Our nation is on fire.
In 1992, the city of Los Angeles was plunged into chaos following the acquittal of four white police officers of the use of excessive force for the beating of Rodney King--the beating had been recorded on videotape and seen by the public, and the acquittal of the officers was inexplicable and unconscionable. The jury that reached the not guilty verdicts (including one hung jury result) was comprised of ten white people, one Latino person, and one Asian person.
There were no African-Americans on the jury.
The city burned for five days, during which time there was over one billion dollars in damage, tens of thousands of arrests, thousands of injuries, and dozens of deaths. There were smaller disturbances in other parts of the country as a result of the verdict: San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle, Atlanta, and New York City.
In 2020, Los Angeles again erupted into disorder following the videotaped death of George Floyd of Minneapolis, Minnesota, after he had been choked by a white police officer while his three other officers watched or assisted. Mr. Floyd was choked by the officer for over eight minutes--the last three of which Mr. Floyd was unconscious or otherwise non-responsive. Minneapolis police took four days to charge the officer of a crime, and of this writing, the other three officers have not been charged at all.
The main uprising occurred in Minneapolis following the murder, but other cities soon followed suit. I am writing this while the uprisings are still happening, almost a week after the murder. Some of the major cities experiencing uprisings include Minneapolis, New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Cleveland, Raleigh, Louisville, Atlanta, Dallas, and the nation’s capital in Washington, D.C.
Today, the entire county of Los Angeles was placed under 6:00 p.m. curfew, which includes Santa Clarita, where I live with my family. My wife and I watch the news and are transported back to ‘92: twenty-eight years ago, we were newlyweds, living in Los Angeles and just starting our lives together. We’d both just started our careers as educators, and we saw our city burning.
And now, I have to ask...what has changed? I know many of you out there are saying, “violence isn’t the answer” or words to that effect. I know what you mean, and I understand the sentiment. You can’t ask for an end to violence but use violence as your method to get there. An eye for an eye and the world goes blind. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. I’ve heard all the homilies. The answer is to vote, they say.
Donald Trump won the presidency despite millions more people voting for his opponent. The Russian government intervened in our election to assist him. Voter suppression tactics were used by the Republican party to tip the scales in their favor. So why would a person think that voting works? I don’t mean a person thinking “my one vote won’t matter,” but instead thinking “my vote won’t count.”
Colin Kaepernick decided to kneel during the National Anthem during the 2016 NFL season, when he was a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. He did so to protest police brutality. He has been denounced by many on the right for his protest, including by President Donald Trump, who called him a “son of a bitch” and said he should be fired. So what is the message being sent to those who wish to protest police brutality? Protest peacefully, but not that way? This is but one example of people of color protesting peacefully and being told that their methods are wrong.
What methods, then, remain?
Langston Hughes once asked, “What happens to a dream deferred?” He had many poetic possibilities in mind, including that it might “dry up/Like a raisin in the sun” which inspired Lorraine Hansbury to write her masterpiece play, A Raisin in the Sun. But his poem, “Harlem,” ended with a prophetic warning, an ominous question about the result of deferring a people’s dream: “Or does it explode?”
I don’t condone the violence that these protests have wrought. I could go on and on about how much of it, if not almost all of it, is the product of fringe groups using the protests as cover for their own unrelated ends: anarchists and white supremacists and all kinds of other groups who see a chance to inflict harm upon society for no reason other than to do so. But let’s not get into that argument. Let’s just simply acknowledge that along with these protests, there has been violence. I don’t like that. I don’t support it.
But to those who look and wonder, who say, “I don’t understand why these people are being so violent,” let me ask you…
What else is left?
If you can answer that, then you are wiser than I. I don’t know what the method should be to effect change--change that is long, long overdue and which has been deferred for centuries. I can’t say what avenue a protester ought to pursue to achieve his or her ends. And since I can’t answer the question “how,” then I will just watch my nation burn, and hope that this time, this time, from its ashes will rise a better society.
