This summer’s unrest comes after years of failure by democratic institutions to respond to police violence.
This summer’s unrest comes after years of failure by democratic institutions to respond to police violence. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden made a forceful denunciation this week of the property destruction that followed the Jacob Blake shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, saying “rioting is not protesting.” “I want to make it absolutely clear, so I’m going to be very clear about all of this, rioting is not protesting,” he said. “Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It’s lawlessness, plain and simple.” Biden’s rebuke of rioters and adulation of peaceful protesters reflects a bipartisan sentiment. President Donald Trump argued during his own trip to Kenosha that “these are not acts of peaceful protest, but really domestic terror.” Attorney General Bill Barr similarly denounced “mob violence.” Barr urged Americans concerned about police shootings to trust the “due process” of the law and allow “dispassionate, reasoned decision based on an analysis of the situation.” It’s not hard to find denunciation of looting from local officials — from Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot arguing that rioting was “not legitimate First Amendment-protected speech,” to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz decrying property damage as “attacking civil society.” These politicians insistence on nondestructive protest echo President Richard Nixon’s civil rights era appeals for law and order amid riots against racial injustice. “Dissent is a necessary ingredient of change,” Nixon said in 1968. “But in a system of government that provides for peaceful change, there is no cause that justifies resort to violence.” Yet what Nixon, Trump, Biden, and other elected officials miss is that America’s government frequently fails to provide meaningful avenues for peaceful change — particularly on police violence. If looting and rioting have no place in a well-functioning democracy, then perhaps we should pause to consider that these are signs that Americans are not, in fact, in a functioning democracy. Rioting and unrest, while tragic and destructive, remains a historically familiar and rational response to state violence and weak democratic institutions. From the Boston Tea Party, to John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, to the 1992 Los Angeles riots, violent insurrections have served as a form of protest and resistance for centuries in the United States. Today’s riots, still relatively rare, roil after years of legal logjams and gridlock on meaningful policing reform. In the executive branch, the recommendations from President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing failed to be implemented nationwide. In the judicial branch, legal precedent still protects officers from the consequences of deadly force with qualified immunity. In the legislative branch, this summer’s police reform bills have stalled out. The institutional stalemate persists at the local level even in the bluest of districts like in New York City or Minneapolis, where police brutality persists, despite years of activism and electoral support for reform candidates. In declining to reconcile the failure of America’s democratic institutions and in their strong denouncements of riots as political protest, elected officials like Trump and Biden avoid the truth — there is no more effective force for stopping riots than making a serious effort to stop police from killing Black people. Why looting happened in Kenosha and elsewhere in the US this summer On Sunday, August 23, Jacob Blake was shot in the back by officers as they attempted to arrest him in Kenosha. Graphic video of the shooting shows an officer holding Blake by the end of his shirt and firing bullets into his back as he attempted to enter into his car. By that night, protesters and demonstrators gathered to express their outrage, and were further agitated as police pepper-sprayed them. As the night went on, demonstrators set fire to dump trucks and local buildings. It was the beginning of a week of unrest and protests that mirrored destructive demonstrations seen earlier this summer following police violence. The unrest in places like Kenosha happens as local leaders show an inability to enact basic police reforms like firing police officers known for misconduct. Regardless of the specific details of any police shooting, Black people have seen the same pattern play out over and over.
