Oh, boy are we concern trolling HARD right now in Chicago: 

The protest did bother some shoppers, many of whom said they were from out of state and only had the day to check out Chicago’s Mag Mile stores. There were confrontations between protesters and frustrated shoppers, who in some cases enlisted the help of nearby police to get into stores.

“I understand the protest, but there’s got to be a better way,” said Sue Hahn, who came with her family from Southwest Michigan. She was turned away from American Girl Place.

“It’s inconvenient. We planned this for two months,” she said. “But what can you do.”

There’s got to be a better way? Yeah, there is. STOP SHOOTING UNARMED YOUNG ADULTS WHO ARE NOT THREATENING YOU AT ALL, BECAUSE YOU ARE ASKEERED OF BLACK PEOPLE AND/OR HAVE HOPPED YOURSELF UP ON SOME KIND OF RACE WAR OF THE WORLDS EMOTIONAL METH FUMES AT THE F.O.P. DINNERS. That’s the better way. Like I’m sorry your shopping day was bummed out but there are dead people, and the dead people win, and the people who look like the dead people get to decide who gets inconvenienced right now and just shove your inconvenience generally.

A better way. Yeah, tell everybody else how to do it. Tell everybody else how to protest just right, so that no one is inconvenienced. That’s the POINT. If you are not inconvenienced, you do not notice, and if you do not notice, then smug comfortable jerksticks can keep writing columns about how nobody’s protesting enough or in the right way, forever and ever amen. The people who are inflicting harm are not the ones who get to lecture here. They’re not the ones in danger:

In many cases, police had already blocked off the stores and ordered stores to not let anyone in or out. Many shoppers inside American Girl Place and Macy’s at Water Tower Place could be seen pacing by the closed front doors of the store, not able to leave.

A security guard at Water Tower Place said management made the decision to temporarily close the building with shoppers inside. It would open up its doors when police deemed it safe, he said.

Barricades were erected outside of the Macy’s at Water Tower Place.

If the city spent a fraction of the time protecting the homes and streets of poor African-Americans as they do protecting the goddamn American Girl Place, if we literally declared a federal emergency over the lives of poor African-Americans the way we do over Americans at risk from imaginary Syrian refugee terrorists, and debated for days in Congress about how nothing was too much if it kept “our people” from harm, there wouldn’t be any protests to critique.

So spare me the “but black people kill more black people than … but he was on drugs … but his family is probably scamming …” You do not get to excuse yourself from caring by citing Wikipedia or a thing your cousin told you he heard from the friend of a friend. And YOU ARE NOT BETTER BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE SUCKS. This is a basic rule of being a human. You are responsible for you. And if you genuinely think that a nice day you had planned downtown is equivalent to a 17-year-old with 16 bullets in him, go back to people school.

A.