Be seeing you!
In 1992, the city of Los Angeles was plunged into chaos following the acquittal of four white police officers of the use of excessive force for the beating of Rodney King--the beating had been recorded on videotape and seen by the public, and the acquittal of the officers was inexplicable and unconscionable. The jury that reached the not guilty verdicts (including one hung jury result) was comprised of ten white people, one Latino person, and one Asian person.
There were no African-Americans on the jury.
The city burned for five days, during which time there was over one billion dollars in damage, tens of thousands of arrests, thousands of injuries, and dozens of deaths. There were smaller disturbances in other parts of the country as a result of the verdict: San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle, Atlanta, and New York City.
In 2020, Los Angeles again erupted into disorder following the videotaped death of George Floyd of Minneapolis, Minnesota, after he had been choked by a white police officer while his three other officers watched or assisted. Mr. Floyd was choked by the officer for over eight minutes--the last three of which Mr. Floyd was unconscious or otherwise non-responsive. Minneapolis police took four days to charge the officer of a crime, and of this writing, the other three officers have not been charged at all.
The main uprising occurred in Minneapolis following the murder, but other cities soon followed suit. I am writing this while the uprisings are still happening, almost a week after the murder. Some of the major cities experiencing uprisings include Minneapolis, New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Cleveland, Raleigh, Louisville, Atlanta, Dallas, and the nation’s capital in Washington, D.C.
Today, the entire county of Los Angeles was placed under 6:00 p.m. curfew, which includes Santa Clarita, where I live with my family. My wife and I watch the news and are transported back to ‘92: twenty-eight years ago, we were newlyweds, living in Los Angeles and just starting our lives together. We’d both just started our careers as educators, and we saw our city burning.
And now, I have to ask...what has changed? I know many of you out there are saying, “violence isn’t the answer” or words to that effect. I know what you mean, and I understand the sentiment. You can’t ask for an end to violence but use violence as your method to get there. An eye for an eye and the world goes blind. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. I’ve heard all the homilies. The answer is to vote, they say.
Donald Trump won the presidency despite millions more people voting for his opponent. The Russian government intervened in our election to assist him. Voter suppression tactics were used by the Republican party to tip the scales in their favor. So why would a person think that voting works? I don’t mean a person thinking “my one vote won’t matter,” but instead thinking “my vote won’t count.”
Colin Kaepernick decided to kneel during the National Anthem during the 2016 NFL season, when he was a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. He did so to protest police brutality. He has been denounced by many on the right for his protest, including by President Donald Trump, who called him a “son of a bitch” and said he should be fired. So what is the message being sent to those who wish to protest police brutality? Protest peacefully, but not that way? This is but one example of people of color protesting peacefully and being told that their methods are wrong.
What methods, then, remain?
Langston Hughes once asked, “What happens to a dream deferred?” He had many poetic possibilities in mind, including that it might “dry up/Like a raisin in the sun” which inspired Lorraine Hansbury to write her masterpiece play, A Raisin in the Sun. But his poem, “Harlem,” ended with a prophetic warning, an ominous question about the result of deferring a people’s dream: “Or does it explode?”
I don’t condone the violence that these protests have wrought. I could go on and on about how much of it, if not almost all of it, is the product of fringe groups using the protests as cover for their own unrelated ends: anarchists and white supremacists and all kinds of other groups who see a chance to inflict harm upon society for no reason other than to do so. But let’s not get into that argument. Let’s just simply acknowledge that along with these protests, there has been violence. I don’t like that. I don’t support it.
But to those who look and wonder, who say, “I don’t understand why these people are being so violent,” let me ask you…
What else is left?
If you can answer that, then you are wiser than I. I don’t know what the method should be to effect change--change that is long, long overdue and which has been deferred for centuries. I can’t say what avenue a protester ought to pursue to achieve his or her ends. And since I can’t answer the question “how,” then I will just watch my nation burn, and hope that this time, this time, from its ashes will rise a better society.
Be seeing you!
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