Why doesn't The Independent take a stand against militias?

The Independent received an award for that photograph of teens during a Black Lives Matter event in Edgewood last Summer. Congratulations! It is a great photo that deserved its front page placement and the award. So do the teens deserve credit. That said—lest we forget—those other blokes in the photos are armed three percenters. At the time, I looked in vain for an Editorial condemning armed intimidation of local teens by a bunch of thugs posing as patriots.

Still, I suppose that would make some Independent advertisers go all pouty. Heaven forbid that local firms providing aid and comfort, if not outright material support or membership, to individual and group insurrectionists and no-masker bioterrorists (groups with substantial boolean overlap) feel less than warm fuzzy treatment by the local media.

How low must the bar go before the paper risks taking a stand?

We know, of course that three percenter, oath keeper (with a large number of oath breaking and oath defiling members), proud boy and other traitorous violence and intimidation groups are key in recent DC and continuing nationwide seditious activity. And we know that parts of New Mexico are a petri dish for them. Of course, anyone who didn't refuse to know, knew the nature of such groups last summer, when The Independent chose to, with a straight face, offer up warm fuzzies to militia thugs, parroting their propaganda that they were present to “maintain a peaceful protest.”

How low must the bar be set before The Independent, version 2021, will say “way too low is low enough”?

Thomas Stuart Tijeras

The editor replies: The Independent rarely editorializes, and when we do, it's on local, not national issues. Additionally, as one of the reporters at that protest, I spoke at length to the two militia members in that photograph, and believe that neither of them are thugs.