Is Violence again Political Speech in America?
November 6, 2020: Post Election Day before Winner Declared: The integrity of the U.S. Election is under a full-scale attack led by one man: the President who appears to be losing. Trump continues to tweet and call out “massive election fraud” and “a rigged election” calling the election a “disaster.” He has urged supporters to protest outside clerk’s offices where officials are doing what they always do in the days after an election – count and re-count. In Maricopa County, the Sheriff’s office was called on to protect workers from an armed group outside. It must be noted that without Trump’s encouragement, such threats of violence with weapons (as opposed to peaceful assembly) would not be happening.
In the days leading up to the election, following significant encouragement from the Trump family, there have been reports of voter intimidation by “Trump Trains;” flag-waving vehicles, specifically outside Austin. They slowed a Biden campaign bus. This is not free speech? Earlier, there was a busted coup attempt to kidnap the Democratic Michigan Governor by a militia, which the President applauded. It is worth remembering that angry armed white people have been around for centuries. For most of modern history, they were kept in check by civic and business leaders who made it clear that their behavior was not the norm and unwelcome. That is how a democracy functions.
I usually scrupulously avoid mentioning Donald Trump by name. Just naming him seems to distract from any serious point and send people straight into tribal mode. On this topic at this time, his part in inciting violence is unavoidable. To attempt to do so would be irresponsible.
In the months leading up to the 2020 election, there was an ugly, daily stream of open encouragement for armed supporters to “defend polling places” and monitor the vote coming, mostly, direct from the President who seemed to not know or care that there was already established practice of election watchers from both parties and a process for them to be admitted. Yet the President continued to persist that there was an urgent necessity to preserve the vote from those who have sworn and dutifully care-taken the process in counties across the country for years. Very few in leadership who might have countered him – at Fox News, or in the Republican national leadership stepped forward to say, “Sorry, Mr. President, we got this.” A few did after election night when the President went on TV to ask for voting to be stopped (except in Arizona where he was behind). Clerks and citizens have been doing this just fine for years.
To begin October, Trump at an election debate made a specific call to the “Proud Boys” who he claimed not to know to “stand back and stand by.” For what exactly? If you are not sure, it is called, using the threat of armed violence for intimidation. Intimidation of voters or of those managing the process is not free speech, it is not peaceful protest, it is against the law. It is what authoritarians do.
In that debate, he refused to condemn white supremacists when asked repeatedly to do so. The President apparently expects that the structures of governance and out democracy may not be enough to protect his power. He may need to call upon civil war and violence… if he loses, and he would like self-appointed militias to be at the ready.
If this sounds like not-exactly-the America-you-grew-up in, it isn’t. It is a fringe America, radically empowered to question the tools of democracy under the guise of protecting democracy. Democracy is protected by voting. The nation for most years I have been alive, would have stamped down this call which seemed ridiculous not so long ago. The truth has been twisted beyond comprehension.
Remember Trump in his first year in office wanted to have a military parade through Washington D.C. like Vladimir Putin and other dictators. The military balked at this for good reason. The President is the commander in chief. But there are norms and laws limiting use of the military within the country or against citizens.
So now Trump has seen the fervor of Militias stepping up during extended Black Lives Matter protests and he has warmed to them. Remember Charlottsville, where he said “there were good people on both sides?”
Whatever “stand by” exactly means is left up to those groups to decipher. To be clear, you cannot have this both ways. Asking for citizens to arm and protect institutions is not a pro-police from a pro-public realm perspective. It is banana republic thinking. It is pure power politics which we have refrained from for many years. It is also known as vigilantism. Though it seems silly to have to point out, this is in no way how a “law-and-order” President would act. Appealing directly to citizens—his supporters specifically–to take up arms because supposedly the American electoral system is too flimsy to handle an election, and American law enforcement is too weak to handle keeping the peace—that is downright cynical. It is amazing more people are not seeing this for what it is and calling it out. There are many who know better who are silent. We want commerce and prosperity, not chaos? No matter how unfair, that is a different battle? Right?
The encouragement of violence, the inching it forward by the President like a snake tamer feels like a fever dream that has been haunting us. So far, no violence surrounding the electoral system is being reported. Of course, there are no election results quite yet.
It also is strange how we can let ourselves be fried in the pan like a frog, a few degrees at a time. This kind of license to use intimidation and violence was not a tactic in 2016. Trump has been consistent in stating that he would question the legitimacy of any election he might lose. Now we are on the brink of just that. To call on citizens to incite violence is not a Constitutional playbook or a democratic one. Until the past months, going back to 1960s when Jim Crow was in full throttle, calls to domestic violence have largely been tamped down by leadership on “all sides.” It is not ironic as the President has called on his white supremist militias and other ugly rhetoric has been happening during one of four major civil rights awakeings in modern America, the Black Lives Matter Movement. Trump recognizes this is his foil. The black people want chaos. We need white armed people to bring back “law and order.” Well this should be pulling the curtain back on the wizard, but nearly half the country seems to agree with Trump on this.
Media has been chastened. So have elected leaders. We have also hesitated to point this out for what it is. The President, facing a loss of power is making a call to anarchy.
