“This business will get out of control...it will get out of control and we will be lucky to live through it.” - Admiral Joshua Painter (played by Fred Thompson) onboard the USS Enterprise, from the movie “The Hunt for Red October”
I know about the Rodney King riots. I am aware they happened and I know it was a big moment in the news at the time but I was 10 years old and not able to grasp the whys of the protests and violence. Similarly, the Crown Heights riots happened in 1991 (I was 9) and I was very aware they happened but I had little idea why beyond what little I watched the news at 5PM and 6PM. I can safely say I have not been acutely aware of any kind of mass protests on this level resulting in violence or rioting.
What’s happening in the United States should not be taken in a vacuum. An African-American man killed by police happens all too often in this country - you’ll see grieving families on TV, calls for justice, a press conference by a local leader (usually the mayor), and perhaps the offending officer is fired. Inevitably some fringe outlet will go all whatabout on the victim, usually finding some checkered moment in his recent past that makes it OK for the police to have killed him. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton will go on TV and demand justice for the family and lament the plight of African Americans.
Here’s the thing: what happened on May 25th, 2020 wasn’t just another killing of an African American by a police officer. George Floyd was murdered and the whole thing was recorded for the entire world to consume and digest. Derek Chauvin, formerly of the Minneapolis police department, put a knee to the neck of Floyd until he lost consciousness and died of asphyxiation right there on the street. We got to hear Floyd scream “I CAN’T BREATHE” and see Chauvin keep applying his knee to the back of Floyd’s neck while three other officers simply looked on, one of whom called an ambulance to the scene. It’s a scene out of a movie - you wouldn’t believe it happened in real life unless you saw the video. At least I wouldn’t have believed it, but the 40-someodd million African Americans living in the United States (along with any other black- and brown-skinned people) would tell you it is a constant fear come brutally to life.
What happened next was surprising and expected - Chauvin was not immediately arrested and the minority community wanted to know why. The logical course for a community in mourning and fear is protest - peaceful, organized, but full of anger. The protests spread through the country like wildfire, almost nowhere in the United States immune to the question of “why.” And then, again surprisingly but inevitably, violence erupted when answers were slow to come. The police, entrusted with the safety of the populace, are now forced to either defend themselves and civic property or appear weak in the face of opposition. In a society where strength is valued more than compassion, many police departments pushed back while some chose to reach out to the communities they serve and listen. Protest turned to rioting, the uncontrolled application of violence by angry mobs of people yearning for answers.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the protest - infiltrators began to join the protests with the express intent of agitating an already angry multitude. Some were the Malcom X to the original Martin Luther King, a violent side to the search for answers. Others were not so obvious - people looking to join in rioting and looting simply to lash out, whether it be to release anger at perceived injustice from a system designed to keep the average person down or to simply commit theft under the guise of racial violence. But it didn’t stop after Chauvin was arrested. The dam burst, the waters flooding from the lake like a wave of anger pent up over 400 years.
The wave overwhelmed local authorities across the nation. I imagine it is hard for police to turn their riot shields against the people they are ostensibly supposed to protect, justifying themselves by protecting the community at large at the expense of those people that would destroy life and property. I have never envied my family and friends that choose to serve their community by donning a badge - at best the job is difficult, often thankless, and deadly at worst. Then, through the words of one that could be kindly called a madman, the job became impossible.
To be clear, Donald Trump is not the real villain of this story - Derek Chauvin is the match that lit this fire. But Trump decided to douse that fire with napalm, goading governors across the country to seek a violent confrontation instead of a peaceful solution - accusing them via tweet and conference call of being weak and to meet the protesters with all available force to quell the riots. This is possibly the first time that a US president called for violent action against protesters since 1865. (I haven’t read what led to the Kent State shootings but Nixon was a “law and order” president, and I am aware federal troops were involved in the Rodney King riots) Instead of doing what most presidents would do during times of unrest - speak to the nation in an attempt to calm tensions - Trump decided to egg on the violence in the name of restoring order. He declared that he will deploy federal troops to restore order, further stoking flames that show little sign of abatement. (To those that think it’s unconstitutional, the Insurrection Act of 1807 absolutely does give him that authority)
As if the voice of Donald Trump imploring state governors to turn to force wasn’t enough, there was one egregious moment that I cannot personally fathom given the cast of characters. A group of protesters were peacefully gathered on the road between the White House and St. John’s Episcopal Church, which Trump wanted to walk to in order to make another speech. Instead of being asked to move their protest, those people - exercising their First Amendment right to peaceful assembly and freedom of speech - were sprayed with tear gas and violently removed from their area so Trump could make a symbolic walk to a church that didn’t want him there. To top it off Trump held a Bible while he was speaking, but held it upside down. I’m sure it wasn’t a purposeful gesture but it certainly was an apt symbol - a man that’s probably never read the book he was holding, holding it upside down, and asking for actions antithetical to the ideals written in that book. A leader calling for violence against his own people - these are the actions of a dictator seeking to consolidate power rather than seek peace and understanding.
(Aside: I haven’t even gotten into the actions of groups like the Three Percenters, the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Bois, and other far-right extremist groups using these events to their own ends. They have been emboldened by the words of Donald Trump but they have always been lurking.)
I was never a Black Lives Matter person - my first thought was, naively, that everyone matters regardless of their label. I didn’t think about the underlying meaning of the movement and defended myself vehemently as not a racist. Time, of course, taught me differently. Of course all lives matter, but until we accept the grievances of people oppressed overtly as well as systemically there is no chance of our society believing that all lives truly matter. Slavery may not exist in the United States in 2020 but the suffering is as raw now as it was in 1860, and until the suffering ends we cannot be a nation that holds that all men are created equal, nor can we purport to hold that everyone is entitled to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.
“You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.” - Morpheus, speaking to Neo in “The Matrix”
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