The good news is that Derek Chauvin has been convicted for the murder of George Floyd. In this instance, the justice system has worked. A white police
Derek Chauvin
officer is being held accountable for his excessive use of force against an unarmed black man. Something that very rarely happens.
But this is also the bad news.
At this point in America’s history, Derek Chauvin’s conviction is a “black swan event.” Recall Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s bestselling book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Random House, 2010), reminding us that incredibly improbable events (like a black swan) may have considerable influence while remaining very rare.
Notice the two provisos: first, the transformative event is very rare; and two, it MAY have significant consequences. In other words, the possible results are far from assured, and the event itself may never be repeated.
Krystal Ball
Krystal Ball (yes, that’s her real name) reminded her viewers on “Rising” this morning of the extraordinary efforts that created the context for Chauvin’s successful conviction.
First, is Darnella Frasier, the teenage girl who had the presence of mind and the courage to pull out her cell phone and film the 9 minute video of officer Chauvin kneeling of Mr. Floyd’s neck.
Second, is the largest, most sustained protest movement in US history, which spread around the world.
Were it not for these two momentous actions, George Floyd would have been just another anonymous victim of police brutality. And Derek Chauvin would have gotten away with murder.
Hardly encouraging news.
Think about that. Let it sink in. It hardly indicates that this is the beginning of a new day in prosecuting police misconduct, let alone altering police behavior nationwide.
[Krystal’s remarks begin at about the 30 second mark.
Now is the time to keep the celebrations brief.
Because now is the time to insist that our legislators pass H.R. 1280, The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021. Though this piece of legislation is inadequate on its own, it may serve as a piece of the larger police reform puzzle.
Now is also the time to continue campaigning for local Defund the Police programs across the country. Numerous cities are testing these ideas now and the preliminary reports are very encouraging in places like Denver and Colorado Springs (see here, here, here, and here).
Now is also the time for Christian leaders to continue speaking out about justice and equality for all people, regardless of race, color, ethnicity, or class.
Do not swallow the Fox News cool-aid insisting that this trial was only about one bad apple who did one bad thing, and that his conviction proves the reliability of our glorious criminal justice system.
That predictably conservative framing of the issues is a recipe for going back to sleep and maintaining the status quo. A status quo that ignores the larger context of US policing and police training which allows police brutality to continue unabated.
No. Now is the time to keep the pressure on, to continue protesting, to insist that the culture of American policing is in dire need of regeneration.
Now is also the time for the evangelical church to break ranks with the Republican party, Fox News, and the politics of fear.
It will mean wanting to become more like Jesus, releasing our vice-like grip on worries over personal security and caring more for those who suffer than we care for ourselves.
Canadian reporter David Doel of The Rational National shares the speech made by Dante Wright’s aunt at the family press conference held yesterday.
We all need to listen to her. Hear why she not only grieves the death of her nephew but is angry over the way he died. She points out details in the shooter’s actions that raised my eyebrows, too.
Afterwards, Mr. Doel goes on to provide excellent commentary, placing Mr. Wright’s murder in its historical context. His challenge must be taken seriously by everyone, please.
As I focus on the problems of systemic racism and white privilege this month, ProPublica has a good article describing the problem of systemic racism in the capitol police force and its effects during the Capitol attack on January 6th.
I have excerpted the article below, or you can read the entire article by clicking on the title above.
Allegations of racism against the Capitol Police are nothing new: Over 250 Black cops have sued the department since 2001. Some of those former officers now say it’s no surprise white nationalists were able to storm the building.
When Kim Dine took over as the new chief of the U.S. Capitol Police in 2012, he knew he had a serious problem.
Since 2001, hundreds of Black officers had sued the department for racial discrimination. They alleged that white officers called Black colleagues slurs like the N-word and that one officer found a hangman’s noose on his locker. White officers were called “huk lovers” or “FOGs” — short for “friends of gangsters” — if they were friendly with their Black colleagues. Black officers faced “unprovoked traffic stops” from fellow Capitol Police officers. One Black officer claimed he heard a colleague say, “Obama monkey, go back to Africa.”
In case after case, agency lawyers denied wrongdoing. But in an interview, Dine said it was clear he had to address the department’s charged racial climate.
. . . Whether the Capitol Police managed to root out racist officers will be one of many issues raised as Congress investigates the agency’s failure to prevent a mob of Trump supporters from attacking the Capitol while lawmakers inside voted to formalize the electoral victory of President-elect Joe Biden.
