Dozens of businesses in the city had been looted. ... Buildings were set on fire and, on a night after a call for armed men to protect businesses, two protesters were shot and killed. The base of the Lincoln Memorial had been defaced with graffiti. What happened at the Capitol is the natural result of the U.S. government granting endless space to white rage and white violence. The other half — that police across America brutalized demonstrators at almost completely peaceful Black Lives Matter protests because those demonstrators were black — is a worse distortion. These “white supremacist” cops at the Capitol shot and killed, from close range, a white Air Force veteran, Ashli Babbitt, when she and a bunch of her fellow insurrectionists were about to break through a barricaded door. As protests erupt across the US over the death of George Floyd, numerous law enforcement officers have been attacked or killed during the riots. While nervously keying into my apartment, I heard helicopters flying overhead blaring the same message over and over again: âIt is now curfew, stay in your residence.â Around the country, those who broke curfew were met with violence and assault, in some cases even as they tried to comply with officersâ orders. The well-respected Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project, working with Princeton researchers, found that a total of nine people, including demonstrators, police and bystanders, were killed during the BLM protests. And this, the consensus continues, just reflects the white supremacism, the systemic racism, in America as a whole. Two police officers were not killed in Utah and North Dakota protests. But what is very, very well-known, and what is being dropped down the memory hole, is that alongside all those peaceful BLM mass protests were much more sparsely attended but extremely violent, ongoing riots where the police were a no-show. Please contact us in case of abuse. A fire had been set inside St. John’s Episcopal Church. Another one of the white cops who were supposedly winking at the rioters, Brian Sicknick, was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Sixty-three people were injured and 17 killed in Chicago, including two children, over the weekend; and in New York City, 44 were hurt and at least six killed. As I marched with my fellow protestors, I could feel police closing in. Protesters take over the Burnside Bridge in Portland, Oregon, on June 1, 2020, the fifth night of protests against the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by police in Minneapolis. If Black people attempted to breach the Capitol, we would have been arrested, tear-gassed, and killed under the guise of safety and national security. Police in Nebraska reported one shooting death, while authorities said two people were killed in Iowa, two in Kentucky, and two in Indianapolis. New Report Reveals Demographics of Black Lives Matter Protesters Shows Vast Majority Are White, Marched Within Their Own Cities – PRNewswire, June 18, 2020, One Big Difference About George Floyd Protests: Many White Faces – New York Times, June 12, Outgoing Capitol Police chief: House, Senate security officials hamstrung efforts to call in National Guard – Washington Post, Jan. 11, 2021, Biden denounces racial inequities in blasting Capitol riot – Washington Post, Jan. 8, 2021, Pro-Trump mob clash with police as they breached the barricades – YouTube (The Sun), Jan. 7, 2021, Kid-glove treatment of pro-Trump mob contrasts with strong-arm police tactics against Black Lives Matter, activists say – Washington Post, Jan. 7, 2021, Some officers march and kneel with protesters, creating dissonant images on fraught weekend of uprisings – Washington Post, June 1, 2020, George Floyd Protests: A Timeline – New York Times, June 6, 2020, Fire set at historic St. John’s church during protests of George Floyd’s death – Washington Post. ... and the others sometimes bearing the names of people killed in confrontations with police. Black Lives Matter protests that have erupted across the United States may be the largest demonstrations in the country's history, with upwards of 26million people participating.. – YouTube, May 30, 2020, Abolish the Police? It is time for the United States to see itself and to know itself. Do people really not remember the scenes of streets of boarded-up downtown storefronts, of mobs of looters breaking store windows and running wild up the aisles, of buildings on fire, of police cars on fire, of protesters menacing drivers who strayed into their path — and there not being a cop in sight? Anti-police brutality protests across the United States have turned ugly, with violence and gunfire. After Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, Black Lives Matter protests spread across the nation. Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of … Those Who Survived the Chaos in Seattle Aren’t So Sure – New York Times, Aug. 7, 2020, Exclusive: $1 billion-plus riot damage is most expensive in insurance history – Axios, Sept. 16, 2020, George Floyd protests: A Timeline – New York Times, June 2, 2020, At least 25 Americans were killed during protests and political unrest in 2020 – Guardian, Oct. 31, 2020, The Inaction of Capitol Police Was by Design, by Kellie Carter Jackson – The Atlantic, Jan. 8, 2021, George Floyd protests in Washington, D.C. – Wikipedia, Fact check: Viral images compare handling of Black Lives Matter protests and Capitol riot – USA Today, Feb. 8, 2021, Chris Rock Isn’t Surprised That The Capitol Terrorists Were Treated Differently Than BLM Protesters – The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, YouTube, Jan. 12, 2021. As the events at the Capitol sink in, I keep thinking of the viral tweet from Rev. The siege occurred after months marked by racial injustice protests, some of which were marred by violence. In Chicago, six people were shot and one was killed that night. (There used to be a lot more than a streak, but now big-city police forces have masses of black officers, from chief on down.) It’s also slanderous to American police, and slanderous to America, period. Taken together, it was on one hand the largest peaceful protest in American history, and on the other hand, it was American history’s biggest, longest, most destructive riot. The 95% of peaceful protests seem to have taken place mainly in the daytime, with the 5% violent ones coming mainly at night. Yet in this second half, too, there is an element of truth. Biden may have a point: There is a streak of racism in American policing. The estimate of insured property damage from the riots overall is $1 billion to $2 billion. At least 771 people were killed by police in the first eight months of 2020. The National Guardsmen weren’t on the steps of the Capitol for the BLM protest in that photo, but on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial – yet that’s not the biggest problem with this picture. This