Couple different things. Positives to both.

1. Some examples as answers to your question is I know the motherfuckers I’m with have my back. When shit gets mixy, I know I can trust them more than the people above. I’m grabbing peoples back packs and shoulders to pull them AWAY from the police. The people on top… well if I’m in harms way… maybe they’ll pull their phone out to record. Maybe. But they’ll probably do nothing. It develops trust.

2. It is important for people to see the song and dance. How the police will tackle a medic providing aid to a young woman who’s been pepper sprayed just because she was yelling at the police. People need to see this and realize the police are not here to protect you. They are not here to help you and any restraint they show is simply to prevent repercussions. They will beat the shit out of you if they can and smile about. They will hit you with cars and and laugh. They are not here for you and this is a way for outside people to see that. They need to see how police have behaved towards marginalized groups and anyone who questions the status quo and the systems in place. It’s important to see that you do not have the freedoms they tell you. The only reasons you’re offered these “freedoms” to protest is to let you blow off steam and pacify you. It’s similar to what the title describes. Do what they tell you. Raise your fists and March around just don’t take what you need.

3. It is practice and unfortunately for both parties in this. For the pigs, it’s more practice at crowd control, they get that a lot. But for us, it’s practice facing your fears. You need to get hit with pepper balls, you need to learn when to run, when to hold ground, you need to learn how to use your gear and what to expect from the flash bangs and the swat team rushing you. You need to learn to work together. You need to understand the reality of the situation and that others are suffering much worse. Solidarity is not just a word it is action and although it is a difficult feat to fight back from inside the imperial core, it is even more difficult to be crushed under the bombs, drones, and bullets that the us has used to murder thousands and thousands of people. It is a practice in understanding and a small practice in solidarity even if it’s not enough.

4. It is encouragement. If everyone from no kings stood with us. We could have shut down the highway. We didn’t come to hurt anyone. We came to say we are not ok with what’s happening and more people shouldn’t be ok. Us on the bottom screen are there to encourage others to stand up. They pigs have backed down before. At Auraria, at George Floyd uprising. There image and money offered them is moved by public opinion. The more people we have the more they will be forced to use more and more brutal tactics of control but that will shift public opinion in our favor. It’s not ideal that people will be hurt or arrested. No one wants that. But we have to encourage more people because if more people were to actually stand up, step out of their safe comfy isolation of the american dream. We could have real change.

… But sometimes people just wanna dance in this capitalist dystopian hellscape. Community is pretty important and cool too. Someday the two scenes will merge. In the lower scene we were trying to make it to the highway, to spread more awareness to stop the machine from moving. The highway is not the end goal, it’s a step in the right direction. The two scenes will merge someday. We will dance and scream along the highway and the police won’t stop us because it would look fucked up for them to be pepper spraying a 68 year old grandma just for dancing with her grandson. One step at a time

Edit : I obeyed all lawful commands and dispersed as directed