Already, officials have suspended several police officers for possible complicity with insurrectionists, one of whom was pictured waving a Confederate battle flag as he occupied the building. One cop was captured on tape seeming to take selfies with protesters, while another allegedly wore a red “Make America Great Again” hat as he directed protesters around the Capitol building. While many officers were filmed fighting off rioters, at least 12 others are under investigation for possibly assisting them.
Two current Black Capitol Police officers told BuzzFeed News that they were angered by leadership failures that they said put them at risk as racist members of the mob stormed the building. . .
. . . Sharon Blackmon-Malloy, a former Capitol Police officer who was the lead plaintiff in the 2001 discrimination lawsuit filed against the department, said she was not surprised that pro-Trump rioters burst into the Capitol last week.
In her 25 years with the Capitol Police, Blackmon-Malloy spent decades trying to raise the alarm about what she saw as endemic racism within the force, even organizing demonstrations where Black officers would return to the Capitol off-duty, protesting outside the building they usually protect.
The 2001 case, which started with more than 250 plaintiffs, remains pending. As recently as 2016, a Black female officer filed a racial discrimination complaint against the department.
“Nothing ever really was resolved. Congress turned a blind eye to racism on the Hill,” Blackmon-Malloy, who retired as a lieutenant in 2007, told ProPublica.
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, the dead bodies of 6 people of color have been discovered hanging from trees in various parts of this country.
In each case, local police are saying the people died by suicide. I don’t buy it.
Below is a video taken by one of several friends who fortunately stumbled upon a lynching in progress and were able to stop it.
No doubt, had these young people not had the good fortune and the fortitude to intervene, we would be hearing the report of yet another black man dying after tying himself to a tree.
Former police officer Tom Nolan has an article at ConsortiumNews condemning the militarization of US policing, pointing to its destructive consequences on display in the ongoing BLM demonstrations.
Below is an excerpt. Read the entire article here.
I have seen, throughout my decades in law enforcement, that police culture tends to privilege the use of violent tactics and non-negotiable force over compromise, mediation, and peaceful conflict resolution. It reinforces a general acceptance among officers of the use of any and all means of force available when confronted with real or perceived threats to officers.
We have seen this play out during the first week of protests following Floyd’s death in cities from Seattle to Flint to Washington, D.C.
The police have deployed a militarized response to what they accurately or inaccurately believe to be a threat to public order, private property, and their own safety. It is in part due to a policing culture in which protesters are often perceived as the “enemy.” Indeed teaching cops to think like soldiers and learn how to kill has been part of a training program popular among some police officers.
Officer A. Cab has written a powerful autobiographical article at Medium confessing and repenting of his 10 years as a cop.
He describes, from the inside, why police “reform” will never work. He also makes the argument for why “defunding” (though that word is misleading and unhelpful) the police is essential if we hope to see real change.
I hope you will read the entire piece. I have excerpted select sections below. You can find the entire article here. It is worth your time.
I was a police officer for nearly ten years and I was a bastard. We all were.
This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt.
——
While every cop’s individual biases come into play, it’s the profession itself that is toxic, and it starts from day 1 of training.
Every police academy is different but all of them share certain features: taught by old cops, run like a paramilitary bootcamp, strong emphasis on protecting yourself more than anyone else. The majority of my time in the academy was spent doing aggressive physical training and watching video after video after video of police officers being murdered on duty.
——-
Once police training has – through repetition, indoctrination, and violent spectacle – promised officers that everyone in the world is out to kill them, the next lesson is that your partners are the only people protecting you.
——
The question is this: did I need a gun and sweeping police powers to help the average person on the average night? The answer is no. When I was doing my best work as a cop, I was doing mediocre work as a therapist or a social worker.
——
Police officers do not protect and serve people, they protect and serve the status quo, “polite society”, and private property. Using the incremental mechanisms of the status quo will never reform the police because the status quo relies on police violence to exist.
My daughter and I attended the Justice for George Floyd/Black Lives Matter demonstration in Kalispell, MT yesterday. The organizers’ Facebook page
I am the masked man on the right
warned that members of several armed militia groups would also be there.
We both wondered what would happen.
Kalispell demonstrations are always limited to a public park at the end of main street cutting through the city center. The organizers applauded how cooperative the local police department had been in helping to plan the event. As a result, we were all instructed not to bring signs with any type of derogatory, anti-police messages.
Instead, the organizers announced, the demonstration’s intended message was “unity.”
