For the past few weeks, the images of an American reckoning accumulated - peaceful demonstrators calling for racial justice; phalanxes of riot police poised for clashes; urban centers aflame with scattered violence; a moat of metal erected around the White House; a president demanding military suppression on an "angry mob" before theatrically brandishing a Bible.
The scenes laid bare the struggle for unity against deepening division in America 2020. By the middle of the month, the unfolding events - at times uplifting, at times shocking - crystallized around one overriding issue: What kind of country are we and what kind of country do we want to be when all of this is over?
The knee on the neck became as real as it has long been symbolic. The viral image of George Floyd gasping for breath, a police officer atop his limp body, fused with the historic metaphor that for 400 years has described the violence and racism aimed at black Americans and Native Americans - the original sin of a great nation.
Whether these events will move the country closer to its long-cherished ideal of equality may be years in the answering, but the past few weeks have suggested that something is changing. The protests reached into every corner of the United States and touched nearly every strand of society.
What began as one more outpouring in reaction to one more killing of an unarmed black citizen seemed to take on a desperate, new urgency in a year of cascading crises: impeachment, pandemic, massive unemployment and racial upheaval.
President Trump caused the first of these crises and compounded the others with his conduct. His often incendiary words, his divisive record on issues of race, seemed to act as accelerant to the forces that swept across the American landscape beginning in late February.
The protests began in Minneapolis and soon migrated to the doorstep of the White House. Crowds multiplied and among them were people who said they felt compelled to turn out only after seeing protesters gassed and bludgeoned to clear a path for Trump's photo op outside St. John's Episcopal Church, also known as the church of the presidents because of its proximity to the White House.
As Trump yet again threatened to undermine constitutional norms - this time by turning the nation's military against its own citizens - he faced an extraordinary backlash. His own military advisers voiced muted dismay, effectively describing him as a threat to the country.
The Coronavirus pandemic and the battered economy will be on the ballot in November when Americans pick a president, and those issues will be on the agenda of whichever candidate wins the election. But, now, also, will issues of racial justice, racial inequalities and the persistence of racism. If the past few weeks have proved anything, it is that those issues will not easily be ignored and that the time of choosing is underway.
Since Floyd's death in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25, public protests erupted in every state in the union and the District of Columbia, as well as every United States territory - at least 700 in all, according to a count compiled by USA Today. Demonstrations as small as a few dozen to some numbering in the thousands took place not just in the country's biggest metropolitan areas, but also in smaller cities, towns and suburbs, from Boise, Idaho, to Fargo, North Dakota, from Appleton, Wisconsin, to Belfast, Maine.
More than 30,000 National Guard troops were activated across more than two dozen states. More than 10,000 people were arrested, according to Associated Press. The eyes of the world watched uneasily as America burned with outrage.
Demonstrations in the memory of Floyd and in protest of police violence took place in over 30 countries around the world.
Here is the elephant in the room in all of this: The use of military force for political ends is a defining characteristic of tin-pot despots. Trump went farther in trying to politicize the military and test its constitutional allegiance than any president in recent memory. He is the first president in my lifetime who does not even try to unite the American people. Instead, he tries to divide the nation and we are witnessing three years of this deliberate effort.
The debate on racial justice has reached with new urgency into every sector of society. This country was founded on protest. It was called the American Revolution.
This entire event has tapped into society in ways no recent event did and condemnations have come from all directions with expressions of commitment to address not only issues of policing in minority communities, but also the more intractable problems of inequality and racism.
The voices calling for change include elected officials in both parties, religious leaders, academic and philanthropic institutions, corporate executives on behalf of their organizations, law enforcement officials and others.
Some institutions have been convulsed by the roiling debate as issues expanded beyond race to speech, affecting Facebook and the New York Times. Many people saw the events of the past few weeks as a turning point - in attitude if not necessarily in action - on the broad issue of race in America. But, in a deeply divided country, where lines had formed before Trump was elected and have hardened since then, changes so profound as those being called for now come slowly, if they will at all.
The ebb and flow of events, not just over the past couple weeks but over a much longer sweep of time, are a reminder of the long struggle for change, of the push for progress and the pushback by those resisting. The cries from the streets recently represent that demand for change, but history shows that the violence that sometimes accompanies otherwise peaceful protests can snuff out those calls for justice.
In 1968, after a year of assassinations, antiwar protests and a bloody clash at Democratic National Convention in Chicago that was later declared by a review board as a “police riot,” Richard M. Nixon won the presidency running as the law-and-order candidate and the champion of a silent majority. Trump, by virtue of his words recently, is making a bet that his path to reelection lies along the same road. Biden, meanwhile, believes that in November, America will want a healer to help stanch the bleeding.
The November election will determine who leads the country over the coming four years. It will not resolve the question of whether the current response translates into something concrete. Leadership from the White House will be vital in that effort, as the country witnessed in the 1960s when President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
But that progress in the 1960s could not have come without the civil rights struggles that preceded those congressional debates and votes - years of struggle and violence aimed at those speaking up for change. Today, the country appears united as never before on at least some aspects of an agenda to address the racial problems that still persist, despite measurable progress.
Real change often happens only upwards from the bottom. The nationwide mobilization in response to the killing of George Floyd - and of other black men and women - is emblematic of the beginning of that kind of movement, but not yet of the realization of the changes those in the streets and others who share their aspirations are seeking.
Comments