George Floyd murder wreaks havoc on United States

America’s most intractable problem, as we’ve noted before, is race, specifically relations between blacks and whites, and has pocked its history with slavery, violence, and Jim Crow laws leading to the civil rights movement in the 1960s, under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, and now 50 years later, the nation is reeling from the murder of George Floyd, by a white policeman in Minneapolis, Minn. who knelt on the man’s neck until he died.

The fact that the crime occured in a relatively progressive city, that includes a sympathetic mayor and that has two transgendered blacks on the city council speaks volumes, not only for irony, but for the common pattern of police statements saying that Floyd was resisting arrest, but a later video showed that he was not; gives credence to the maxim, that as much as things change they remain the same.

As protests have spread across the nation, with most peaceful, they have been tailgated by those intent on robbing stores, and the sounds of breaking glass that have been accompanied by alarm bells, and police sirens, and fleeing vandals, their arms bulging with stolen mobile phones, athletic shoes, designer handbags, and other merchandise.

These looters have sullied both the message of the protests, sending people into a tailspin of anger, disappointment,and hurt, at the loss of millions of dollars, and the lives behind them, for both employer and employee, as broken as the shards of plate glass that litter the streets of New York, Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles, and Ft. Lauderdale, just some of the more prominent, and notable cities in the United States.

As Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot noted, in an initial speech, asked who comes to a peaceful protest bearing shovels, pick axes, metal pipes, and bottles filled with urine?

Those hell bent on taking advantage of the situation for personal gain.

There is also some evidence, although not all is known, that there were extremists from either the far right, or the left, intent on bending the peaceful demonstrators to their goals of anarchy and lawlessness, what some media reports are calling, “violent radical elements.”

Nevertheless a mob is still a mob.

The pattern of police abuse will linger long after the glass and debris have been swept away, leaving this still gaping hole in the moral fabric of a country that was once referred to as the New Jerusalem, the City on the Hill, but now wearing a tattered suit of racism, dismay, and for some disbelief.

Needing fundamental change in race relations and policing is nothing new, amidst the horror stories of not just unwarranted arrests, but aslo forced confessions, torture, and the whip of cruelty. What is needed, these past decades has not been possible as local lawmakers face a legacy of racism, and the lack of will to make systemic changes in a society that often turns a blind eye to the destruction of individuals and families.

Now, what is desparetly sought is leadership on the federal level, besides to assist with that of local and state lawmakers, but with President Donald Trump in office, nothing is to be gained, and everything is to be lost, as he has shown a pattern of turning a blind eye to the need for both.

His history when dealing with racial tension, and specifically sports players, demonstrating the police brutality, in taking a knee, in protest begun by Colin Kapernick, proved to be a pivotal moment when he said that, and what was most infamously noted, with the white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, in 2017, where a white protestor was killed, and the president later commented that there were good people on both sides.

On Monday, the president had a peaceful protest broken up with the assistance of United States Park Police, and the Secret Service who used tear gas and rubber bullets, so that he could walk to historic St. John’s Episcopal church, for a photo op, in front of the church, which had suffered minor damage from a basement fire, standing outside in front of the church, holding a Bible.

Trump never entered the church, nor did he notify, with customary professional courtesy, that he was coming to the local bishop, The Rt. Rev. Marianne Budde, (who ironically was a rector in Minneapolis for eighteen years), which is normally done, when a sitting president visits.

Using the church for the photo was, as most agree, a play to his political base, as his poll ratings have plunged to below 34 percent. But Budd, along with Presiding American Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry, expressed their profound displeasure, with Curry citing biblical injunctions.

With racial justice and legalities, now brought to the forefront, is perhaps no more succinctly seen than in the lack of will to enforce the consent agreement formed in the waning days of the Obama administration, for Chicago’s police department which found huge holes in how black people were treated, mostly worse, than white citizens, ironically by those sworn to protect and serve; in behavior, more akin to that of an occupying force.

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Taking a rearview look in the mirror, we can see Rodney King, in Los Angeles and the dragging of the black man in Texas, James Byrd, behind a pickup truck, as sad historical antecedents, among many others, giving the nation a sad legacy of brutality.

The financial cost of the damage done by looters, and vandals, are in the millions, but what cannot be calculated is the range of emotions, in the aftermath of of the outrage and anger in the genocide of black Americans.

Updated 8 June, 2020 CSDT