“Unity with whom for what?,” I asked myself.
Demonstrators line main street
o, Kendra and I are going to demonstrate against police brutality in a country where unarmed African-Americans are 5 x more likely than white Americans to be shot and killed by police. The organizers have agreed with the local police department to restrict the protest to the police-approved section of the public park, where the police have also decided that we will experience “unity” with heavily armed members of local militia groups.
Let freedom ring.
On the positive side, I was happy to see the largest turnout for any protest I have yet attended in Kalispell.
Demonstrators lining both sides of the street
The Sunday morning paper estimated there were at least 1,000 people in attendance — including, of course, our semiautomatic rifle-toting, American flag waving, self-appointed, “don’t tread on me” guardians.
A small group of armed cowboys walked through the crowd carrying American flags and yellow signs calling people to repent and believe in Jesus. At one point, as they approached me I loudly reminded them that Jesus is not white.
While my fellow protesters got the point and laughed, the gang of gun slinger
Armed militia
patriot-evangelists remained totally oblivious to the mockery they were making of the gospel they came to promote.
I took time out periodically to talk with the militia members. I picked the guy with the biggest rifle and asked him why he was here? What was the group’s goal in attending this protest?
Each one repeated the same response. I got the impression that they had all been briefed on how to answer questions from the public. “We are here to protect you,” they said.
I probed further.
Armed and ready
“We don’t want to see the kind of looting and property destruction in our city that we see everywhere else these protests happen. We especially don’t want anyone defacing our veterans’ memorial,” referring to a large statue near the street.
“But,” I would say, “There is a large police presence here already. They would stop people from defacing the statue. Did the police ask for your help?”
“No. We just volunteered,” I was told.
The mass of demonstrators would periodically chant “Black Lives Matter”
Guarding the war monument, and chanting USA, White Lives Matter
while receiving a chorus of horns honking in agreement from cars passing by.
But each time we chanted “Black Lives Matter,” the militia members waved their flags more aggressively and took up a counter-chant, usually “USA! USA!” or sometimes “White Lives Matter!”
I took another break, approached a chanting militiaman and asked why he did that. Why did he respond to Black Lives Matter with USA? How was his a counterpoint to ours?
“Well,” he said. “This is America. And in America everyone is equal.”
“But I still don’t understand,” I said. “Why can’t you say Black Lives Matter with us, if everyone here is equal?”
Well, you guessed it. With that the racist damn broke. I was now listening to a heated monologue about how “black people bring all their problems on themselves.”
It was impossible to get a word in edgewise, so I thanked him for his time and said goodbye.
As Kendra and I left the park later that evening, we talked about what we had learned. It was evident that everyone carrying a handgun and a rifle were devotees of Fox News. They had never seen any of the abundant video footage of peaceful demonstrations all across the country, nor had they seen the gangs of police attacking innocent protesters.
They had all arrived believing that every “liberal” demonstration was a riot-in-
How many semi-automatics does it take?
waiting. They stood guard believing that were it not for their armed presence, Kalispell would have been the next city victimized by looting liberals run riot.
I wish I could say that I feel encouraged this morning after Kalispell’s largest (maybe first?) Black Lives Matter demonstration. But I don’t.
I fear that America’s deepening divisions will never be bridged, much less mended, as everyone remains comfortably ensconced in their preferred information bubble. Between the alternate realities of Fox News and MSNBC (not to mention the others), our segmented mass media has destroyed the possibility of any truly national conversation.
We don’t live in the same world. We live in different worlds, different universes separated by contrary “facts,” alternate realities that too many of us meekly accept without challenge, investigation, or alternate, independent thinking.
It’s too easy to grab another beer in a self-assured, reaffirming world where confirmation bias goes unrecognized. Not a one of my armed conversation partners would believe that the vast majority of the nation’s recent protests were peaceful, that the looting was marginal — graphic but marginal.
And why should they? After all, Fox News told them otherwise.
I am too old to be surprised by racism. But it is still depressing to hear the stream of ignorant words pour from the mouth of a man immediately in front of me. I can’t imagine what it must be like for African-Americans to repeatedly hear from ill-informed, prejudiced lips that all their problems are of their own making.
Sure, we all make many of our own problems. But asymmetrical police brutality is NOT one of them.
How often can any person tolerate being told that when the police attack you, kneel on your neck, and choke the life out of you, it is because something is wrong with you; that you create your own problems? That if you were a better citizen, the police would not be murdering your friends and family at 5 x the rate of everyone else?
