It’s not your imagination: The unrest sweeping through America this week really is more widespread, and really is more violent, than any spree of national demonstrations since the 1960s.
A country that guarantees the right to assemble in its constitution, and has always accepted public protest as a form of communication – from the Boston Tea Party to the Women’s March of 2017 – seems to be staggering into chaos one city at a time.
Minneapolis, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Newark, Louisville, Washington, D.C. … by midday Saturday, no fewer than 26 American cities had been sites of active protests and by Saturday night dozens more were expected to join in.
What’s more, few demonstrations are sticking to protest signs and songs.
In Minneapolis, a police station was burned to the ground. In Louisville, seven people were injured by gunshot. In Washington, protesters held the White House under siege, prompting the Secret Service to coordinate with police to protect the safety of the president and his family. And at least two people – a protester in Detroit and a contract security officer working for the federal government in Oakland – were shot and killed.
Baton strikes and pepper spray, Molotov cocktails and police cars in flames; this week, they have taken the spotlight from a global pandemic.
In Los Angeles – where on Saturday officers fired rubber bullets at protesters and Mayor Eric Garcetti imposed a citywide curfew to try to quiet the streets and asked Gov. Gavin Newsom to deploy the National Guard – LAPD Chief Michel Moore’s assessment of the events seemed to invoke a collapse of civility itself.
“I’m sorry that L.A. failed tonight,” Moore said late Friday, a night when 553 people were arrested.
“Our ability to have a demonstration, express our views, our anger, our disgust … unfortunately turned into an unruly situation.”
So, one question about this moment is simple:
Does today, the sixth since video emerged of a black man, George Floyd, suffering for eight minutes and 46 seconds under the knee of a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, mark the end of our collective failure, or the beginning?
But another question isn’t simple at all:
Why is this happening?
Frustrations mount
Before the video of Floyd pleading for air and his life, there was video of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man shot this year by two white men while jogging in a south Georgia neighborhood. And before Arbery there was Eric Garner, strangled by a New York police officer in 2014; he was suspected of selling untaxed cigarettes. And before Garner there was Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old who in 2012 was shot by a self-appointed neighborhood watch leader in a Florida community.
In fact, there are dozens of videos and high profile incidents involving black men dying at the hands of police – and many more that don’t get that kind of attention.
While hundreds of men and women of all races are killed by police or other authorities each year, numerous studies show that black men are more likely than all others to die in this fashion. Police argue that the shootings or killings are justified. And, often, they are. But when those killings aren’t justified, police are rarely punished.
The message in this week’s protests is that, for many, the injustice is no longer tolerable.
“How many people have to die?” screamed a woman who was caught on television Saturday protesting in downtown Los Angeles.
But frustration with the police might not be the only frustration boiling over in this week’s protests.
On Tuesday, a day after Floyd died, federal officials reported 2.1 million new unemployment claims. On the same day, the nation’s COVID-19 death count jumped past 100,000.
The unemployment data shows more than 40 million people have lost work since early March, when coronavirus shutdowns around the country put the nation’s economy in a coma. And while some people are returning to work as businesses reopen, and some who are off work are getting an extra $600 a week in unemployment pay as part of the national pandemic bailout, the economy is skidding into what many view as a depression.
Soon, rent forgiveness and mortgage abeyance rules that have been part of the coronavirus relief package might end, pushing millions of people closer to homelessness. And, already, food banks and other charities are noting that hunger is rising and demand for food is growing in neighborhoods that only recently were comfortable.
Those issues are leaving many people feeling raw with fear – and fearful people sometimes take to the streets.
“I definitely think there are (many) reasons to be pissed right now,” said Alexa Sanchez, a 24-year-old Santa Ana woman who said on Saturday that she planned to protest peacefully in Anaheim or Santa Ana.
Sanchez said she’s never been arrested, and that she and her family don’t view the police as enemies. Instead, she said, she hoped that attending a protest would show solidarity with people who are treated unfairly. “And that’s a lot of people.”
But Sanchez also said she’s been on furlough from a restaurant she declined to name, and that the economy, even before the pandemic, has been creating “no chance for opportunity” for people her age.
“I don’t know if that’s why everybody else is going, or if it’s why I’m going, but there’s a lot of fairness things that are making a lot of people mad right now.”
The racial inequities that cloud police killings and the economy are even playing out in the pandemic.
Though COVID-19 is most dangerous for older people with pre-existing conditions, studies show it also is hard on people of color and people with lower incomes, who often have pre-existing health issues. A study from American Public Media research lab found that blacks accounted for 13% of the population and 27% of COVID deaths.
“It would suck if your color kills you,” Sanchez said.
Being heard
Whether you nodded in agreement or recoiled, the term “American carnage” President Donald Trump used in January 2017 his inaugural address was hyperbole. As he entered office, unemployment was about 4.7%, the economy was expanding and crime was down or low in most American cities.
By early Saturday night, television and online news sites showed an America where carnage was not hyperbole.
In Salt Lake City, police lined up as human barriers to prevent protesters from marching down a thoroughfare that was empty of non-burning cars. In New York, police on bicycles and horseback rode through crowds that, in most cases, seemed uninterested in conflict, even as vehicles were burning nearby. In Chicago, firefighters and police pushed people away as they battled a blaze near downtown.
And in Los Angeles, open violence between police and protesters for much of the day pushed Garcetti to declare a curfew, starting from 8 p.m. Saturday to 5:30 a.m. Sunday for all of the city.
“With liberty comes responsibility,” he said, after insisting he wants to allow for peaceful protests. But Garcetti also suggested that Los Angeles doesn’t always keep its protests peaceful.
“We’ve seen this before in Los Angeles,” he said. “When the violence escalates, no one wins.”
For many, the protests have an upside: In limited ways, they seem to make a point. The man who kneeled on Floyd’s neck was arrested on Friday, after the first night of unrest in Minneapolis.
“If this is what it takes to get heard, maybe that’s the problem,” Sanchez said.
