BY HANK REICHMAN

No right-thinking person can fail to condemn the looting, arson, and window-smashing that have marred the overwhelmingly peaceful protests that have swept the nation for the past week in the wake of the brutal slaying of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers.  These criminal actions may have been carried out by a handful of political extremists, left and right, who probably envision these events as prelude to some fantastical revolution or civil war.  It could also be that semi-organized criminal gangs, with no political agenda, are taking advantage of the unrest.  This was likely the case in Santa Monica, California, where fashionable shops were looted while police were occupied by an entirely peaceful protest taking place about a half mile away.  And we can’t deny that some young people, facing a bleak future defined by pandemic, economic depression, and police violence, may have been overcome by their own anger and rage.  Probably all three factors are at play.

That said, and despite the unconscionably inflammatory rhetoric and actions of our malevolently incompetent president and the hand-wringing, including on this blog, of some well-intentioned anti-racists, the fact is that when compared to previous incidents of urban unrest since the 1960s the current protests stand out both for their relative orderliness and their remarkably extensive impact, nonviolently mobilizing people of all races in cities and towns large and small.  It’s become fashionable to say that 2020, previously thought to be a reboot of 1918-19 and 1929, is now also to be compared to 1968.  Heck, I’ve made the comparison myself several times.  It has some resonance, but it’s not entirely accurate.  Previous rebellions could with some basis be tarred as mere “riots,” but the current movement is different.  It is a sustained series of massive and often moving multi-city political street demonstrations, marred, mainly in a few big cities, by the criminal actions of a few bad apples and increasingly by a heavy-handed response by too many police.

Today the New York Times reports that in the full week that “clashes have echoed in the streets of at least 140 cities” at least five people have died.  According to the Times the confirmed deaths include the owner of a barbecue business in Louisville shot when police fired randomly into a crowd; two people in Iowa killed by gunfire; a 22-year-old black man in Omaha shot by a white bar owner; and a St. Louis man dragged to his death beneath a FedEx truck that was apparently trying to drive away from protesters.  Also, in Minneapolis a shop owner was arrested for killing a man he accused of looting his store; in Cicero, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago), two people were killed following an “afternoon of unrest,” although the circumstances are unclear; and in Las Vegas “police shot and killed an armed man wearing body armor. The man was walking among protesters as a demonstration was coming to an end and reached for his weapon when he was shot.”  Several other deaths were only tenuously linked to the protests.  In short, none of those who have perished have been confirmed as victims of protesters.  The Times reports a growing number of injuries, however, including a reporter hit in the eye by a rubber bullet fired by police and protesters hit by cars.

Arrests are in the thousands: “nearly 500 people have been arrested in the Twin Cities, more than 2,000 in Los Angeles, and more than 1,200 in New York City.  On Sunday alone, nearly 700 people were arrested in Chicago.  Hundreds more have been arrested in cities big and small.”  From the beginning of the protests to the morning of June 2, Wikipedia says, at least 5,600 people had been arrested nationwide.  As of June 2, governors in 23 states and Washington, D.C., had called in the National Guard, with over 17,000 troops activated.  Property losses are yet to be calculated, of course, but so far must clearly run well into the millions of dollars.  These, it is sad to say, are often disproportionately felt by small businesses, often minority-owned, which have been burned and looted, especially in the Twin Cities, where, of course, a police precinct was also destroyed by fire.  Even the headquarters of the AFL-CIO in Washington was vandalized and its lobby set ablaze, with damage to precious labor artwork.

These are depressing facts, but how do they compare to previous urban uprisings, most often also sparked by police violence?  For one thing, none of these previous events, beginning with the 1965 Watts rebellion in Los Angeles, lasted more than six days.  But all produced far more extensive loss of life and property than we have so far witnessed over the past week and continuing, with, it would also seem, far fewer participants and protesters.

To begin, consider the 1992 Rodney King rebellion. That uprising, sparked by the acquittal of police officers charged in the beating of Rodney King, an unarmed black man, lasted from April 29 to May 4 and was confined to the city of Los Angeles.   Over those days 63 people were killed, 2,383 people injured, more than 12,000 arrested, and estimates of property damage ran to over $1 billion, much more in 2020 currency.

In the aftermath of the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a wave of civil disobedience swept the country, the greatest upsurge of social unrest the United States had experienced since the Civil War.  This is probably the clearest historical parallel to current events.  During the week following the assassination on April 4, protests and “riots” extended to some 110 cities.  Some of the most violent unrest took place in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Chicago, and Kansas City.  In total, there were more than 40 deaths, over 2,500 injuries, and more than 15,000 arrests.  In Washington, some 1,200 buildings burned, including over 900 stores, with damages pegged at $27 million in 1968 dollars.  In Chicago, 11 people died, 500 were injured, and 2,150 arrested.  Over 200 buildings were damaged, with costs running up to $10 million, again in 1968 dollars.  In Baltimore, 6 people died, 700 were injured, and 5,800 were arrested; property damage was estimated at over $12 million.

In these rebellions the participants were overwhelmingly African-American, but the 1967 rebellion in Detroit, which began on July 23 and was finally pacified five days later, saw a good number of young whites, mainly working class, join.  That series of disturbances, provoked by a police raid on an unlicensed after-hours bar, left 43 dead, 1,189 injured, over 7,200 arrests, and more than 2,000 buildings destroyed.  That summer saw 159 different incidents of rebellion in largely black urban neighborhoods.  After Detroit the largest came in Newark, New Jersey between July 12 and July 17.  There, 26 people died, 727 were injured, and there were more than 1,400 arrests.

