Inept leadership missteps fuel racial fires
Mass protests in the US have spread like wildfire in the week since the graphic and gruesome images of the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis went viral. Bystanders begged the police to stop. With little regard for this black man’s life, the police didn’t stop crushing his neck and ability to breathe – they caused the death of Floyd.
Coming on top of 100,000 COVID-19 deaths in the US and mass unemployment spiking to more than 40 million Americans in just two months, the street protests have evolved into a nationwide-style rebellion unlike any other event since the tumultuous 1960s.
Dr Martin Luther King Jr. described the “riots” that swept American cities in the 1960s as the “cry of the unheard.” If he were alive today, if he had not been felled by an assassin’s bullet at a young age, he might well use the same characterization.
The triggering event for the current unrest was the viral video of the nonchalant killing of one more unarmed black man by police.
But that is not unusual. Such killings provoke local protests that usually last a few days and then dissipate. This protest is different. It spread to big cities and small towns. It kept going. It was mainly young people but it was not only black youth. These were large multi-racial gatherings and the people showed solidarity and sympathy with each other. When police used tear gas, pepper spray, the baton and other “non-lethal” weapons it did not quell or disperse the participants but provoked them into greater fury. After a couple days of skirmishing they began to lose their fear.
If the government had acted quickly to arrest George Floyd, these protests would not have unfolded as they did. If President Trump had promised real police reforms and promised accountability for criminal acts by police officers, these protests would not have spread. But the President is obsessed with being the “tough guy” so he took to Twitter and threatened to shoot the protesters and to have them mauled by “vicious dogs”.
The flames were lit by the death of George Floyd but it was the president who chose to pour gasoline on the fire by his tactless and threatening taunts against Americans who sought to exercise their cherished rights to assemble and redress their grievances. The president incited violence against the protesters. This created anger rather than fear. More and more young people took to the streets. A small minority engaged in looting and this was seized upon by the president to characterize the movement as nothing more than a violent mob.
Now the protesters are being demonized by the president and even in the mainstream US media as “outside agitators” and perhaps the tool of foreign powers. This is superficial and false. I have been with and among the protesters for the past 72 hours in Washington DC. These are America’s young people. They are strong, confident and smart. They are also largely unemployed and staggering from huge student loans. They are not outside agitators. They don’t need a foreign power or outside agitators to tell them about racism or police brutality or poverty. These are their lived experiences.
President Trump is in trouble politically on the eve of the upcoming presidential election. He badly mismanaged the COVID-19 crisis by downplaying the risk rather than preparing the country so that it could adequately control the spread of the disease. Having failed to act in a timely manner the Trump administration then imposed a draconian shutdown of huge swaths of the economy. The federal government and Federal Reserve Bank rushed trillions of dollars to prop up the biggest banks and corporations but failed to adequately sustain the workers of the country. Food lines are long and they are everywhere including among those who consider themselves to be “middle class.” It is estimated that as many as 40 percent of those who lost their jobs will never return to those jobs. Tens of thousands of small businesses have closed their doors and they will never reopen. The president always wants to blame someone else for his own failures: China, Democratic governors, and now young protesters – everyone else is the problem and
Trump is always the victim.
The protests raging throughout the US should be a wake-up call not just for Trump but the political leadership of both the Democrats and Republicans. This dynamic rebellion should be understood to be the “cry of the unheard.” Threats, taunts, and repression will not work in the long run.
The US uses the National Endowment for Democracy and other government agencies to fund and promote antigovernment protests movements in other countries. The American government and media champions protests in countries that are targeted as “adversaries” by the State Department and the Pentagon. Perhaps it would be wiser for US authorities to safeguard the rights of those protesters in America who are demanding nothing short of the “American Dream” of justice and equality for all. Democracy, real democracy, should start at home.