This is a special post. I will continue my series on socialist policy critique another day. I wanted to report on this developing event in America. If you wish to see any of my past posts you can view them here. Also, help keep this project going by becoming a patron at patreon.com/ForwardBlog
Well, here we go again. The Ferguson riots in 2014 after the murder of Michael Brown by a Ferguson Police officer, sparked two weeks worth of rioting and civil unrest. It fomented an atmosphere of frustration around the country as riots began in Baltimore as well that summer. It was the first time in America that video caught such a blatant act of violence against an unarmed black male, and it caused the country to go stir crazy. Black Lives Matter formed as a result of this and ushered in a new era of awareness to police brutality in America. The brutality hasn’t subsided at all and there’s been no criminal justice reform since then. In fact, the Trump administration basically gave the “hands off “ signal to police departments across the country when Jess Sessions became AG and said there will be no federal government oversight into police killings. In fact, his last move in office back in 2018 was to handcuff the Justice Department’s ability to prosecute police for any wrongdoing. The new guidelines set up unprecedented barriers for Justice Department attorneys to negotiate consent decrees. Consent decrees are court orders jointly agreed on by the federal government and a state or local law enforcement agency accused of serious violations. There is no doubt that under the Trump administration, the burden has been lifted from police departments to prosecute cops for racial bias or any kind of basic oversight for record keeping. So now not only are police departments told they can relax but they have been given the green light to use even more violence and become even more of an occupying force in the inner cities than they already are.
So enter 2020. The coronavirus made its way to America back in March and the Trump administration pushed through the second massive bailout for the rich in just over 10 years. Any consideration for the middle class? No. Any consideration for the millions of working poor? No. Any consideration for the “essential workers” who are nothing more than wage slaves that are made to work in perilous conditions so they can take home their $200 weekly checks? No. Instead, what they gave the working people of America was a big middle finger and a $1,200 one time check. This occurred in the background while millions went on unemployment in record time, millions lost their employer-sponsored healthcare and millions lost their homes and apartments. In fact, 30 million people filed for unemployment just since mid-March. During the Great Depression, it took 3 years to reach 25% unemployment, but we will most likely accomplish that impressive feat by June. All of this is to say that economic immiseration of the poor and working class, never leads to a good result for the country. It leads to urban riots, civil disorder and an unpleasant time to consider yourself an American citizen. And for those who consider themselves upwardly mobile (Yuppies) millennials who may be adverse to these economic conditions, they are slowly realizing they aren’t and that the suffering will reach them too at some point in the near future. That’s why you saw just as many young white males in the Minneapolis riots as you saw inner city black males. It’s because we are all in this together and the economic immiseration that the Trump administration is choosing to unleash on the American people, doesn’t come without consequences.
All of this sets the table for summer flash points. The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, is just a catalyst that will spark a larger movement this summer. With Americans under lockdown and suffering the economic effects, it was only going to take one police murder caught on video to unleash all of this anger. While the video is bad (Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for seven minutes), we have seen this before and quite frankly, are desensitized to it as a country. Europeans look at us like we’re savages for allowing our police forces to act like paramilitaries. I don’t blame them. In the Obama era, the 1033 program was used to transfer excess military equipment to police departments. This is a DOD-mandated program and they must distribute this weaponry, as opposed to destroying the stockpile or selling it to foreign governments. While Eric Holder and the Obama administration allowed this to happen, they continued to pay lip service to Black Lives Matter (BLM) and local activists who called for real change. What change can you expect when you arm your police departments to the teeth like they are heading into a war zone? What change can you expect when you pump academy cadets full of anti-media propaganda and brainwash them into think they don’t have to protect the citizenry, just occupy them. As they say in police departments around the country, “better to be judged by twelve than to be carried out by six.” It’s a horrible line to mutter but one that feeds into their boys club mentality, especially when they consider their lives to be more valuable. It’s almost like they forgot why their salaries are paid by the citizens. Their job is “To protect and serve”, not occupy and assault.
But this leaves us with quite a conundrum when it comes to the different types of treatment police officers dole out to different races. Over the last few weeks “Reopen” protests (right-wing protests often funded by donor families like the Mercers and the DeVos family), have spread across the country as people watch in disbelief. These are nothing more than astroturf campaigns designed to make it seem like the protests are organic when they aren’t. The Trump administration, in a lame attempt to save his candidacy during an election year, decided to turn mask-wearing during a pandemic into a culture war issue. It’s borderline criminal the amount of deliberate misinformation and lies that come out of the WH everyday. It makes sense though to try and turn mask wearing into a culture war issue if you think the election is all that matters in the end. In other words, the Trump administration knows that his base is ignorant and exhibits signs of cult-like behavior. They know that the conservative brain exudes “machismo” (or so they think), at all times. And they know that they dropped the ball on handling the pandemic and thus have to distract in other ways. F-15 flyovers? Check. Heightening up tensions with Iran and Venezuela? Check. Blaming China? Check. Getting Elon Musk to send people into space on his “private-public partnership” rocket? Check. These are all distractions, aimed at calming down a public that is increasingly agitated by the handling of this pandemic and our ongoing economic collapse. Everything in the public space has become a factor of how “manly” you are and whether or not you can “own the libs” by not wearing masks. This toxic partisan culture is nothing new for conservatives. It’s always existed and these people have always been the core base of the modern Republican Party. It’s an ignorant, older white male base that constantly has to feel aggrieved in order to live their lives in any meaningful way.
