Protests for racial justice gain strength across U.S.
What happened
Demonstrators demanding justice for George Floyd and action against police brutality marched in at least 1,280 towns and cities across the U.S. as of this week—a protest movement that is now the broadest in American history. Crowds waving Black Lives Matter signs took to the streets of big multiracial cities such as Los Angeles and New York, but rallies were also held in smaller and predominantly white towns and cities, including Norfolk, Neb.; Cody, Wyo.; and Tacoma, Wash. “People didn’t understand the point of us protesting,” said Ande’ Green, who organized a march in Alliance, Ohio. “But we wanted them to know that we are taking a stand for our nation.” As demonstrations rippled across the country, Floyd was laid to rest in his hometown of Houston. In a video message played at the funeral, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said the nation must use this moment to tackle the “racism that stings at our very soul.”
With the overwhelming majority of protests now peaceful affairs, cities across the U.S. lifted curfews, and President Trump ordered the National Guard to begin withdrawing from Washington, D.C. Work crews started to dismantle some of the 8-foot-high chain-link fencing that was erected around the White House in recent weeks. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser renamed a street in front of the White House “Black Lives Matter Plaza” and had the slogan painted on the asphalt in giant yellow letters. Trump shot back on Twitter that Bowser was “grossly incompetent and in no way qualified to be running an important city.”
What the editorials said
Trump is failing “to convince people that he can provide calm and steady leadership” during these troubled times, said Washington Examiner.com. Only 32 percent of voters believe he’s handled the mass demonstrations successfully. “When it comes to the horse race,” Biden is leading Trump by an average of nearly 8 points nationally; at this point in 2016, Trump trailed Hillary Clinton by only 1.5 points. If Trump “cannot convince the public in the next five months that he can lead during a crisis, he is likely to lose.”
We are “being reminded anew of the power of peaceful protest,” said the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Instead of dissipating, the anger at racial injustice has gained strength and is drawing in Americans of all races, all marching “with the same message: Black lives matter.” Meaningful reform—when it comes—will be produced not by “rage and destruction” but by a peaceful yet persistent “demand for lasting change that calls out the best in us.”
What the columnists said
Trump wants to replicate President Richard Nixon’s “law and order” playbook against protesters, said Ian Haney López in the Los Angeles Times. Nixon exploited the upheaval of the 1960s to secure electoral success, calling anti–Vietnam War demonstrators “thugs” and saying he stood with the “silent majority.” Trump has denounced protesters as a “mob” and urged authorities to “dominate” the streets. But 2020 is not 1968. Back then, it was easy for white Americans to “dismiss the claims by African-Americans that police brutality and pervasive white racism justified their protests.” But the whole country has seen the cellphone footage of a police officer suffocating Floyd.
Such videos have “helped persuade skeptical Americans that an endemic problem exists,” said Giovanni Russonello in The New York Times. In a Monmouth University poll released last week, 76 percent of Americans—including 71 percent of white people— called racism and discrimination a “big problem” in the U.S. “That’s a 26 percentage point spike since 2015.” In the same poll, 57 percent of Americans said protesters’ anger was “fully justified,” and another 21 percent called it “somewhat justified.”
We’ve never seen anything like this before, said Lara Putnam in The Washington Post. Unlike the protests of the late 1960s, which mostly occurred in large cities and on college campuses, this movement has spread to “small-town America” and even to some places “with deeply conservative politics.” And unlike the Women’s Marches of 2017, these are spontaneous events that didn’t benefit from months of planning. America is angry and hungry for change, and that could have big consequences for “the election—and future policy.”