Understanding
The Riots
By
Devon Bowers
Given
light of the nationwide protests, especially in Minneapolis regarding the death
of George Floyd, as well as other victims of police violence, this is a revised
and updated version an article I wrote in 2014, defending the Ferguson
uprising.
“Now, let’s get to what the white press has
been calling riots. In the first place don’t get confused with the words they
use like ‘anti-white,’ ‘hate,’ ‘militant’ and all that nonsense like ‘radical’
and ‘riots.’ What’s happening is rebellions not riots[.]”- Stokley Carmichael,
“Black Power” speech, July 28, 1966
"The
bourgeoisie of the whole world, which looks complacently upon the wholesale
massacre after the battle, is convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick
and mortar."
Karl Marx, "The Civil War in
France" (1871)
In light of the uprising
in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Washington DC, and other places across the country,
many people have come out of the woodwork to condemn violent protesting and the
destruction of buildings. However, we have to ask ourselves, what do they mean
by violence?
When talking of violence
in this context, it is rather strange. What people are condemning is property
destruction, not violence. One can’t act in a violent way towards an inanimate
object. Burning a building, whether it be a Target or a police precinct, isn’t violence,
but in this context is pushback against a system where that has destroyed
people for years. The murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor is actual
violence. Two people’s lives were abruptly ended due to the maliciousness of
the police. Storeowners have insurance, stores can be rebuilt and revived, we
can’t revive Floyd, Taylor, or Ahmaud Arbery.
On a deeper level, this
is where capitalism and racism intersect. One of capitalism’s main tenets is
the dominance of private property and how it must be protected. We can see that
this has been transcribed in law, such as with the Stand Your Ground laws. Yet,
also within the larger society there is a lack of caring for black life. In any
situation, the media and general public regularly engage in victim blaming and
look for anything, anything at all to assassinate the character of those who
died at the hand of the police.
This can be seen in the
recent past, where the media bought up Akai
Gurley’s criminal record when discussing his death at the hands of a police
officer or when the New York Post published an article discussing Arbery being arrested for shoplifting in 2017. The
publication of such information is done with the intent to demonize victims of
police and white supremacist violence, allowing supporters of such violence to
have an excuse as how the victims ‘deserved it’ and ‘simply got what was coming
to them.’
We have also seen that the
police will flat out lie to push their narrative. In the case of Breonna
Taylor, police argued that her residence “was listed on the search warrant based on police's
belief that Glover [Taylor’s boyfriend] had used her apartment to receive mail,
keep drugs or stash money.” However, a postal worker noted
that the police “did not use his office to verify that a drug suspect was
receiving packages at Breonna Taylor's apartment” and that when a different
agency asked in January 2020 if Taylor’s home was receiving suspicious
packages, the answer was no. The no-knock raid went on unabated and then was justified
based on knowingly false information.
With regards to the riots
themselves, the larger society is asking why protesters don’t remain peaceful.
The answer is two-part: peace has been tried and we are going to be condemned
no matter what.
We have to ask this: Why
would you think that people would remain peaceful in the face of constant
violence? Why would people remain peaceful cases of police violence and police
murder continue with no end in sight and usually no punishment for the
offending officers?
Black people have tried
peace before. We were peaceful in the 1960s when we were peacefully protesting
for our civil rights and were met with racist mobs, firehoses, and dogs, we had
crosses burnt on our lawns, lynchings, and a bomb put in a church. During all
of that time we remained peaceful even as society enacted massive violence and
repression against us. Yet, violence against the black community continues
today.
The situation is
currently such where if a black person is killed by the police, people
immediately come out and find any way in which they can besmirch or blame the
victim. This occurs even when it adds insult to death, as is the case with
Floyd where the autopsy
noted that his “being restrained by the
police, along with his underlying health conditions and any potential
intoxicants in his system, ‘likely contributed to his death.” Such a statement partially
puts the blame on Floyd himself for dying rather than entirely at the hands of Derek
Chauvin and the other officers who sat there and watched Floyd die.
The conversation
drastically changes when oppressed people fight back. Not only is the violence
denounced, but then it is used as an excuse to use massive amounts of violence
against the oppressed, as we see currently with not only the
National Guard being called up to suppress the uprising in Minneapolis, but
also active
duty military police units from all over the country are being prepped.
When people lash out
against one incident, one may be inclined to call that violence, but when
violence against your community has been going on for decades and people lash
out, that’s no longer violence on the part of the oppressed, that’s called
resistance.
When the question is
raised of why aren’t there peaceful protests, it is also extremely
hypocritical. Many have spoken out in person and on social media condemning the
riots, but at the same time they are silent on the constant police brutality
that the black community deals with and they are silent on the economic
violence done against black communities, pushing them into ghettos where not
only is there economic poverty but also a poverty of expectations.
At the heart of this is
how society condones state violence, but condemns violence by individuals. This
mindset is a serious problem as it only gives more power to the state and
consistently puts state forces in the right, with the victims of state violence
being forced to prove their innocence, a situation made all the harder due to
people already assuming that the victim is in the wrong.
Many have pushed for
peace, but peace and safety are not something the black people in America
receive, whether we are just looking for help after a car accident, as was the
case with Renisha McBride, or we are carrying a toy gun around, as was the case
with John Crawford.
This is not the time to
ask for peace. This is the time to say “No justice, no peace.”