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The rioting caught Simon Hinton by surprise. “It started on Friday with a protest for George Floyd,” he says. “I don't even think the cops were expecting things to explode.” But what began as a peaceful demonstration in Omaha, Nebraska, got out of control quickly: Suddenly, “almost 1,000 people were in the streets in a massive battle between cops and protesters,” Hinton says. “And from that point on through the rest of the night, it was just a mess.”
That’s more or less what Hinton, 25, had been hoping for. The self-professed revolutionary communist attended the protest with his comrades to “try to agitate things politically,” he tells me. And it worked: “It grew exponentially. Next thing you know, there's like 700 to 1,000 people in the street, marching straight down Dodge Street.”