Racism is endemic to the human heart. I saw that again last night. We will never be rid of it till Jesus comes.
Sadly, the young ensemble of armed patriots qua evangelists provided vivid witness to the fact that “confessing and repenting of sin” is no guarantee of a transformed heart or a renewed Christ-like mind.
Danielle Kilgo, journalism professor at Indiana University, presents the
Prof. Danielle Kilgo
results of her research into the way journalists present, or frame, protest movements depending on the issues at stake. Her article at Consortium News is entitled, “Riot or Resistance: Media Framing Shapes Public View.”
Her data demonstrates the inherent bias of reporters depending on the issues being protested and the effects of reporter bias on public perception. Below is an excerpt.
My research has found that some protest movements have more trouble than others getting legitimacy. My co-author Summer Harlow and I have studied how local and metropolitan newspapers cover protests. We found that narratives about the Women’s March and anti-Trump protests gave voice to protesters and significantly explored their grievances. On the other end of the spectrum, protests about anti-black racism and indigenous people’s rights received the least legitimizing coverage, with them more often seen as threatening and violent.
Decades ago, scholars James Hertog and Douglas McLeod identified how news coverage of protests contributes to the maintenance of the status quo, a phenomenon referred to as “the protest paradigm.” They held that media narratives tend to emphasize the drama, inconvenience and disruption of protests rather than the demands, grievances and agendas of protesters. These narratives trivialize protests and ultimately dent public support.
The predictable mantra has begun – “we have to maintain law and order.”
Calls for law and order in the midst of nation-wide demonstrations against police brutality and in favor of racial justice are as predictable as the sunset. It always happens.
Well timed calls for law and order always served the purposes of the powerful who pretend to care.
Keith Childress, shot for carrying a cell phone
It is always the great “BUT” working to obscure the issue at hand; to distract from the problems of racial injustice and police violence.
Law and order is the subversive language deployed by people who are not at risk as they feign comradeship with those who are. It allows the bogus compatriot to say, in fact, “I am with you as long as you keep your objections within my boundaries of safety.”
When members of the establishment say things like, “I believe in peaceful protest, BUT…I believe in racial equality, BUT…I support the protests, BUT I condemn the looting…BUT we need to maintain law and order,” they merely repeat the establishment code for defending the status quo.
Defending law and order has always been the message of the establishment,
Bettie Jones, shot and killed for helping a neighbor and opening the door to police
allowing it to maintain its mask of humanity while tacitly supporting acts of inhumanity.
We have seen it all before.
Law and order was the message of pro-segregationist governors and mayors in the deep south who believed that ANY expression of civil disobedience, no matter how peaceful, especially when committed by black people and other civil rights advocates, was a dangerous act of lawlessness demanding brutal, police suppression.
Lester Maddox, the racist, segregationist governor of Georgia, always insisted that he accepted black people as equals. He just didn’t want them living next door. And he would gladly sic the police on any black person who tried to move into his neighborhood. (Watch his racist confessions with Jim Brown on the Dick Cavett show here. I recall watching a different Cavett show where Maddox walked off the set).
It was also Richard Nixon’s Republican party code for keeping black people
Jamar Clark, witnesses say he was shot and killed while handcuffed and unarmed
in their place at the height of the civil rights movement in 1968. It was also a very successful code language that spoke volumes to conservative America and led to his presidential victory that year.
But every reactionary plea for “law and order” must first answer the question, “Whose law, and whose order?”
Because the fact is that, in America today, there are two difference types of law and order, one for white, middle/upper-class communities, and another for (poor) communities of color.
As the repeated, public murders of African-Americans demonstrate, law and order for black people in America is unlike law and order for white people. For African-Americans, law and order means (1) people of color are born guilty; they are always suspect, which means that (2) the police are free to treat them as they wish.
Law and order for black people in America includes breaking down their doors for no good reason; shooting them dead inside their own homes, even when police are at the wrong address; planting evidence while making
Michael Marshall, suffered from mental illness; died after being “restrained” into a coma
illegal arrests; and the list goes on.
That is the “law and order” enforced in America’s black neighborhoods today.
So, whose law and order are the public pearl-clutchers advocating and defending when they condemn protesters for violating the norms of “law and order”?
Where were these easy-street advocates of public order when black neighborhoods were being patrolled by cops who viewed community residents as the enemy to be controlled rather than as citizens to be protected and served?
