The American uprising
Rashed Rahman
Riots have rocked 48 cities by now in the US, from east to west, north to south, following the death of an Afro-American man in Minneapolis at the hands of police. George Floyd was arrested by police accused of using a forged currency note at a shop. He was pinned to the ground by the four arresting police officers and one of them, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee on the accused’s neck while he lay on the ground. Floyd’s desperate pleas that he could not breathe had no effect on the offending police officer, who kept up the pressure of his knee on the accused’s neck for 8-9 minutes, until the man died.
This latest incident of a black life being snuffed out by the US police is neither the first, nor, given the police culture in the US, likely to be the last. Initially, peaceful protests against the murder broke out in Minneapolis and a few other cities. The US police, not for the first time, showed its well known colours of not being able to handle peaceful protest in an intelligent manner, being always ready to resort to violence unnecessarily. Inevitably, this habitual response of the police acted as fuel to the fire, both in terms of the spread of protests throughout the country, and some of the peaceful protestors expressing their rage at the original incident as well as the heavy-handed response of the police by fighting back. As the pattern of such developments in recent years has shown, the situation soon attracted a wide array of disparate forces to the protests, including some looters.
Looting and arson have emerged as widespread phenomena in the major cities of the US. The epicentre of course is still the original site of Minneapolis, which has seen five nights of an ineffective curfew defied by the protestors on the streets. The police are using rubber bullets, tear gas and truncheons on the assembled crowds, arguably making matters worse. Arrests are being made en masse and some police officers have suffered minor injuries. The uprising across the US in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed 105,000 lives so far has highlighted the sense of crisis that pervades the US today.
Things have not been helped by US President Donald Trump’s combative approach to any problem. His incendiary tweets have persuaded even Twitter that had allowed him so much leeway so far, to attempt to control the damage he continues to inflict on individuals and society as a whole through his inflammatory rhetoric and incautious pronouncements that do not behove the holder of the most powerful political office in the world. To take some examples, Donald Trump called the protestors demanding an end to police brutality, especially against black people, “thugs”, “criminals”, “vandals” and perpetrators of “mob violence”. He has blamed anarchists and far left activists as being behind the violence. He accuses the anti-fascist network Antifa of orchestrating the violence, in a new conspiracy theory, something he delights in consistently. Last but not least, Trump’s insensitivity and failure to show leadership by appeals for calm is accompanied by references to “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” and threats to deploy the military if things spin out of the control of the police and National Guard.
While Donald Trump continues to stoke the fire at home, protests against police brutality and the entrenched racism in US society have been held in Toronto, London and Berlin. The American uprising has reiterated the slogan “Black Lives Matter” that emerged earlier in the light of similar incidents of police brutality against black people. It has emblazoned George Floyd’s last words, “I can’t breathe” on its banners. The fact that the officer directly responsible for killing George Floyd, i.e. Derek Chauvin, has been charged with third degree murder and manslaughter while he and his three colleagues at the scene of the crime have been dismissed from service, has failed to satisfy the burning anger and grief being felt by the people of the US, black and white. Citizens in Minneapolis have expressed their sentiments by cleaning up shops and the streets and laying flowers in front of the shop where George Floyd was arrested.
Such is the anger on the streets, not the least because of the brutal police response to peaceful demonstrations to add to the injury of the original brutality against George Floyd, that some journalists covering the protests have been attacked by both sides. The CNN headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, too has been attacked. The Committee to Protect Journalists has issued a statement asking for journalists not to be targeted merely for doing their jobs.
Donald Trump has demonstrated since taking office how he is the most divisive and polarising president the US has ever had. The sum total of his statements since the tragedy in Minneapolis has been to stoke the fire by virtually calling for meeting violence with violence. Some incidents of ostensibly right wing supporters of Donald Trump attacking protestors have been reported. With the presidential election looming in November 2020, the concern is that if his right wing supporters mobilise against the protestors, the traditional peaceful election process of the US may fall prey to violence. Donald Trump is trailing in the opinion polls, a self-inflicted wound that may prove his undoing. His reckless, insulting, brash, combative style may appeal to his right wing constituents, but as the developments in Minneapolis and other cities of the US show, the country is tipping towards completing the unfinished agenda of the struggle against slavery and racial discrimination that began in the settler colonial plantation era, through the American civil war, civil rights movement and the advancement of the rights of people of colour.
The current protests may not continue indefinitely, especially if Donald Trump’s threats of using force are carried through. But in the process, the US people may overturn in November 2020 the mistake they made by electing a man like Trump to the highest office in their land. That would elicit a sigh of relief not just from the American people, but people all over the world.
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