As a result of all of this, we have seen Reopen protests get out of hand. We have seen militia groups, local Klan branches as well as real small business owners show up to these state capitols to protest reopening. These are people who are racist, bitter and are not there to protest their economic immiseration. Why bring a Confederate flag or swastika symbols to a reopen protest if you’re so hurt economically? Why bring guns? The reality is, most of those people aren’t hurt economically and they only care about a perceived infringement on their “rights.” However, the right to go to an Applebees, get a haircut, buy lawn fertilizer or go to a beach during a global pandemic, isn’t enshrined in their believed Bill of Rights. I’m sorry to inform them of that. These people who show up to Reopen protests are the first to call others “sheep” for wearing masks. The reality is, they are the flock of sheep. And corporations are the shepherds. They are the people being told by corporations and the financial elites in this country to go out there and risk their lives for profit margins and the health of stock market (a stock market that just got artificially inflated by trillions of dollars being dumped into it). While they claim mask-wearing is an infringement on their rights, their rights as humans and as workers get violated everyday right under their ignorant noses. It would be comical if it wasn’t all so pathetic and sad. It’s like the movie “Idiocracy” from Mike Judge, coming to real life.
That leaves me to explain why urban riots occur in the first place and why those in Minneapolis are doing something more brave than any of us keyboard warriors could ever do. Their protests are a symbol of oppression from multiple sources. Oppression by the police but more importantly the federal government that continually allows this to happen. The difference this time, is that they aren’t just protesting over the murder of one unarmed black man, they are protesting over the mistreatment of their communities and the recent economic immiseration they are having to live through. It’s a perfect storm of events. A pandemic that forces people to “shelter inside” but isn’t applied equally. The “essential workers” are mainly minorities who take public transportation to get to work. They are the ones being adversely affected by this pandemic, while yuppies and suburban liberals get to work from home and have foods delivered to them by Grubhub drivers; coincidentally these very same people. Then to make matters worse, they are given a false choice to continue to work in perilous conditions inside their workplaces that don’t provide adequate PPE or choose to quit their jobs and suffer just as much as they otherwise would have if they kept working. Nowhere in that process is the health of them or their loved ones considered. It’s a false choice and one that the Washington DC bubble forced onto people. While European countries provide a social safety net and don’t allow millions to go on unemployment or lose their homes and small businesses, we chose to let people suffer. Government policy is always a choice and ours made their choice back in March when the administration bailed out large corporations and billionaires. A consumer-driven economy can only function if people actually have the money to spend. Although, it seems the administration doesn’t care about that fact or is just only concerned with pulling off one last heist (most likely the latter), before their beloved neoliberal economic model comes crashing down. These conditions are laid out for the world to see when minorities in these communities want to protest various injustices, like police murders. While those right-wing Reopen protestors march into state capitols with assault rifles and demand (and actually get) capitulations from the lawmakers without any consequences from law enforcement, one can see how this would set the table for frustration in the inner cities. One group gets to march in with guns and demand change, the other gets rubber bullets and tear gas to the face after just conducting peaceful protests in the street. We see this time and time again. Cliven Bundy's white, aggrieved offspring can go take over a wildlife refuge for a month and force law enforcement to pathetically retreat while black protestors in Ferguson, LA or Minneapolis get beaten and shot with tear gas. It’s a criminal justice system divided into two types of responses. An aggressive response for minorities and kid gloves for white right-wingers. People are growing sick of the inequality and the police abuse and who could blame them?
This also answers the question that I often hear from older white people who can’t seem to grasp this dynamic of why urban riots occur. They ask “Why do they burn down buildings and destroy their own communities?” The answer is simple. What choice do they have? Reopen protests can get get national coverage all day, every day on the cable networks because white aggrieved people must have their feelings considered. Meanwhile BLM protests and other social movements can’t get any positive coverage from any network at any time. If voices need to be heard, what better way to have them heard by conducting civil disorder? Are businesses getting looted and destroyed? Yes, of course. Is that ok in a moral sense? No. But is a Target or an AutoZone getting looted worse than the never-ending police abuse and economic immiseration in these communities? No, it’s not. At least not in my book, maybe it is in yours. We see the lack of consideration from the authorities when they spend more time using taxpayer funds to build a wall around the 3rd Precinct station or sending 30 cops to guard the home of the cop who murdered Floyd, but we don’t see the same level of care or engagement with the local community who is suffering. It takes more than just local pastors or civic leaders to step up and call for peace. The calls aren’t respected or heard. Sometimes civil disorder is the only way. The goal is to learn from this and understand why these riots occur, so we don’t have to keep going through this cycle of violence. This is just the beginning of a long, hot summer if no changes are made.