Where were the white marches launched in defense of black communities when they needed defending against a local, militarized police force eagerly searching for excuses to deploy their new body armor, armored vehicles, stun guns, rubber bullets, 4-foot batons, rubber bullets and tear gas?
George Floyd, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, and Ahmaud Arbery are only the tip of the iceberg.
Unarmed black people are 5x more likely to be shot and killed by police than
Ahmaud Arbery, shot and killed for jogging in a white neighborhood
are white people in America. That shocking statistic alone tells us that murdering unarmed black people (although possessing a weapon is not a significant distinguishing factor) is completely acceptable and well within the bounds of American law and order.
Concerning the present protests, an overwhelming amount of video evidence proves that the police themselves regularly instigate violence where protesters were behaving peacefully.
The police are masters at escalating violence needlessly as an expression of their own presumption of authoritarian privilege. (Watch this compilation video of cops attacking peaceful demonstrators with impunity). I have personally experienced how the police use excessive force to instigate violence during an anti-war protest in Chicago in 2012. I then watched as the establishment media turned the facts upside down to accuse the demonstrators of attacking the police!
By condemning these calls for law and order, I am not condoning violence.
Sandra Bland, arrested during a routine traffic stop; supposedly (and unbelievably) committed suicide in jail
Rather, I am highlighting the fact that we must learn to insist and to resist.
First, we must insistthat the public spot light remain focused on the central issues: racism and police brutality. We cannot be distracted.
Second, we must resist the power of corporate media to socialize us into (a) complacency and (b) collaboration. The problem being exposed by protesters right now is notsome tendency for peaceful rallies to be exploited by chaotic troublemakers. Don’t allow the media to suggest otherwise.
The problem is white America’s sleepy indifference to the daily mistreatment of our black brothers and sisters – an evil with which God’s people can never collaborate or become complacent.
The problem is white America’s indifference to the fact that a separate code of law and order is applied to communities of color every single day.
The problem is not the disintegration of law and order but the historic
Eric Garner, choked to death by police while pleading, “I can’t breathe.”
application of arbitrary, dehumanizing law and order at the whim of our dehumanized police force.
Here is a basic Christian principle: God’s people must always stand with the oppressed and the disadvantaged, just as we must always stand up for equality and justice. This is God’s way, and it must always be ours.
Thus, the ethics of God’s kingdom demand both pacifism and civil disobedience whenever cultures work to shape kingdom people, both black and white, into ungodly configurations.
Resistance is difficult but essential if we hope to become more like Jesus. Which means that the church cannot lazily mimic cultural mantras, whatever they may be.
Instead, God’s people are obligated to INSIST on justice and to RESIST falling in line.
Over the past few years, The Intercept has produced a series of investigative articles covering questions of police brutality, budgeting, and reform in America.
Most recently Alice Speri, Alleen Brown, and Mara Hvistendahl have written “The George Floyd Killing in Minneapolis Exposes the Failures of Police Reform” giving greater depth to a point I made here.
Below is an excerpt.
“Reform is not the answer, we’ve been trying it for decades, and as you can see,
Neighborhood protest in Minneapolis
we’re just not getting anywhere,” he said. “We need a new paradigm of policing in the United States. It needs to be completely dismantled and reconstructed, not changing a policy here or there.”…
…“And what does it say about the limits of reform that the city of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis police department could be part of a multi-year, multimillion-dollar national project to enhance police community relations, and after all of that, here we are?”
A niece of Jamar Clark protested with a photograph of the two Minneapolis police officers who were involved in Clark’s murder on Oct. 15, 2016, in Minneapolis. Star Tribune via Getty Images
After years of investment in improved policing with no results to show for it, “the conversation has changed,” she added. “There’s much more of a public awareness and conversation about abolition, and what that means and what that might look like. … I think people were radicalized by Jamar Clark and Philando Castile. And then they saw the contradictions around Justine Damond.”
Montgomery, the director of Black Visions Collective, said that organizers are tired of just calling for prosecutions. “We’re moving past a conversation around prosecuting the police and individual officers — that doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t prevent another Philando Castile or George Floyd,” said Montgomery. “To me and many of my comrades, police reform is irrelevant.”
Some demands have shifted to community control. Organizer Sam Martinez told The Intercept that the Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar wants a board similar to a city council or school board to run the police: controlling its budget, approving union contracts, and deciding disciplinary actions. Martinez says the board would have to be fundamentally different from previous civilian police review councils that law enforcement has mostly ignored.
