How did we get from marching and protesting the brutal murder of yet another unarmed Black man to cops all over the country violently beating Americans exercising their right to peacefully protest? The narrative from the government and the media looks like this:
Black people protesting police brutality turned into Black people looting stores for the hell of it. To stop the looting, the government has had to step in and deploy law enforcement to keep everybody inside and our cities safe.
That’s not how we got here, and that’s not where we are now.
Protest
Black people across the country marched for George Floyd and all the other Black people killed by state-sanctioned violence. Sometimes property damage happens when people are angry and have nowhere to direct that anger, when people are silenced and no one is listening. I wrote about it here and you may have already read it.
Agitation
Here’s where the media first dropped the ball, but we saw it at the protests and we shared the videos on social media. Cops, both undercover and in uniform, along with anti-Black protest infiltrators wanted to instigate riots to stoke the fires of racial tension. They wanted the police to have a reason to justify beating Black people for exercising their right to protest, so they went out and destroyed property.
Entertainment
The media continued to ignore bored white kids ransacking shopping districts for fun. Social media influencers discussed their “riot outfits” before getting drunk and going out to the protests for entertainment.
Here in NYC, they emptied entire stores in SoHo and set fires downtown one night and the next night tried to do the same at Queens Center Mall.
The radio scanners picked up cops responding to projectiles being thrown at the police from rooftops on 56th and Lexington Ave, and if you’re unfamiliar with NYC demographics, there are no Black people there — it’s all rich white folks. They wanted to be a little rebellious, act out a little, dabble in some light anarchy, so they put on their little hoodies and sneakers and went out to the protests armed with privilege and spray paint.
https://twitter.com/BoxingKingdom14/status/1267428907386429440
Looting
There’s some looting along with property damage associated with most civil unrest, but looting as a distinct, planned, and specific activity outside of a peaceful march is what particularly sent NYC into curfew mode, and this is where the media picked up its narrative. White kids from Staten Island burning up SoHo didn’t really make a dent in the media coverage. Black people converging on Macy’s in Herald Square two nights later was cause for mass panic in newsrooms and the halls of government. There are a few different reasons we started to see that.
One, there was opportunity for personal enrichment in a time of chaos. People have been out of work for months and underpaid for generations. If you see people breaking into stores one night, you might be inspired to do the same the next night so you can get some free stuff too.
Two, the same reasons people cause property damage in the course of a march apply to people who destroy storefronts and clear off the shelves as a form of protest: white people in power don’t listen until you mess with their money, so mess with their money on a larger scale.
Three, we watched white kids tearing up stores for two days, white kids who are neither oppressed nor economically disadvantaged. Why should they get all the free stuff when they don’t even need it?
Police Response
Now the police have been presented with a reason to do what they always want to do, even if they have to embellish the facts or make up lies to give to the media who will then try to convince us that their response is wholly necessary to protect the public.
I am a very online person in a very liberal city, so I often lose touch with the tenor of the country. I don’t always know what white people in rural Nebraska are ingesting from cable news. I don’t always know what Black people in Southern cities are being fed from local reporters. From snapshots of conversations people are having with their relatives, I get the sense that most people think cops are okay, save for a few “bad apples,” the ones who were involved in George Floyd’s murder should be charged, Black people are treated unfairly but too many are using this opportunity to just steal stuff, and curfews will help get everything back under control.
There are so many videos where people of color are attacked for peacefully protesting.
1️⃣7️⃣3️⃣ San Antonio, TX: police abruptly open fire into crowd of peaceful protestors
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) June 3, 2020
🗣: "Everybody put your hands up!"
👮🏼♂️👮🏼♀️👮🏼: ::starts shooting::
pic.twitter.com/XNbbVursCQ
8️⃣0️⃣ Kansas City, KS: like 7️⃣8️⃣ above, a man is talking to a line of cops at length and from a distance
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) June 1, 2020
So police approach, pepper-spray him, and arrest him
https://t.co/a1lvwlkEFf
But need you to send them videos of white people talking about their attacks by the police.
Jason Rosenberg, an HIV activist and one of the nicest people in NYC, was beaten, arrested, refused medical treatment by the police, and finally released in the wee hours of the morning so he could go to the emergency room.
Show them videos of the police trapping people with nowhere to go, only to gas them in a smaller space.
1️⃣6️⃣8️⃣ Charlotte, NC: police kettle protestors in between two parking decks, then open fire on them
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) June 3, 2020
[Excerpt of the @queencitynerve livestream]
https://t.co/jIJWHMjhnq
Show them videos of journalists being attacked by the police.
1️⃣7️⃣9️⃣ Washington, DC: cops pepper-spray a CNN crew as they're broadcasting live on-air
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) June 3, 2020
pic.twitter.com/bXORbw6q5K
Full video of 1️⃣3️⃣8️⃣ above in Seattle WA
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) June 2, 2020
pic.twitter.com/X0M0kIXK0U
Show them videos of white people being attacked by the police.
1️⃣8️⃣2️⃣ Los Angeles, CA: police block a street to swarm out and start arresting random motorists for violating curfew
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) June 3, 2020
pic.twitter.com/jvHNXUoPDc
1️⃣6️⃣4️⃣ New York City, NY: how many NYPD cops does it take to beat one woman?
