HOLIDAY WEEKEND IS TIME FOR REFLECTION, REIMAGINATION

It’s Memorial Day weekend, and this holiday will likely be one to remember.

Beaches are filled with maskless revelers. Barbecue grills are fired up, and the food tastes especially delicious.

Welcome to something resembling normalcy.

But it’s also a time for reflection. Last week marked the oneyear anniversary of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. His death reminded the nation that White police officers are still killing Black people in disproportionate numbers.

Professor Eddie Glaude Jr., chair of the department of African American Studies at Princeton University, shared his thoughts in an op-ed for The Washington Post. “A year after Floyd’s murder, the wounds have not healed, and Americans have yet to decide whether we are willing to reimagine policing in this country,” he wrote.

Glaude has a point. Americans sometimes can’t prepare for the future, because they’re too busy trying to forget the past.

I don’t want to forget the past. I’d like to change it. I find myself wishing that what took place outside Cup Foods on May 25, 2020, had never happened, or that George Floyd would have patronized a different store that day. Or, I wish that someone had pushed former police Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee off his neck.

There’s another do-over I wish for. You see, policing isn’t the only thing that needs to be reimagined. So does protesting.

While the protests that occurred in the aftermath of Floyd’s murder were mostly peaceful, there were violent exceptions. Dozens of cities across the country imposed curfews, but many people ignored them. This led to standoffs and clashes, often involving counterprotesters.

Vehicles were vandalized and shops were looted. National Guard troops were deployed in 24 states and in Washington, D.C., where demonstrators torched historic buildings and threw stones at officers. Police used tear gas in response.

In Louisville, Ky., a man fired shots at police officers and guard troops as they tried to disperse a crowd in a parking lot. They returned fire, killing the man.

Yet, amid the chaos, where was the anger and outrage from the left, as peaceful demonstrations descended into violence? It’s as if they considered these actions justifiable in response to Floyd’s death. There was even talk of starting a legal defense fund for the relatively few protesters who got arrested.

Apparently, madness is a bipartisan affliction. On Jan. 6, the U.S. Capitol was stormed by a mob of supporters of former President Donald Trump, attempting to disrupt the electoral vote count that would formalize President Joe Biden’s victory. The Capitol was locked down while rioters occupied and vandalized the building for several hours. More than 140 people were injured in the insurrection, which appears to have resulted in the death of five people.

Again, where was the anger and outrage from the right, as violence threatened the lives of duly elected lawmakers, their staffs and Capitol police?

It’s as if they considered these actions justifiable in response to Trump’s election loss. And despite approval from the House, a measure failed in the Senate to establish an independent commission to investigate what happened that day.

We are paying a high price for our inability or unwillingness to forcefully condemn these protests that went horribly wrong. That price may be the loss of a fundamental liberty: our own right to protest. States are quietly passing legislation that restricts our right to gather.

Reporting by Reid Epstein and Patricia Mazzei of The New York Times finds that lawmakers in 34 states have introduced 81 anti-protest bills during the 2021 legislative session, more than twice as many proposals as in any other year.

Legislators in Oklahoma and Iowa have passed bills granting immunity to drivers whose vehicles strike and injure protesters in public streets. In Tennessee, protesters can go to jail for a year if they block a sidewalk. A Minnesota bill would prohibit those convicted of unlawful protesting from receiving student loans, unemployment benefits or housing assistance.

Meanwhile, in Florida, Gov. Ron Desantis signed sweeping legislation that makes rioting a felony, defining it in a way that could implicate protesters who engage in no violence at all. And the penalties are extreme.

It’s time to stop burying our heads in the sand when we see injustice — even when it’s our side committing it.

The right to gather and to protest, peacefully, is too important to our country. We must protect it in the best way possible: by ensuring that it is exercised properly.

Dinkin is president of the National Conflict Resolution Center, a San Diego-based group working to create solutions to challenging issues, including intolerance and incivility. To learn about NCRC’S programming, visit ncrconline.com