Why Memphis didn’t burn in protest after video release
Local activists knew city would defy predictions of mass violence
Late into the evening on Jan. 27, the city of Memphis collectively exhaled when protesters left the Memphis-arkansas bridge, ending the hours-long blockade, and marched back to the origin point of the protest at Martyr’s Park.
There were no arrests, no tear gas, no property destruction — only acute pain and anguish among those gathered.
Footage of the inhumane beating of Nichols at the hands of five murder suspects and former police officers was released at the very moment the crowd of protesters, flanked by nearly as many reporters, began to advance toward Riverside Drive and then, eventually, the I-55 bridge.
Prior to the moment the footage was released, businesses closed early, numerous public officials — all the way up to President Joe Biden, urged the city to stay peaceful and preemptively chided any violence that had yet to occur.
“Those who seek justice should not resort to violence or destruction. Violence is never acceptable. It is illegal and destructive,” read part of Biden’s statement on the matter.
It’s possible the tumultuous summer of 2020, in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbry, was fresh in the minds of the president and any number of public officials who pleaded for peace.
But if anyone had asked any one of Memphis’ cadre of experienced community organizers, they might have told you the physical response to the killing of Nichols would have likely unfolded in the manner it did — small numbers of protesters, specific demands, and safety-oriented practices.
They also might have told you that by the Memphis police giving protesters a wide berth of space, the number one agitating factor that sends protests in upheaval had been effectively neutralized.
Because the last decade in Memphis has seen a revitalized period of protesting and civic disobedience; the organizers behind the scenes have identified patterns and exceptions — none of which are marked by the mass violence so many feared.
King’s long shadow and modern-day fallout
“The thing about Memphis, I believe, is that we live in the shadow of King’s assassination. I think the impact of that event is not always taken into account, when we talk about how it changed the trajectory of movement building here,” said Jayanni Webster.
Movement building is a term community organizers use to summarize all facets of organizing around a cause. It can refer to the quieter parts of organizing that have less media appeal and require consistent nurturing — phone banking, studying policy, fostering conversations within communities, or raising funds.
Webster, a national organizer for Right to the City Alliance, started her career in Memphis around issues tied to, among others, livable wages, the right to unionize, and reproductive justice. Her roles in movement building have included both the everyday minutiae and the upfront moments like protests.
Predicting a blanket response based in rioting and destruction over an issue like Nichols’ death is flawed thinking, Webster believes. Sheer desire for concrete change does not always translate to marches and Memphis has not seen a full-fledged riot since King’s assassination, more than five decades ago.
And in King’s time, as it is now, “politics is mostly engaged in by a few,” Webster said.
And while it’s not accurate to say that the decades proceeding King’s assassination were an apolitical period for Memphis, it is fair to say Memphis did not see a significant revival of community organizing until the 2010s.
The protests that have dotted this revival, with some exceptions, have been peaceful, marshaled, organized, and part of a larger strategy. They also typically range from a few dozen attendees to a couple of hundred.
That’s not to say there haven’t been exceptions. The 2016 “Bridge protest” in the wake of the police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castille was the largest protest in recent history with more than a thousand protesters It sparked organically, and experienced activists like Keedran Franklin and Antonio Cathey made a split-second decision to usher the swelling crowd to the Hernando de Soto Bridge.
But in the two weeks leading up to the release of the video footage of the fatal encounter between police and Nichols, Webster said, “there were no implications in people’s workplaces, how they talked about this in people’s churches, how they talked about this in people’s homes, that people will take to the streets.”
The day the Nichols video released, the New York Times published a piece with a headline suggesting “volatile eruptions” over policing were imminent. The Times changed the headline eventually, but it was one of many media outlets that insinuated violence and upheaval in Memphis was a certainty. A Daily Mail article outright fabricated claims of “thousands of Antifa protesters march on Memphis.”
“People assumed, and I think it was a racialized assumption, that a majorityblack, poor city would up-rise, would riot, just because we are Black and poor. And this is what this country associates with uprising and rioting, not realizing that the movement has always been multiracial, it’s always been multiclass,” Webster said.
