In cities all across the country fans have rejoiced at the beginning of another season of football, but there are at least two places where the celebration has been a bit muted. One is New York if you happen to be a Giants fan. The other is Minneapolis where the fans of the Vikings ran into a completely non-sports related issue courtesy of the Black Lives Matter chapter in St. Paul. The group was back in action this weekend protesting the latest case of alleged misconduct by “law enforcement” by blocking the light rail tracks as people were trying to make it to the stadium for the game.

Roughly 100 protesters assembled in St Paul to protest what they said was excessive force on a 17-year-old with autism.

At about 10:15, protesters began to march west on the light rail tracks after a rally in the middle of the intersection of Lexington and University. The group staged a die-in on the tracks before walking to the Western District police station.

Later the protesters returned to Lexington Avenue, where they said the would remain until the Vikings noon kickoff time.

This all started with an earlier confrontation between 17 year old Marcus Abrams and the metro police. (As opposed to the actual city cops.) Abrams, who is black, was standing on the railroad tracks when the officers spotted him and yelled at him to get off before he got himself killed. The boy allegedly jumped back onto the platform where he was confronted by the authorities and resisted arrest, resulting in a fairly severe beating. Unfortunately the kid is autistic and mostly blind, but the cops apparently didn’t realize that.

With that as the backdrop, it’s reasonable that some of the locals might want to protest and demand answers. But the method they chose, rather than just protesting at the metro offices or taking their case to city hall, was to block the light rail line on the morning of a Vikings game. In this way they managed to take out their frustration on everyone in the city rather than the actual people they sought to hold accountable. Traffic to the game had to be diverted to extra buses to make up for the missing rail service.

One of the more disturbing elements of the story (shown in pictures at the link) is that while people were holding a “die in” and literally lying on the tracks, the cops were standing nearby monitoring the situation. Is this what we’ve come to now with the BLM movement? Are the police so frightened of looking bad on CNN that they will no longer even do their jobs? Protesters for any cause (or parades for that matter) aren’t even supposed to block the city streets without obtaining a permit. And they most certainly can’t legally tie up commerce and transportation on the railroad tracks. Why wasn’t there a wagon on hand to start arresting people and hauling them off to jail? Instead, a relatively small group of SJW agitators were allowed to effectively shut down part of the city’s infrastructure for hours.

Way to go, folks. The BLM movement is certainly making friends and influencing public opinion everywhere they go.