Protests continue across United States,
Americans barraged by images of brutality against peaceful crowds
WASHINGTON— A 75-year-old white man bleeding on the ground was the latest galvanizing image from an evolving U.S. crisis that has been defined by them.
The man, identified in media reports as Martin Gugino, was at a protest near Buffalo’s city hall on Thursday. In a video widely circulated on social media, Gugino can be seen slowly approaching the police. He makes no aggressive moves, but appears to be trying to talk to an officer. Officers push him backward, sending him tumbling to the ground where his head strikes the pavement. Blood immediately begins pooling beneath his head as he lies, immobile, and police casually stroll over and around him to continue breaking up a peaceful protest to enforce curfew.
In a statement, a police spokesperson initially said a person had been injured at the protest after he “tripped and fell” in a “skirmish” with police. The already-public evidence of the truth led, within hours, to the suspension of the officers without pay and widespread outrage.
If no camera had been present to record the moment, it would have passed without notice, the initial police account likely accepted without challenge. But that is no longer how the world is, as has become increasingly obvious.
The waves of protest and civil unrest in the U.S. were kicked off by the smartphone video of George Floyd dying while a police officer knelt on his neck. In the protests that followed, social media has offered a barrage of images of police brutality, some captured by civilian phones, some by professional media, against apparently peaceful crowds and individuals.
On Twitter, North Carolina attorney Greg Doucette has compiled more than 300 of those videos of police: in Fort Wayne, Ind., pepper-spraying a woman in the face; in Phoenix, tackling a man from behind as he walked away from them, and then beating him; in Minneapolis, shoving a reporter to the ground and then casually pepper-spraying him in the face as he lay there, stretched out and compliant; in Chicago, running up to a man who was backing away, throwing him to the ground and beating him with a baton; in Erie, Penn., kicking a woman who is sitting on the ground with her hands over her face after being peppersprayed; in New York City, approaching a man with his hands up to pull down his mask and pepper-spray him in the face. There are hundreds more such recorded incidents, from cities across the U.S.: police wading into apparently peaceful crowds swinging batons as if they’re taking batting practice, indiscriminately firing tear gas, pepper spray, and projectiles at reporters, protesters and bystanders, accelerating cars into people who refuse to get out of the way.
The effect of the relentless images is to depressingly underline the point about police brutality that the protesters are trying to make. Near the White House this week, a man named Eric Patterson told me that smartphones and social media mean this behaviour is no longer invisible — and seeing it on his screens convinced him “you just can’t keep staying on your computer, talking about the way you feel.” It was time to “get in the street.”
There are other images that have defined the crisis, to be sure. President Donald Trump’s Bible photo-op was one. But also the ones Trump was responding to that afternoon: the images of broken windows, overturned cars and burning buildings, especially in the early days of the demonstrations, did much to harden some opinion — like the president’s — that police needed to “dominate” these protests. In some Washington neighbourhoods where stores were vandalized early in the week, people on the street were shaken.
But there has been a noticeable change in the protests in Washington as the days have gone on.
At Lafayette Park on the night of May 30, some protesters were throwing water bottles, fireworks and bricks at police, and trying to break through their line. By June 3, people were sitting in the street waving flashlights and singing “Lean On Me.” The open rage of the first few days has given way here, at least somewhat and at least for now, to a focused determination.
On the day of that midweek protest, there were no arrests in Washington. The mayor — who had made statements about not standing for the destruction of her town and imposed a curfew — was asking the president to remove troops from the city by the end of the week.
On Friday, she had a giant “Black Lives Matter” mural painted on a road near the White House.
Reports from other cities including New York showed a similar trend, with much of the police violence of the past few days targeting those breaking curfews, not windows.
The other remarkable change in protests over the week is that they have grown in size. Some demonstrators say both Trump’s response to the protests and the images of police behaviour they are seeing have motivated them to join the protests. People at home seem to agree: a PBS poll released Friday showed Americans support the goal of the protesters by more than a two-to-one margin.
The protests are about unjustified police violence, and people are seeing unjustified violence play out every day. A movement has arisen fuelled by images portraying America’s situation, and the images that have relentlessly emerged are brutal.