If you want the woke perspective on the riots in Minneapolis there are lots of online voice you can consult, but since Pulitzer-prize winning author Nikole Hannah-Jones is offering her take let’s start there.
There’s a lot of consternation on here abt the uprising in Minneapolis & how the only means protestors can be effective is through non-violence.I hurt for the destruction like everyone else. But the fact of history is non-violent protest has not been successful for blk Americans.
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) May 29, 2020
She says that but actually that is what was successful as she admits eventually. But first we’re going to play a rhetorical game where the movement wasn’t non-violent because the reaction to it wasn’t non-violent.
King, Diana Nash, John Lewis, knew most white Americans did not care abt black people non-violently protesting in the streets. These were the same people that had tolerated lynchings, racial apartheid, fascism against black Americans for decades. Why would marching change that?
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) May 29, 2020
So, the strategy became how to bait white people *into* violence in order force other white people to act. They picked the locations of their protests and marches based on the ability to draw violence. And when dogs got sicced on children, white media “discovered” a story.
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) May 29, 2020
I thought our country was born in 1619 not 1773? That’s an interesting slip.
It’s not incidental that this civil rights legislation is passed during the Vietnam war. The images of the Great Democracy violently suppressing its own citizens became an international embarrassment, and it was that, not some newfound racial egalitarian, that forced change.
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) May 29, 2020
Even if you accept her premise that it was the violent reaction that brought change, that still only works because it presents a clear contrast. It’s not just two sides battling, it’s one side being unfairly brutalized by violent goons and monsters. People have sympathy for victims of violence not perpetrators.
In Minneapolis and around the country, people think what happened to George Floyd was wrong. Police chiefs who are generally hesitant to condemn police officers have come out and said it was wrong. The officers involved have already been fired and charges against them are expected to be filed.
But the riots don’t fit any strategy of baiting bad people into violence. The riots are violence and mayhem. They are the opposite of the “strategy” Hannah-Jones is describing.
The 3rd precinct building is now on fire. Rioters are celebrating and posing for pictures in front of the flames. pic.twitter.com/j5IrK8ARUd
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) May 29, 2020
Let’s at least be *honest.* Slavery in this country ended because of the deadliest war in our history. Black Americans got full legal citizenship only after a decades-long *violently* repressed rights movement. I am sure destruction won’t work here, but neither has anything else.
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) May 29, 2020
Again, there’s a big difference between “*violently* repressed” and just plain violent. The riots we’re seeing in Minneapolis haven’t been violently repressed. On the contrary, everyone is wondering why it seems very little has been done so far to stop the city from being burned down. Police aren’t repressing the protesters they are abandoning precincts to avoid a confrontation.
This is the moment when Minneapolis police officers abandoned the 3rd precinct building. Rioters chased them as they left and continued to throw objects at the police vehicles. pic.twitter.com/KoxAAYiUIN
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) May 29, 2020
These are violent, anti-police riots. Some have argued this is understandable because of the outrage over Floyd’s death:
I would never throw a rock at the police. I would never throw a brick through the window of a big-box store. I would never set fire to an office building. But I want to. I understand why some people do.
I know I am supposed to counsel “nonviolence.” I’m a 42-year old man with a wife, two kids, and a mortgage; I’ve got a college degree and a law degree and a blue checkmark on Twitter; I know I am supposed to shun “rioters” and “looters” who allegedly cede the moral high ground of protests when they respond to tear gas and rubber bullets with stone and flame. But every person has a limit to the injustice they can bear before lashing out.
You can argue the lashing out is understandable but I don’t think you can successfully argue that it’s somehow in keeping with the “strategy” of the Civil Rights movement. By definition, lashing out is not strategic. It’s what you do when you’re just angry beyond the ability to plan or think ahead. I think that’s what we’re actually seeing in Minneapolis right now. At some point very soon, wiser heads need to prevail.