Whether at Oklahoma City, Ruby Ridge, Columbine, Las Vegas or Charlottsville we have held a line on Racism and Extremism over the years. The President has not played by the same rule book. The President is on record that for driving into a crowd of protesters, “there were good people on both sides.” Really? I’m not sure Trump is intrinsically racist. He seeks to preserve power. This is a more ominous drive than we seem prepared to confront. He is a full-on transactional leader who believes that this open racism is politically advantageous. His unapologetic use of racism, white supremacy, white nationalism, supporting citizen militias to step in and provide security where law enforcement may not be able to, should give anyone pause. The Wild West mystique of each person defending themselves, may be cool in a movie or video game, but is fiction. Not what this country is built upon. Not rule of law. Not, to the ultimate gain of the monied supporters of this approach should condone as in any way conducive to commerce with is America’s only true religion.
This is one reason that I hesitated to nationalize the implications of the conflict playing out as nightly theater in my hometown of Portland, Oregon over the summer and into the fall. I have watched. Wondering if it is supporting the cause of justice or creating a foil for this false premise of needing law and order. Of course, subtler messages and tactics have been used to intimidate and suppress voters over the years. There is an entire course of study to how voter suppression has occurred and has opened the question to whether this will provide a prime opportunity to address it comprehensively. The Obama White House did not. Congress has not. The Supreme Court has been stacked with idealogues who will not. The Trump White House has leveraged racism and nativisim to full spectacle. To use it openly as a campaign tactic is quite new. There are many angry people who are suffering from an unequal, economic and racist environment. There are those who think this regime will bring back what they believed was theirs. Little actual policy debate has underscored this national “discussion” occurring.
When I started this column, in August, I was concerned that it would be perceived as alarmist. As the days have passed into weeks and months, it has sat on my desktop as other matters have risen to priority. My agency has been working on a report on Colorado SB20-217 the use of force bill passed in June, one of the few responses to the Black Lives Matter movement, George Floyd killing and other incidents. Colorado is probably not the place that reform mattered most. This does not demean the piquancy of the matter. I have been surprised that inspite of this moment many people I talk with do not believe there is racism in America, while others I talk with see it embued in everything—people, institutions, even inanimate objects. In this way, we are talking past each other at a very key moment in our history.
The Washington Post reports in their Fatal Force page which records every fatal shooting by an on duty police officer in the U.S. is up to 992 killed since they began the log deaths in 2015. A report from the Center on Extremism reports that in 2019, domestic extremists killed at least 42 people in 17 separate incidents making “2019 the sixth deadliest year on record for domestic extremist related killings since 1970.” Newsweek on 7/10/2020 reported that in the U.S. “64 victims were killed in 34 terrorist attacks by white supremacists and white nationalists between 2015 and 2019,” it reports, as many as 9 times as many civilians as muslim extremists have during terrorist attacks in recent years. This is not a small matter, and the election rhetoric is driving the discussion backward, not forward towards justice. We have police violence to confront. This is what Black Lives Matter “means.”
My working title in August 2020: Is there Chaos in the Streets? The media inflected the issue beyond what most of us were seeing. Reading about Portland, it was as if some local street theater was suddenly projected on the big screen and posed as a national reality. Looters. Anarchy. An-ti-fa. A few short video clips put on rewind. Unfortunately it gave Fox News and the President talking points and gave them some legitimacy which they didn’t have in the face of George Floyd.
What is the role of peaceful protest, lawful assembly, use of force, citizen police, what is a riot, and how does change occur in the U.S.? This is another working title.
The Black Lives Matter Movement began in 2013 “in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman” according to the BLM website, as an “intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ humanity….” In 2014, the murder of Mike Brown by Ferguson, Missouri police officer, Darren Wilson added fuel to the movement and to additional BLM protests. A series of incidents, mostly involving police use of force and blacks, often caught on camera and posted for all to experience, has propelled the movement ever since then to exercise the 1st Amendment “right of the people to peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The movement has been remarkably peaceful given U.S. history, but in June of 2020, the murder of George Floyd, widely condemned by law enforcement leadership across the country as far outside of protocols tipped the scales.
I CAN’T BREATHE. Martin died for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy Cigarettes. Some of the urgency of this working title has, I am sad to say, diminished in time. This next paragraph was pulled out of our report on SB20-217 because my collaborators all thought it was too inflammatory. Without it, I worry the report will read to some as overly apologetic to how the backlash against police has effected local jurisdictions far from urban centers without acknowledging the ground-zero event that caused the blast.
Since a police officer in Minneapolis put a knee on George Floyd’s neck until he passed away, with the entire 9 minutes caught on video, the momentum of the movement has stepped up considerably. It seems to have paused as the election has grown closer. Except as a tool for those who think the country has grown too open, accepting of justice for non-whites. As an election matter, racism is a powder-keg.
