This weekend, protests across the United States, and the world, highlighted the unacceptably high death toll of young Black men publicly executed by police. With presidential conventions rapidly approaching, the political elite would be well-advised to think about the surge of frustration in the United States not just from the Black community, but from many others as well, with people of all races marching in solidarity during rallies and protests, and in some cases reportedly standing between Black marchers and police violence. This week, a roundup of what we’re reading on the subject.
‘‘Blue Lives Matter’ Bills Pop Up After Dallas Shooting‘ (Think Progress)
The Dallas shooting led many people to suggest that members of Black Lives Matter are anti-cop, and perhaps even rejoicing at the deaths of five police officers. Nothing could be further from the truth: It is possible to be part of Black Lives Matter while also condemning the shooting deaths of police officers — would that police officers would return the sentiment and condemn the shooting deaths of the people they murder.
In May, Louisiana became the first state to expand its hate crime protections to include police and emergency personnel. To the disappointment of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and advocates of the First Amendment, the first-of-its-kind Blue Lives Matter law enhanced the penalties for people who attack or threaten cops in the state, effectively lumping a profession into the same category as fixed or perceived traits like race, gender, and religion. When it goes into effect in three weeks, it could be put to the test right away in Baton Rouge, where protesters have taken to the streets in response to the shooting of Alton Sterling.
‘After Dallas, Black Lives Matter is more important than ever‘ (The Guardian)
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor has more thoughts on the connections between Black Lives Matter and the Dallas shooting, as well as the lack thereof, in a sharp rejoinder to claims that the movement is somehow provoking anti-police sentiment.
All of these attacks on BLM are intended to create the impression that it’s the activists and organizers that are riling up otherwise placid people. But they have it backwards. The movement does not exist because of its most prominent personalities or spokespeople. It exists because of police brutality and misconduct. In other words, it is not ‘erroneous information and inflammatory rhetoric’ that has inflamed people; rather it’s the regular abuse and racist harassment that sometimes results in the murder of innocent African Americans at the hands of the police that gave birth to the movement.
‘A Single Photo From Baton Rouge That’s Hard to Forget‘ (The Atlantic)
Of many striking images from a weekend of protest, one Reuters image by photographer Jonathan Bachman stood out: A woman standing tall and proud in a dress, calmly facing down police officers in riot gear. Her expression is serene as her dress swirls around her, while the police officers are in frenetic motion as they close in on her. It’s an image likely destined to become iconic, and it’s one of many stunning images from the weekend — the democratisation of photography through the ready availability of both affordable cameras and broadcast mechanisms has enabled the appearance of stunning protest photography.
‘It happened quickly, but I could tell that she wasn’t going to move, and it seemed like she was making her stand. To me it seemed like: You’re going to have to come and get me. And I just thought it seemed like this was a good place to get in position and make an image, just because she was there in her dress and you have two police officers in full riot gear.’
‘Why Alton Sterling and Philando Castile Are Dead‘ (The Nation)
In conversations about police reform in the United States, it’s imperative to face up to history, including its more ugly elements. The nation was founded in part on the ownership of Black — and in the West under the Spanish, Native – bodies, and that reality is everpresent today, no matter how much people attempt to ignore it.
Nor will there likely be peace, because of a simple fact about law enforcement: There is too much of it, touching too many aspects of daily life, creating too many opportunities for it to inflict violence upon the public it is supposed to serve. This has always been true for black people, in one way or another. From the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act forward, public-safety officers have been empowered to harass black bodies in the defense of private capital and the pursuit of public revenue. As a result, no generation of black Americans has been spared the macabre tradition of drilling into its children tips for avoiding death at the hands of the state—not during slavery, not during the era of black codes that followed war, not during Jim Crow, not during the indiscriminate war on drugs, and not in the current era of cops functioning as tax collectors on the poor in decimated municipalities.
‘There’s No Such Thing as Hope’ (Mel)
In an era when media has made the presence of police violence ubiquitous and unavoidable, it takes an immense toll on communities continually retraumatised by that violence.
But then you start seeing replicas of yourself being shot, or choked, until they stop breathing and therefore posing a threat, and you’re forced to accept that your life is cheap; you become legitimately scared to do even the innocuous things that ostensibly make American life so great. Witnessing the lives of Sterling and Castile slowly leave them reinforced the idea that there’s nothing I or anyone can do to rationalize deaths like theirs, and that I too might be killed for having the temerity to speak back to an officer when spoken to.
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Photo: Darryl Smith/Creative Commons