Live on Your Phone
For younger folks, this weekend seemed like the apocalypse: choppers in the sky, marching in the streets, burning buildings and drifting clouds of gas. They stood against authority, represented by the police, and in some cases, the National Guard. But if you’re old enough, this is really nothing new. It doesn’t look much different than the 1960’s, though watching live on social media adds a heightened immediacy, even if you can’t feel the rubber bullets.
Like the 1960’s, many young people felt drawn to stand for something, even in the midst of a world pandemic. A cause they could understand: inequity, a system unfairly stacked against their friends. They wore masks, perhaps for COVID-19, or to maintain some anonymity from the facial recognition software. Or maybe they thought it might help ease the pain of pepper spray.
Black Lives Matter
The issue is stark: authority that treats African Americans and particularly black men, differently than whites. It isn’t really about the individual police officer; many of them walked with the protestors, or kneeled down in prayer and solidarity during the early hours. As we would have said in the 1960’s, it’s “the system” that somehow designates black men for different treatment. Black Lives Matter may be a movement, but it is more importantly a statement of what “the system” does not seem to recognize. The statistics of racial imprisonment, and the litany of names where black men and boys were treated as “less,” is far too long to ignore.
Standing for the system, in place of Bull Connor or George Wallace, is the President of the United States Donald Trump. While he made the perfunctionary phone call to the grieving family of George Floyd, he was unwilling to listen to their grief, talking over their words. He also chose the racist 1960’s Miami Police Chief’s term to express his view on Twitter: “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. The President placed a greater value on property over life.
Lines Being Drawn
The lines were drawn up, just like an old Civil War battle. On one side the well equipped police: helmeted, padded, respiratored, equipped with gas and “non-lethal” force. On the other side, t-shirted and face masked protestors, seeking a target for their anger. Behind the line, organizers were calling out: “white bodies to the front”. They believed that the police would be more hesitant to advance.
The Protesters were looking for confrontation. They were looking to vent their anger and frustration. And the police knew there would be only one ending to this, no matter how many hours of peaceful protest preceded the final act. Many individual acts of kindness and solidarity might occur during the day, but conflict was inevitable as the sun went down. The cry went out from the protestors: “No Justice, No Peace”. And added to it: “F**k the Police”.
Burn Baby Burn
Violence begets anger and frustration. None of that is an excuse for vandalism and destruction, but it happens. How to impact a “system” that has all of the tools to drive you away? Destroy the products of that system: the stores, the restaurants, and the symbols of prosperity. Both sides looked to deflect the blame for these seemingly random acts.
The “system,” voiced by Attorney General Bill Barr, claims that dark subversive forces led by “ANTIFA” are encouraging destruction. The protestors claim that police “provocateurs” or white nationalist groups like the “Proud Boys” or the “Bugaloo Boys” (that’s a new one) are subverting the cause. While both sides may have some facts, the reality is that frustration creates anger, and anger needs an outlet. Cities have burned in frustration for centuries, it doesn’t require someone else to light the fuse.
So the riot goes on. The police fulfill their role, and the protestors get their confrontation. And for some of us, we wait for the chant of “Attica, Attica.” But that’s merely an echo of another time.
The Choice
Dr. Eddie Glaude is Chairman of the African-American Studies Department at Princeton University. He presents America with a stark choice: “we can either embrace change, or double down on the ugliness”. Historian John Meacham puts it a different way: “do we want history to see us as Bull Connor, or transformative”.
We are at a crossroads in America in so many ways. In the middle of a world pandemic, made infinitely worse by the mismanagement of the Trump Administration and 104,166 Americans already dead, we are now forced to face our society’s inequities. In a nation aching for national leadership, we have leader who hides from protest in the White House bomb shelter. At a time crying for national unity, the President is doubling-down on polarization to encourage his own voter turnout.
So it will be up to the individual cities, the mayors and the police chiefs, to reach across the line and find common ground. They must withstand the crashing waves of frustration and anger, and then find ways to transform “the system”, changes that will answer the legitimate demands for fairness. It will have to be from them, because the Commander-in-Chief can only tweet out division from his bunker.