A number of states, including Colorado, passed legislation regarding clarifying limits on police use of force in certain situations, including with regard to protests. Colorado’s SB 20-0217 “Enhance Law Enforcement Integrity” bill was passed in record time in somewhat pre-emptive response to address the escalating public outcry in the state. Some of it’s provisions are not activated until 2023, but some are immediate. Now that there has been time to absorb the directive, it is evident that it could use some refinement. My agency, NWCCOG, is in the process of assembling a report by interviewing law enforcement leaders across the region about how their policies, procedures, and culture are prepared for those changes and what gray areas from the legislation concern them. Reading it from Portland or Minneapolis might seem like an apology to police, but this is a complex issue that reads differently in places that have different racial demographics. We intend to issue the report with recommendations by mid-October, prior to the legislative session to help inform possible legislation to refine the bill to make it stronger and clearer. There is a place for community policing, the many roles that law enforcement play in communities that is not racially charged that matter to quality of life. This is how the emphasis on racism, protest and unrest doesn’t play so well evenly across the nation. Police are asked to do too much as our social safety net is systematically deconstructed. The results play out across racial lines.
Though it is difficult most days to feel the importance of this constitutional rights issue—the use of force—I is instructive to observe whether it is better served by reformed police, norms or by some open call to citizens to enforce it. The question is spilling into the streets across America with the other crises among us—COVID, economic, etc. Perhaps because most of us have the time to watch, reflect and identify with those who are mishandled by police use of force even if those from the Colorado high country may not feel it is near, there is no denying that the crisis of police conduct, policy, racism, and protest across the country in it’s earnest plea for Constitutional rights to be distributed equitably
(Going back to July, continuing into October) It was as if the BLM protests inspired a scale tipping armed redneck protest, and I was both proud and embarrassed that my hometown, in lilly white Oregon had thrust itself into a spotlight eclipsing other places closer the pain.
The Black Lives Matter assemblies have been nearly continuous now for the entire summer in many places. In my hometown, Portland, Oregon, “the whitest major city in the U.S.” according to The Oregonian, protests surpassed 100 nights and, not to undermine their legitimacy, have turned into political theater by media outlets, the presidential campaign and a resurgence of “counter protestation.” Is Portland the right place to highlight the issue?
Two Washington Post stories, of the homicide in Portland and then of the suspect being killed while resisting arrest later are disturbing. The man was a self-appointed provocateur who didn’t self identify with antifa (VICE interview) but who considered himself security for the movement. He was confronting a rally of other self-appointed provocateurs, which is a different way of labelling “counter protestors.” The active “antifa” group in Portland decided to act. So it is.
This is the right time to ask if we prefer citizen militias to police?
On September 2nd, 1A produced the segment “Who Are The Armed Civilians Showing Up At the Protests?” It is an excellent listen if you want to better understand the militia movements, what motivates them, their relationship to the Constitution and current law as well as how we got to this place of civilians brandishing guns in America openly, their legal standing doing so in public places, and the relationship police have to armed civilians in such situations. With the protesters assembling specifically to protest police misuse of force, and structural racism, having armed civilians who are mostly white in the mix and being encouraged to do so by the President to defend the police (symbolically if not actually) and help provide “law and order” is interpreted vastly differently depending on your point of view. Are they utilizing their legal second amendment right, deputized as “a well regulated Militia” or proving the point about racism and power?
Months into the Black Lives Matter movement nightly protests, amid a conversation about police reform, racism being played out under second amendment rights of assembly, there are dynamics at play that reveal much about our divided thinking about America. The addition of violence, of property damage, and citizens who see themselves as there to “counter” the violence property damage not with peaceful assembly, but armed and ready to protect a way of life puts police in a challenging position. The optics are not good.
With organized militia “counter-protesters” and in some cases the protesters themselves opening fire as happened in Kenosha, Wisconsin, this is a critical time to get clear on
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| From the New York Times Sept 1, Morning Briefing IDEA OF THE DAY: A ‘COLD CIVIL WAR’ |
| “We are locked in a cold civil war,” the journalist Anand Giridharadas writes in his new newsletter, The.Ink. |
| The U.S. has become “two countries impermeable to each other,” where each side thinks the other presents an existential threat to the idea of America and where persuasion is all but impossible, Giridharadas writes. He leaves no doubt about which side he’s on: He described Fox News’s coverage of the Republican convention as resembling “a complete, coherent, airtight, fascistic world.” |
| But much of his description will still resonate with Trump and his supporters. “The cultural civil war that has been simmering underneath the surface is now boiling,” writes Ben Domenech, the publisher of the conservative website The Federalist, amid protests over police violence. |
| “Trump is a secessionist from the top,” David Frum argues in The Atlantic. “As my colleague Ron Brownstein often observes, Trump regards himself as a wartime president of Red America against Blue America. That’s how he can describe riot and disorder as happening in ‘Biden’s America,’ even when it happens under his presidency.” |
Our country and our politics are inventions of ours that are reinvented and reinforced constantly. The only possibility to tap into the better angels of our nature and move forward to heal the country is through facing truth and building trust by speaking it and listening to truth from others who are frustrated enough to protest, and sometimes be violent. Violence is the inarticulation of injustice–economic, racial, and moral. We need to build a language together again, not a language of rhetoric, poses, and lies, but of common truth.