Patterns of policing protests
Not much surprised Amber Sherman in the days following the release of the footage. She anticipated a couple of hundred people would want to make their voices heard and would gather to march. It was also cold, she said, not everyone can be out damp, cold weather hours at a time.
The police response to the protests was drastically different from what she said she is accustomed to; outsized police responses have been dispatched in response to small groups of people.
During Nichols-related protests, officers gave a wide berth to protesters, largely staying out of sight and hanging back to direct traffic.
This didn’t surprise Sherman either. “I really wasn’t surprised because considering, like how bad the video was, I didn’t think they was gonna do (anything),” Sherman said.
The ramp-up to the release of the video, the hand-wringing, the repeated warnings from officials to not resort to violence, has an effect on people, Sherman said. In the case of Nichols’ protests, she believes it had a chilling effect.
“A lot of fear mongering was pushed heavily. It causes black folks to sit in a state of trauma and PTSD. And so that can hinder someone from wanting to come out to protests or come out to make their voices heard. Because we are in a state of constant trauma,” Sherman said.
Sherman, as an organizer who, like Webster, has been in embedded in spaces that touch on a range of issue believes police are the primary agitators when protests do devolve into chaos.
“It’s always because the police escalate a situation. And so they want to come in and agitate folks. And they start escalating situation by either randomly arresting people or poking their phones or picking on somebody like pepper spraying people. It’s always them causing an escalation,” Sherman said.
Police officials might push back on Sherman’s observation, though she is far from the only organizer who shares them. But one thing remains to be seen is the amount of savings for Memphis taxpayers that a dialed-down police response to Nichols protests.
In 2017, former Memphis police Dir. Michael Rallings implored Memphis city council to keep the $22.4 million he’d budgeted for overtime pay in the 2018 fiscal year. Policing the uptick in political protests was a primary driver in overtime costs, he said.
The total costs in overtime expenses for the Nichols protests isn’t yet known; smaller demonstrations and press conferences are still occurring. But many of these demonstrations lack consistent helicopter monitoring, mounted patrol officers, riot-gear-clad officers and vans equipped for mass arrests — all of what were once standard fixtures in the Rallings era.
Predicting is futile
The brutality of Nichols’ death and the scale of national and international attention it prompted is unmatched in recent history. Like both Webster and Sherman, Cardell Orrin did not anticipate a volatile reaction following the release of the Nichols’ footage.
“I would have surprised me if there was a welling up of what some people here, and some people nationally expected,” Orrin said.
Orrin, is the executive director at Stand for Children - Tennessee; he grapples with the fall out what he describes as a culture that subjugates Black Memphians daily.
Significant police reform could be imminent especially if the Department of Justice decides to fulfill the request for a pattern-or-practice investigation. But other systemic issues that fuel Memphis’ poverty rate and violent crime rate are still in full swing.
Some solutions to what ails Memphis’ most vulnerable, are complex and will be multi-generational efforts. Others are more tangible, concrete , and implementable now. Orrin points to increased funding towards Memphis’ beleaguered public transportation system as one of the latter.
“We know a number that will drastically improve the public transit system, and help people to get to jobs and appointments and doctors and all these other things. And we will not take five 5% of the (city’s) budget, increase to improve people’s lives through transit, that says something about what we think about people here,” Orrin said.
Until the pattern of oppression is broken, however, Orrin describes a pressure cooker of daily life for too many in Memphis.
In the case of Nichols, Webster said, there was almost an instinct among many to do the exact opposite of what media outlets, elected officials, and police officials seemed to indicate was guaranteed. In a way, respectability politics partially influenced the reaction.
“What I saw the community response be was, ‘We’re not going to do what y’all think we’re going to do ... if you think we are violent here, if you think that we’re going to burn down our own city — well you’re wrong.”
But as long as Memphis remains bereft of opportunity for too many, Webster, Sherman, and Orrin all believe people have the potential to hit the streets and raise voices when righteous anger becomes overwhelming. It’s a losing game to try and predict when.
“People have been saying it and talking about it (oppression) all the time. That it’s been happening to people. Once you’ve beaten people down so far... when do they really explode?”