Trump suggested that Northern Carolinians could do this week (read: Ignoring warnings from election officials, Trump again suggests supporters should try to vote twice). Doing so is to commit voter fraud. 

Let's avoid what's happening right now in Belarus by making this election a landslide victory for the Biden Harris ticket and getting this fascist, would-be dictator out of power.

-Angela Valenzuela

#SayNoToFascism #Vote #Vote2020 #SayNoToWhiteSupremacy #Fascism #fascismo #VoteTexas #VoteHimOut #VoteOutTheGOP #VoteBlue #DictatorTrump

Protesters Flood Streets in Belarus 

but Lukashenko Refuses to Bend

The authorities sealed off streets in the capital to clamp down on demonstrations but mostly refrained from the heavy-handed violence.

MOSCOW — Protesters on Sunday again flooded into the capital of Belarus and towns across the country, signaling the depth of popular anger at President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, an iron-fisted leader who, fortified by strong support from Russia, has shown no sign of bending.

The Belarus protests have mobilized large numbers of people for nearly a month, since a disputed presidential election, and have been dominated by calls for Mr. Lukashenko to resign. They have struggled, though, to bend the will of an authoritarian leader who has rejected all compromise and scorned his critics as “rats,” “tricksters” and “traitors.”

The crowd on Sunday in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, appeared to be as large as those on three previous Sundays, when more than 100,000 people gathered to protest what they believe was a blatantly rigged presidential election on Aug. 9 and to demand that the declared victor, Mr. Lukashenko, cede power.

Defying government warnings, protesters in Minsk paraded up to lines of riot police officers blocking major avenues, shouting, “Shame!” and “Go away.” They waved red and white flags, which served as the national flag until Mr. Lukashenko replaced it 25 years ago — a year after he took office — with a more Soviet-looking standard.

Smaller protests were reported in Brest, a city in the west on the border with Poland; Grodno, a hotbed of opposition sentiment in the northwest; Gomel, a town in the southeast near Russia where Mr. Lukashenko has staged a number of pro-government rallies, and several other towns.

In an effort to reduce the size of the protests in Minsk, the authorities sealed off streets in the city’s center, shut down metro stations and deployed large groups of riot police officers. They arrested scores of people but mostly refrained from the heavy-handed violence that was seen when the protests began last month.

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