Leftist Media Hails 'Iconic' Pic of BLM Activist's Arrest for Blocking Traffic

She was the calm at the center of the storm, a storm spreading across the country.

The young woman stood silently on the cracked asphalt, her summer dress billowing in the breeze.

Around her swirled a kinetic mix of police officers and protesters. Dozens of demonstrators had blocked Baton Rouge’s Airline Highway on Saturday to denounce the death four days earlier of Alton Sterling, shot by police outside a convenience store. Many protesters carried signs. Some shouted into bullhorns. A few carried guns.

A phalanx of police officers stepped across the road, dressed in riot gear.

Jonathan Bachman was snapping pictures of protesters yelling at the officers when he turned and saw her.

The woman in the summer dress didn’t seem to look at the two officers as they ran toward her. Instead, she seemed to look beyond them — even as they arrested her.

“She just stood there and made her stand,” the Reuters photographer told BuzzFeed. “I was just happy to be able to capture something like that.”

Bachman’s powerful photo quickly went viral.

The young woman’s stoic pose drew comparisons to Rosa Parks’s refusing to give up a seat at the front of a segregated bus or “tank man” facing down war machines in Tiananmen Square.

Some likened her to a modern-day Statue of Liberty, guiding a bitterly divided country back toward the proper path.

Others called her a “superhero.” [Emphasis in original]

A group of demonstrators had formed a blockade—blocked Airline Highway, which runs in front of Baton Rouge Police headquarters. So law enforcement came out, consisting of several departments within Louisiana … they had come out in riot gear to clear the protestors off to the side of the road. In that attempt, they arrested three to four people as some of the demonstrators confronted the line that the police had created, but for the most part they were able to move everyone off to the side of the road.

I had my attention on people confronting the police on the side of the road … I had turned to look over my right shoulder, I think that I had heard this women say something about she was going to be arrested, and I saw this woman, and she was standing in the first lane in that road.

It happened quickly, but I could tell that she wasn’t going to move, and it seemed like she was making her stand. To me it seemed like: You’re going to have to come and get me. And I just thought it seemed like this was a good place to get in position and make an image, just because she was there in her dress and you have two police officers in full riot gear.

It wasn’t very violent. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t resist, and the police didn’t drag her off.

Baton Rouge 2016. Tiananmen Square 1989. If you lauded Tank Man, speak up for #LeshiaEvans. pic.twitter.com/92b0VWyWYE

— rahaeli (@rahaeli) July 11, 2016