Minneapolis Burning

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

If anything, former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin has redefined the phrase "chauvinist pig" and expanded the definition to include hatred of black men.

     Hours after Donald Trump playacted at being the president after a weekend of golfing in Northern Virginia to lay a Memorial Day wreath at Fort McHenry in the same city where Freddy Gray was brutally murdered, Derek Chauvin was strangling the life out of George Floyd in broad daylight and with the protection of his own cronies. The next day, all four officers in Floyd's extra-judicial lynching were fired.

    But it still took four more days for his comrades in arms to get around to arresting Chauvin on suspicion of murder. The day after Memorial Day, mostly African American protesters peacefully assembled near the scene of the crime and demanded justice, an all too familiar ritual in latter-day American society. And the Minneapolis PD was all too glad to provide another American ritual- Mostly white cops showing up in riot gear and firing tear gas at them when the blacks got too uppity.

    Amanda Marcotte in the pages of Salon was struck by the stark difference between the initially peaceful protests in Minneapolis and the police response to that (essentially identical to Ferguson) and the almost exclusively white thugs showing up at state capitals armed to the teeth, several threatening to lynch their own governors (Beshear in Kentucky and Whitmer in Michigan) while cops not in riot gear strenuously ignored them even while these lunatics were screaming in their faces.

    Several of the so-called anti-lockdown protesters have been identified as members of the fascist "Proud Boys" movement, essentially a bearded Bund comprised of overweight incels who glorify in their self description of being, ironically, "western Chauvinists." You would think law enforcement would be clued in as to who the real threat is (Hint- It may be the aforementioned white incels who show up in fake camo gear cradling semi-auto rifles, threaten to lynch the governor and try to storm the legislative chamber that that same governor had to shut down.).

    But the difference in law enforcement's response, which is completely based on the overall skin hue of the protesters, is in itself a symptom of the problems we still face nearly 250 years into our history that boldly started with the proposition that all people are created equal but some are more equal than others.

    We saw it in Selma in the '60's when black protesters were simply exercising their 1st Amendment rights of peaceful assembly were petitioning for the right to vote, a right they already had in the Constitution. Protests inevitably start out as peaceful, the cops show up in riot gear, armed with tear gas, they escalate the situation and it's on.

    White cops see black people who are aggrieved, demanding a redress of their grievances, and, the unholiest of unholies, amassing in large numbers (something made legally prohibitive in mid 19th century Charleston, South Carolina). Then the cops needlessly escalate the situation. We saw this in Ferguson when black homeowners were tear-passed by city cops just for standing in their own yards. We saw it in Baltimore after Freddy Gray's murder when kids on a school bus were stopped by Baltimore police and made to exit the bus and held in a tight circle in a transparent attempt to manufacture an incident.

     It's this behavior that black demonstrators are trying to tell cops about yet all they see is a threat to their way of life and their authority.

Back Up, Boogaloo

Of course, cops, being among the stupidest and most hardheaded people on the planet, oafishly obeyed the dictates of their DNA that goes all the way back to when their 18th century forebears were legally empowered to kill escaped slaves on sight, and reacted in a hostile, defensive and retaliatory way. By Tuesday night, the night after Floyd's murder, Minneapolis's 3rd Precinct, to which four of the fired officers had been assigned, was evacuated and completely in flames.

     Black people nation-wide have reached a tipping point and George Floyd and his murderer Derek Chauvin provided that flashpoint that had been primed by the February 23rd murder of Ahmaud Arbery and the March 13th murder of Breonna Taylor in her own bed in Kentucky as she slept (police, as usual, got the wrong house). And what made the Floyd and Arbery murders especially egregious was that they were not only committed in broad daylight, but seemingly with the blessings of law enforcement.

     The last time I counted, 25 American cities were in flames today. Considering that coronavirus has been dominating the news as completely as it has for most of 2020, it would have taken one hell of a story to get us to forget about the pandemic for a minute and fallout over George Floyd's murder provided it. Yes, our African American community has reached a tipping point but there's no absolutely no indication whatever that police have reached their own tipping point beyond evacuating and abandoning one of their own precincts when protesters showed them their own tipping point.

     This is shaping up to be a summer of anger like the endless summer of 1967 (ironically nicknamed the "summer of love") that saw nearly 160 US cities go up in flames, and, less than a year later, more of the same after Dr. King's assassination in Memphis. In every single instance, police responded with the only two languages they knew- Violence and escalation.

     City and county prosecutors, heavily dependent on the work of law enforcement to help them make airtight cases and advance their political careers, are often loath to do their jobs when those same cops become the defendants when they, in turn, commit crimes. This was one of the reasons why the protests quickly turned violent. Even before the first tear gas canister was fired by Minneapolis police, the Hennepin County prosecutor said that he saw no grounds for a case against Chauvin. When Minneapolis went up in flames, he quickly changed his tune and Chauvin was charged with the ridiculously lenient felonies of third degree murder and manslaughter.

     Public opinion is thisclose to turning against the protesters because of the acts of arson and looting that have been occurring since night two of the rioting. But things decidedly took an uglier turn when the infamous Boogaloo movement decided to have their own spring break in Minneapolis. If you look real close at some of the file footage, you can identify them by their Hawaiian print shirts (their more or less official tunic). We know such right wing factions were instrumental in casting the protesters in Ferguson in a bad light when they committed petty acts of vandalism and larceny in the hopes it would be blamed on the black protesters.

     As usual, up to a point, it's working. Social media is still ablaze with white people condemning the black protesters with others defending their black brothers in arms for setting fire to Minneapolis and even bringing up the specter of the Boston Tea Party and how that elevated white people impersonating Indians and how that elevation was hypocritically denied black protesters. But the vast majority of the real protesters are doing no such thing even as Boogaloo thugs pretend to take up their cause so, again, black people will be blamed. That's because it honestly never occurs to white people to believe that when riots break out, especially when one hockey team or another wins the Stanley Cup, it's because of white assholes. Think I'm lying? I give you Lansing, Michigan.

     Nothing will change until attitudes change. But, to quote another Ringo Starr hit, "It Don't Come Easy."