Lastly, the 1965 Watts rebellion in Los Angeles, sparked by the attempted arrest of a black motorist, led to 34 deaths, 1,032 injuries, 3,438 arrests, and over $40 million in property damage ($320,000,000 in current dollars) with almost 1,000 buildings damaged or destroyed.  23 out of the 34 people killed in the riots were shot by LAPD officers (16 deaths) or National Guardsmen (seven deaths).

Looking at these grim statistics it is impossible not to recognize that the ongoing demonstrations in response to the killing of George Floyd not only extend to more cities and towns than in the past, probably mobilizing more people, they have also been by far less violent and have caused considerably less property damage than the previous urban uprisings to which they are often compared.  In fact, the death and destruction caused in any single city during the 1960s and in the 1992 King rebellion far exceed the totals to date reported for the entire country over the past week. 

But two remarkable and important new features stand out about the current movement.  First, in all these previous rebellions activity was largely confined to minority neighborhoods, with mostly minority participants.  But now, with the exception of Minneapolis where the site of Floyd’s death and the precinct where his killers worked became the focus, the demonstrators have turned much of their attention to prosperous city centers, public buildings, traditional gathering places for protest, and major thoroughfares.  Large crowds assemble at the White House, the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, and at city halls around the country.  Marchers parade down streets like New York’s Fifth Avenue or briefly take control of bridges and freeways.  The crowds, moreover, are characterized by the extraordinary diversity of their ethnic composition as well as by their youth.  And, of course, the impressive size of the crowds and the fact that tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands are taking to the streets in the midst of the most deadly global and national pandemic in a century, risking their health and even their lives, is little short of astonishing — as well as inspiring.  The courage and commitment of so many of our country’s youth, many of whom are our students, merits commendation and support.

Most important, while national television news inevitably focuses on the big cities (and the Twin Cities) perhaps the most extraordinary development has been the extent to which the movement has been embraced by so many in medium and small cities, as well as suburbs.  In California, where I live, the crowds in the Los Angeles area, Oakland, San Francisco, San Diego, and San Jose are both large and to be expected.  But less well reported have been demonstrations in Walnut Creek, a well-to-do Bay Area suburb; Santa Rosa; San Luis Obispo; and Modesto, Visalia, Fresno, and Bakersfield, all mid-sized cities in the state’s conservative central valley.

Anne Helen Peterson, who writes for Buzzfeed and has been reporting on what she’s dubbed the “cool-ification” of America’s small and mid-sized cities, yesterday posted an extraordinary Twitter thread of pictures and videos of marches and demonstrations in places not so well reported, including more than a few in alleged “Trump country.”  These include Portland, Maine; Lubbock, Texas; Pendleton, Oregon; Bozeman, Montana; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Springfield, lllinois (where the demonstration was organized by three teenage girls); Idaho Falls, Idaho; Belfast, Maine; Medford, Oregon; Harrisonburg, Virginia; Frisco, Texas; Bentonville, Arkansas; Dover, New Hampshire; Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Appleton, Wisconsin; Great Falls, Montana; Prineville, Oregon; Huntington, West Virginia; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Ogden, Utah; Cape Girardeau, Missouri; and Oxford, Mississippi.  In each of these the photos and videos show large crowds (the line of march in Frisco is a sight to behold, as are the packed crowds in Appleton, Sioux Falls, and Bozeman).  And need I say that the crowds are all multi-ethnic.  (If you’re not on Twitter or simply have trouble reading Twitter threads, the full thread can be viewed as a web page, produced by the Thread Reader app, here.  Do be sure to check it out.)

Striking as well is that college and university towns are seeing demonstrations despite the fact that schools have been all but shuttered since mid-March and most students are now scattered.  In Morgantown, West Virginia, home of West Virginia University, a local lawyer friend of mind who has lived in the city since the 1970s wrote me that despite the state having turned “deep red,” the crowd demonstrating yesterday, even “without the students,” was “amazing” and “totally peaceful.”

Speaking of students, one comparison that we might make with a past protest is with the “riots” that rocked the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968.  Here the demonstrators were overwhelmingly white youth, but the rioters were mainly clad in blue.  An official inquiry called those events a “police riot.”   Chicago’s “finest” beat and tear-gassed demonstrators willy-nilly, prompting protest on the convention floor where reporters were assaulted and that year’s Trump, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, hurled antisemitic slurs at Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff.  I personally experienced another police riot earlier that year when New York City cops indiscriminately beat students, faculty, clergy and reporters at Columbia University in an effort to bring to a close a six-day building occupation that was protesting the university’s involvement in war research and its construction of a racially segregated gymnasium on public land.

Frankly, police riots are what we’ve increasingly and too often been witnessing this past week.  From the New York police cars that drove directly into crowds of protesters, to the unprovoked shooting and gassing of media figures, to the cynical assault on a peaceful and legally assembled crowd outside the White House yesterday so that Trump could stage his pathetic “photo op,” the unfortunate actions of the looters, arsonists, and window smashers have been matched by the too frequently unprovoked and largely ineffective violence of the police.  To be sure, many individual police officers are faithfully doing their duty and there are more than a few like the exemplary sheriff in Flint, Michigan, who took off his riot gear to march alongside the demonstrators.  But the actions of far too many, egged on by Trump and other racists, including ones in their own police unions (the head of the Minneapolis police union wears a t-shirt that proclaims “Cops for Trump” and slandered George Floyd as a “dangerous criminal’; UPDATE: Read this article about him), only reveal how important the demands of the protests are and how far we still need to go to gain justice, not only for George Floyd but for all oppressed people.  In this sense, we are, sadly, still revisiting 1968.

UPDATE: Here is a link to a database of 195 videos (and, alas, growing) of police brutality during the protests that have been posted on Twitter:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YmZeSxpz52qT-10tkCjWOwOGkQqle7Wd1P7ZM1wMW0E/edit#gid=0

This is not to say that there are not videos of criminal behavior by those who are alleged to be protesters.