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) June 3, 2020
Seems like at least 4-5 here pic.twitter.com/gkpwXrhHAz
1️⃣5️⃣0️⃣ Philadelphia, PA: cop pulls down a protestor's mask to pepper-spray her in the face as she's kneeling with her hands up, then the cop sprays another one, then he pushes over a third to make sure he can pepper-spray them in the face too
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) June 2, 2020
pic.twitter.com/Ca3liTraTH
1️⃣8️⃣4️⃣ Los Angeles, CA: protestors shot in the head at 3rd & Fairfax by the Grove
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) June 3, 2020
Per the journalist who got the video, police shot first, *then* gave order to disperse
pic.twitter.com/7ddAPMkhHm
If it’s just the case of of “a few bad apples,” why do all the videos from around the country look so similar? Brutality is a feature, not a bug, and if someone in your life is defending law enforcement, show them these videos. T. Greg Doucette has been building a thread on police brutality — and he keeps adding to it here — and you need to make your Blue Lives Matter associates and relatives watch every single one. (Threads on Twitter are tricky, because when they get too long, the thread breaks, but if you scroll down and the tweets stop loading, click the last tweet and more should populate.)
The Civil Rights movement hit a real turning point when white people across the country could turn on the television and see other white people who look just like them standing side by side next to Black people being attacked by the police with dogs and fire hoses. We can go deep into why Black people being brutalized isn’t enough to incite massive changes in society, but it is what it is. White people don’t believe it until it happens to white people. White people won’t believe the cops are bad and that it’s not just a few “bad apples” until they see white people who look like them being gassed, sprayed, tossed, and shot at. So show it to them, because the media isn’t doing enough to focus on the real narrative: law enforcement in this country created this situation (by killing us), exacerbated this situation (by inciting riots), and are prolonging this situation (by trapping and baiting protesters so they can brutalize and arrest them).
Curfew
Curfews are a way to take the police response and kick it up a notch. In many municipalities, the goal seems to be trapping likely protesters outside after curfew so the police can use force to arrest them or violently frighten them into never protesting again. It didn’t quite go as planned last night in NYC because the protesters didn’t take the bait and there was more publicity than they planned.
Curfew here in the city was at 8pm and some people did not receive notification until well after 7. The police started barricading entrances to subway stations around 6:30 in many areas and we saw crowds of people in places like Columbus Circle wondering how they were going to get home before 8.
https://twitter.com/FirenzeMike/status/1267978511668645890
Further downtown, thousands of people from three different protests around Manhattan converged and made their way toward the Manhattan Bridge to continue marching into Brooklyn. When they got there, they couldn’t come back, because the NYPD blocked the Manhattan side of the bridge. They also couldn’t turn around, because the NYPD blocked the Brooklyn side of the bridge. Thousands of people were just stuck hundreds of feet above a river with no water, no bathroom, and nowhere to sit for hours, and the images spread around the country (and the world) faster than they anticipated. AOC saw them got ready to leave her home to see if she could do anything. It was front page on CNN — the nation’s largest police force holding thousands of people hostage on a bridge — and helicopter footage.
Protestors are currently trapped on the Manhattan Bridge. NYPD will not let them off on either end.
— Sophie Ellman-Golan (@EgSophie) June 3, 2020
We have seen how violent the police are willing to be with protestors, without provocation. All eyes on this bridge. https://t.co/Iz9Hqiz1Bj
The police wanted a riot. They had police vans ready and a wall of cops prepared to gas, spray, beat, and shoot anyone who got agitated, but the protesters didn’t give them the opportunity.
The Brooklyn side of the bridge opened and the marchers were told to go back that way. The subways still run at night for essential workers and some entrances were cleared for protesters who live in Manhattan to get home, but many decided to find shelter in Brooklyn for the night. If you know the police want to arrest you, would you take the subway with a crowd of people coming from a protest?
While this was going on, Mayor deBlasio said the city was calm and curfew was working.
At Barclays Center now. Very calm situation. So far, the curfew is certainly helping, based on everything I’ve seen in Brooklyn and Manhattan over the last three hours.
— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) June 3, 2020
In other cities, trapping protesters didn’t end so peacefully.
And that’s where we are now. We’ve gone from the police refusing to take accountability for its treatement of Black people to the police instigating violence to the police trapping people for the sole purpose of enacting violence, to scare the population into submission.
I don’t think it works that way. When you’re an essential worker walking home from your shift at the hospital and you get beaten by the cops , you might be moved to join a protest yourself next time.
When you’re sitting on your porch and the police roll through shooting everyone in your neighborhood to force you to go inside, you might be moved to join a protest yourself next time.
Minneapolis Police and National Guard patrolling resident neighborhoods stopped to fire on residents peacefully filming them from their own front porch. #MinneapolisPoliceMurderdHim pic.twitter.com/mh8uyZN0hl
— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) May 31, 2020
When you’re on your couch and you see video of the police getting a kick out of inciting violence, you might be moved to join a protest yourself next time.
https://twitter.com/bIndsundoll4mj/status/1266641240952455168
There are now protests in all 50 states.
Across the world, people are marching in solidarity against American law enforcement officers.
Turnout for George Floyd protests in Amsterdam.
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) June 2, 2020
Extraordinary.pic.twitter.com/VShFtzfyFE
I don’t know what’s going to happen or where this will end up. For all of the white allies marching with and for us, there are equal if not greater numbers on social media calling for us to be shot and roaming the streets armed with weapons at the behest of the President.
These white people are now roaming Philly with the blessing of the police.
— Read Let This Radicalize You (@JoshuaPHilll) June 1, 2020
This is what the President of the United States just endorsed.
https://t.co/lZOKFDfoLL
Racism set the stage for this, the police created this, and the government is endorsing this. What are you going to do?
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