39: Frustration and fury

The things that are deemed acceptable and not acceptable during the pursuit

Fauna boreali-americana, or, The zoology of the northern parts of British America :.London :John Murray,1829-1837.

Even speaking as someone who likes to go on and on about the potential speed and power of social movements, it has been astounding to see the response to the latest cases of police killing Black people in the United States. It’s part of a movement that in its modern form has been going since around 2013, but this latest wave seems to be reaching people it did not before. And the conversation feels different too, still somewhat about reforms around the edges (of the kind Minneapolis has been enacting for years before George Floyd was murdered), but also more people calling for abolition, defunding, and otherwise undoing decades of increasing police militarization and control over communities.

One thing that does not feel new is something that I’ve been struggling a lot with this past week, both in my own reactions and in conversations with others. That is this persistent way in which white people, even if we are supportive of racial justice, tend to cordon off and separate ourselves from certain aspects of social change that make us feel uncomfortable.

This is an understandable response to some extent, but it inevitably becomes a form of paternalism over people who are fighting for their own right to exist and by extension, for all of us. And it’s mostly shown up lately in the form of carving out what people consider peaceful protest from what they consider violent protest.

I find this tricky to talk about, because there’s a version of this that is thoughtful and based on good intentions and accurate information. For example, it’s true that many of the people resorting to property damage are likely random actors exercising some form of opportunism or at least white privilege. Movement leaders have called out such people during protests and in print. It’s also true that in these demonstrations, police are instigating the violence, through their appearance, their weapons, their numbers, their crowd control tactics, their eager overreactions to minor nuisances. You watch it happen repeatedly, the sort of main demonstration happens, during which police are mostly sidelined. They stand around with their batons, maybe take selfies with some naive protestors, and mostly wait. Then that phase starts to wind down, and a switch flips, and all of a sudden here we go it’s Call of Duty time. Groups of cops often armed to the teeth close in, start cornering people, marching in formation, taking potshots, and rounding people up.

So on one hand, it’s important not to lump everyone together, and it’s important to call out who is fucking things up and who is being the real aggressor.

But I worry that when we focus too much on separating protestors into different buckets, it can turn into something else. And I don’t mean awful people on Facebook or Trump himself or All Lives Matter kind of people, I mean people who really care about what is happening can start drawing artificial lines that dictate what is legitimate and strategic.

Just as police can’t credibly say that everyone who broke a law in a demonstration was an “outside agitator” who drove in from out of town, as police always try to do, neither can a self-appointed critic of a social movement, trying to feel more comfortable about a cause they are supporting. And that leads to an inevitable divvying up, by a white person who may legitimately care about racial justice, of the things that are deemed acceptable and the things that are not acceptable during its pursuit. (Another version of this, incidentally, is the line of acceptability often drawn between protests of today and past eras, always misguidedly invoking MLK.)

That’s not to say that people don’t have good reasons for being opposed to and concerned about violence. There is the moral argument that it’s just never OK to resort to certain acts. I would consider myself a nonviolent person, but unlike some people, for me, this is a world in which it has been exceedingly easy to remain nonviolent. As Elie Mystal wrote, “I would never throw a rock at the police. I would never throw a brick through the window of a big-box store. I would never set fire to an office building. But I want to. I understand why some people do.” And as Soraya Nadia McDonald wrote in her essay, “Why we can’t stop thinking about George Floyd’s neck” (CW descriptions of violence):

…when our collective necks are threatened, when we are finally forced to do away with civility and politesse because all other options for insisting upon our own humanity have been exhausted, there are white counterparts who remain quizzical about our frustration and fury. We are left reminding our fellow countrymen and women of the quotation widely attributed to Malcolm X: “That’s not a chip on my shoulder, that’s your boot on my neck.”

Then there’s the strategic argument, essentially, that protests that cross certain lines will set back a cause. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a related topic in the book Why Civil Resistance Works, about nonviolent resistance campaigns being more effective than violent ones in bringing about regime change. It’s a very compelling case and I’d be really interested in hearing what the authors have to say about current events, but to be clear, their study was looking at a very different kind of violent insurgency campaign. They also never discount violent tactics entirely, and point out that even nonviolent resistance is very confrontational. Anyway, this is frequently debated in the context of the Civil Rights Movement, and recently Princeton researcher Omar Wasow has made the case that violent protests swung the 1968 election toward Nixon. Which may be worrisome with an election months away, although even if true, I find it debatable that you can point to one election, or presidential politics in general, as an indicator of overall forward or backward progress.

