Hello, friends,
Last week, there was no The Progressive Cafe. This week, we’re going to talk a little about how to change things. Many of you will already understand what I’m saying, but some of you might be encountering this for the first time. Thus, welcome.
On Friday last week, the video footage of Tyre Nichols’ murder was released.
I didn’t have anything to say, other than that I’m disgusted with, but not surprised by what happened. That’s not to brush it off with a dismissal of “that happens,” but rather the opposite.
Are you still thinking about Tyre’s murder?
Or are you thinking about something else in the political field? Like maybe a spy balloon or some laptop nonsense? It would unfortunately make sense if that were the case: Modern day political discourse is constantly focused on the latest thing, or maybe the thing-about-to-drop. I’m citing precisely zero evidence for this claim, other than the gut feeling that you probably have observed this phenomenon in action.
Thoughts and prayers were uttered by politicians as if this was just another garden-variety tragedy. And, hey, when you have more mass shootings than days in a year, it’s hard to focus on any one tragedy. There’s just not enough bandwidth.
Or is there?
The Nature Of Tragedies And Responses To Them.
Individual tragedies are horrifying, but are also very momentary. “It happened, it’s over” is a real phenomenon many people feel. “I donated to the Go Fund Me, so there’s nothing more I can do” is a real thing, especially for those who are resigned to believing that nothing can be changed. (No, but seriously, donate to the Go Fund Me if you have the funds available to give)
And a week later we’re on to the next thing, like clockwork, and society remains status-quo.
The trick that the powers-that-be rely upon to make sure that crises revert to normalcy is to isolate them. To de-Humanize the crisis. A mass shooting took place? “X number dead, Y number wounded, Z shootings so far this year” and it’s over. The collective political consciousness just dismisses the tragedy as an inevitability that was coming no matter what.
And yet, paradoxically, that mentality is part of the rationale of a potential solution. No, we aren’t going to forget that the atrocities affect individual Humans who we absolutely should care about! But we’re going to have to treat these things like they are: Systemic challenges that must be fought with a systemic approach.
Systemic Change Requires Systemic Solutions
As far back as 2016, while the Black Lives Matter movement was still in its relative youth, German Lopez of Vox was writing about how Police have an implicit bias that views Black people as a great danger. This has clearly not changed. “I feared for my life” is an excuse to commit any number of abuses in the name of the law. Brendan O’Flaherty and Rajiv Sethi of The Marshall Project discussed this in 2019, and it’s still going strong.
The straw-man counter-argument to the status quo is “Defund The Police.” I’ll say up-front that I support defunding the police! But I’ll also acknowledge that the term is politically charged in a way that doesn’t accomplish much. “Reform the police” sounds much nicer to centrist ears who will at least acknowledge there is a problem, but to those of us who have seen quite more than enough atrocities take place, it’s hard to even temporarily adopt the idea that this system can be so basically “reformed.”
That straw-man argument is, of course, punted about by those who at best don’t acknowledge there is a problem, at at worst actively enjoy watching the problem play out. There is a substantial percentage of the American population that doesn’t see any problem with the state of affairs in policing. Timothy S. Rich (et al!) wrote for The Hill in 2020 when he analyzed the acceptance of protests by members of the public.
In short: A large chunk of one of the nation’s two big parties really, really doesn’t believe police brutality is out of control.
I might consider them boot-lickers, but that doesn’t help matters. In practice, what this information tells me is that people who are opposed to police brutality (or any other type of tragedy; again, mass-shootings come to mind) need to bring in the voices of those who are politically disengaged.
I wish I could provide a solution for the best way to do that.
It’s true that large protests attract media stories, but they also attract people who want to exploit the crisis for their own gains. Fascists might pre-emptively accuse Antifa in a weird coordinated fear campaign. Dennis Wagner of USA Today touched on thieves who use protests as cover. Human Rights Watch discussed how police sometimes embrace violence during anti-violence protests.
Yet large protests remain an excellent way to bring renewed effort to a crisis. They attract the attention of those who may feel like there’s no way to make change. That might be the only way to accomplish anything - by demonstrating to those in power that the majority stand behind whatever changes need to be made to improve things.
In Conclusion.
I think my train of thought is running out of steam. Suffice to say:
- Individual tragedies are horrible,
- Attention spans are short.
- Creating movements around issues can generate change.
- Such movements need to “activate” the disinterested/depressed.
- There will be opposition, but it can and must be overcome.
I hope you’re all safe and sound!
Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe. If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list. This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.