I’ve got a dilemma that I need your help with. Like many of you, I look at the news and see protests and riots and great consternation when people are shot by the police. I’m trying to work through how I feel about all that, so I invite you along as I piece through the myriad thoughts working their way through my brain. Maybe we’ll all know how I feel by the end of the column!
We here in Minnesota certainly got an up-close view of protests and rioting following the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police. And then the non-fatal shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin led to more death and destruction as people flooded the streets.
So let’s start with this: What’s the difference between a protest and a riot? I think of it this way: Protests are peaceful, and riots grow violent. People have the right to protest, guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution, the right to peaceably assemble and have freedom of speech. But the key is peaceable. A protest becomes a riot when the peaceful part goes away.
Do people have the right to protest the actions of the police in both cases? Absolutely. Whether the officers in both cases are exonerated or not, their actions sure fell into a blurry area of judgment. People are mad because of it. There are many who feel changes need to be made in how police are trained and how they respond to situations, especially when it involves minorities.
Like any profession, I really believe the vast majority of police officers are fine, upstanding people who work hard and deserve our respect for putting their lives on the line. But also like any profession, there are bound to be some bad apples out there. The hardest part of judging the actions of the police is that none of us know how we would react in a heated moment, when we could be making a life or death decision, and that decision might even be our own life or death.
I really enjoy the book (and movie) The Hate U Give. It has as its central conflict the death of a young black man after being shot by the Chicago police. The officer in the story believes the teenager is reaching for a weapon, even though it is just a comb. A main discussion point in the book is whether the officer was justified. There is no right answer; if you thought someone might be pulling a gun on you, would you shoot them?
Where there is a clear right and wrong in that story is that the black man is pulled over for no clear reason. This type of racial profiling is not something we’re really familiar with in rural Minnesota, but it’s an unfortunate truth in larger cities. And yes, I’ve seen the memes that say the cops will leave you alone if you’re not doing anything wrong. But there are too many stories of minorities being pulled over for minor reasons that white drivers are left alone about.
So the point of the protests around our country was to demand action to change the statistics that show that minorities are sometimes arrested five times as much as white people. We’ve been protesting in this country since, well, since before we became a country! Groups gather often at the White House or the state capitol to protest something they think is unfair about a law or a status in our country. Martin Luther King, Jr., led one of the most memorable protests at the Mall in Washington, D.C., helping lead to equal rights for all.
However, these riots get out of hand. It starts with the people who think that blocking traffic on major roads is a good idea. To me, that’s rioting; you’ve moved beyond peacefulness and gone to endangering lives. It’s breaking the law, plain and simple.
When the violence occurs, as we saw in Minneapolis and Kenosha, it seems like many people are looking for an excuse to do whatever they want and get away with it. Why is Target at fault for a police officer’s actions resulting in the loss of life? How about all the small businesses that will never recover? These rioters take away from the message the original protestors were trying to send and, unfortunately, reinforce a stereotype that minorities can be violent.
I do think a little bit about rioting in a positive vein, though. Again, going back to before we were a country, there’s a little thing known as the Boston Tea Party. Wasn’t that rioting? Was it the fault of the ship’s captain or the tea merchants that England was enforcing a tax that the colonists didn’t think was justified? So one could argue that our country was founded partly on riots.
At the end of all this, I think all I want is for people to behave civilly. Obey the police and the laws of your area. If something doesn’t turn out the way you want, go ahead and protest; maybe you can help enact change in a positive way! But don’t look for an excuse to put on a mask (something we all love doing by now!) and go wreck other people’s lives, people who might have had nothing to do with why you’re upset.
Thanks for sorting through that with me! As Al Batt tells us every week, it’s pretty simple. Be kind.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is equipollent, which means equal in power and force, as in, “The protestors were looking for equipollent opportunities for people of all races.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!