But I say all that as preamble to this—even if there are such reasons to oppose things like property damage or intentional confrontation with police—as white supporters of Black Lives Matter, that is not our concern. And more often than not, what is lying underneath such arguments is actually discomfort with a perceived threat to the order of things.

To kind of overemphasize this part, I’m not out here saying hooray everyone protesting police brutality is throwing bricks and I think that’s awesome. But what I am saying is that I am far more concerned about racist police violence, lives threatened and lost as a result, and a system designed to encourage and absolve that violence. Beyond doing everything I can to help stop that, I have to accept that this will not be resolved without serious disruption.

I’m reminded of a 2010 paper by Barbara Masters and Torie Osborn about how a stodgy institution like philanthropy can support social movements that I also find valuable in understanding how someone in a position of privilege can be supportive of social change. “Because movements, by definition, must be driven by the people who are most affected, foundations cannot determine the goals and timetables of a movement.”

I think sometimes when people say things like they only support peaceful protestors, they are picturing people doing pretty much nothing. Maybe being quiet somewhere in large numbers but not too large. And then a different set of violent protestors maybe swoop in after they go home. But just as movements can be a kind of paradise “where souls get made,” they can also be chaotic, messy things. When you decide to support one, especially as a person whose life is not directly on the line, you just don’t get to prescribe how it goes or what it looks like.

I know, hopefully at least, we are all out here trying to do our best, and I think it’s OK for anyone to be stressed, anxious, uncomfortable. But instead of worrying about property damage and fires, white people would be better off removing ourselves from the role of critic, putting ourselves in the spaces where these struggles are happening, listening and learning.

Below is a post from a friend of mine Jason who has an independent comic book store in Downtown Portland. I thought it was a very insightful sentiment on this topic and I suspect a lot of small business owners have similar feelings.

Podcasts

This is more like a poetry corner entry instead of a podcast entry but every once in a while a poem from The Slowdown makes me stop in my tracks and this week it was “supply and demand,” by Evie Shockley. Shockley lists common idioms about money, but replacing the word money with “black boys” as a way to illustrate the commodification of Black lives. You can read and listen here.

Comics

Swamp Thing vol. 6. I just love this series sad to be on the last installment of the Alan Moore run. This is an animal made out of water.

Listening

Orville Peck, Dead of Night

I Endorse

Giving money to Black-led groups working for racial justice and opposing police violence. I work at a philanthropy and nonprofit news site so I think about and recommend this kind of thing a lot I guess but if you want to do something, there are 100% organizations in your community working toward these goals and they 100% are under-resourced.

There are also limits to giving money as activism but it is pretty much always a good first or second or third move. There are a lot of other forms of showing up that are not for everyone (especially during a pandemic), but there are things anyone can do and donating is one of them.

I usually recommend that small donors give locally because that way it can also serve as an entry point to following what groups are doing in your own community and getting involved throughout the year if you can. We just made a round to Mass Action Against Police Brutality and Violence in Boston, and a couple others.

An enormous vigil in Franklin Park on Tuesday.

Well another week, another year’s worth of new developments. I hope you are getting enough sleep. Things are certainly speeding up aren’t they. Remember when stupid ass Plandemic was a thing yeah that was like 10 years ago it must have been, no it was just two weeks ago huh ok.

One thing about this newsletter when I started it was that it was always going to be about whatever was on my mind at the end of the week and climate change is generally the leading issue. But it’s also just about the rough state of the world and living in it and the good things and bad things that happen and how it all plays out in our lives. And now there have been at least two historic moments back to back or I guess on top of each other this year. But I think it’s increasingly clear to most of us that all of these issues are kind of the same issue if you know what I mean. I’m going to keep thinking and writing about that. Just trying to figure some things out over here.

Hang in there, hold on to something like when Indiana Jones was on that bridge and wrapped that piece of rope around his wrist because this thing is going down.

Tate