was a huge, unintentional, greatly lamented failure. A big zip. An overwhelmingly white police leadership has refused to rein in white supremacist violence, or acknowledge the existence of racism within policing. In June, during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, I rushed home to my Los Angeles apartment. Embed from Getty Imageswindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'cOQYNDB0Sshw0YaPSVEF0g',sig:'y01RDxqF24dw8dx7WDwCs8rqXV8dKEGCt9tK3TDR-wc=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1230477154',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })}); Embed from Getty Imageswindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'rLfDoCRAQcNdChHBGAPp9A',sig:'-XeHRq3h3SxLI8StkA5U5KKKVpXsl9oRYIiBiPwpZfs=',w:'594px',h:'402px',items:'1245141577',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })}); Then there’s the viral side-by-side photos of Trump’s mob streaming up the steps of the Capitol past the hapless police, alongside the photo of a phalanx of National Guardsmen, looking like alien centurions, lining the steps of what looks like the Capitol and facing a peaceful BLM demonstration. Meanwhile, President Trump has told his followers to âbe wild,â ânever concede,â and âstand back and stand byâ â all dog whistles inciting the kind of violence Americans saw on Jan. 6. That’s just in Seattle. Are they behind the violence? There’s tons of footage showing cops beating, manhandling and trampling protesters who were not acting violently. America is not loyal to democracy if it is only faithful to white supremacy, white rage, and white interests. Go home!”. After being pushed by his colleagues to quell the violence, Trump released a now-deleted video to Twitter. No, it doesn’t. Instead they killed one “protester,” and he was pointing a gun at them. It says the cops treated the white marauders with kid gloves because they’re white, and brutalized the BLM protesters because they were black. He is also lead singer for The NightCallers, a '60s-'70s rock 'n' soul cover band, and a copy editor and contributor at Haaretz. Violent demonstrations, meanwhile, have been limited to fewer than 220 locations — … At one protest, 20 police cars followed us as helicopters traced our route and military tanks lined the streets. The Difference Between The Capitol Riot & The BLM Protests Shouldn't Surprise Anyone. And finally, the idea that the police went trigger-happy during the BLM protests is a million miles from the truth. Like I said, there is still a streak of racism among urban American police, but not like it used to be, not when there are untold numbers of black police officers at every level on every force. Outside the White House, Secret Service agents had been hit with bottles of liquor and urine; their injuries included broken bones. But the liberal consensus on the Capitol invasion goes way beyond that. invaded the Capitol building, forcing legislators to evacuate or hide beneath seats, broke curfew were met with violence and assault. Yet, when white people feel erroneously slighted because they didnât win a presidential election, theyâre allowed to throw a violent public tantrum with no intervention. In Seattle, the merchants whose businesses got torched or otherwise wrecked say their uninsured damage came to $200 million. We are a dystopian society founded on white supremacy and inequity. American history understands white violence as a sacred right because America was created by force and subjugation â of Indigenous people, of enslaved Black people, of those who oppose a racist status quo. The father of an 8-year-old who was shot and killed in Atlanta over Fourth of July weekend issued a strong message to Black Lives Matter activists following his daughter’s death. It found that municipalities where BLM protests have been held experienced as much as a 20 percent decrease in killings by police, resulting in an estimated 300 fewer deaths nationwide in 2014–2019. When we express our dissatisfaction with a government that continues to harm and traumatize us, our anger is violently silenced. By now it’s a consensus in liberal America: the police’s pathetic response to the virtually all-white mob that invaded the Capitol, compared to the brutality the cops showed demonstrators at the overwhelmingly peaceful Black Lives Matter protests last year, was a stark reminder of the endemic white supremacism in American policing. Police intervention is unevenly deployed along the axis of race: wander the streets openly armed, and theyâre able to incite the institutional violence, White police violence against Black people goes unpunished, Black protests against that very violence are ruthlessly suppressed, âmilitiaâ of heavily armed white farmers seized a federal building, met with police in riot gear, and hundreds were arrested. As I drove, a high-pitched sound emitted from my phone warning me of an impending curfew. In Minneapolis, Mayor Jacob Frey (whom Trump called a “very weak Radical Left Mayor”) said, “What started as largely peaceful protests for George Floyd have turned to outright looting and domestic terrorism in our region.” . Some American cops, white and black, are apt to stereotype black people in a given situation as violent and act accordingly. Black people would not have even gotten into the building. It didn’t happen that long ago. Previously he was a columnist and feature writer at The Jerusalem Post. There is plenty of footage of Capitol police trying desperately to fight off the surging mob with water hoses, chemical spray, fists and batons. Embed from Getty Imageswindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'X2rmMpj8SRNn-_x8ksLrkw',sig:'PDafM58jYdbJe2O_YkMTBLzOr7r6Bgbh1FpTXb-I1AQ=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1236801616',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })}); But that’s just one half of the distortion of reality in the now-accepted claim that the police response at the Capitol was a grand display of white racism. This is meant to illustrate the difference between how police gear up for black protesters and how they gear up for white ones. Perhaps itâs fitting the attack was on the Capitol â the symbol of what America wants to believe about itself and its ideals of justice, equality, and freedom. And while the Capitol police were obviously, hopelessly undermanned and unprepared, it wasn’t by “design”: Their chief, Steven Sund, who has since resigned, pleaded with his Congressional higher-ups, both before the riot and after it started, to send in the National Guard, but to no effect. Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement protesting against incidents of police brutality and all racially motivated violence against black people. More specifically, these rioters stormed the Capitol apparently in hopes of blocking the transition of power from Trump to President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. They would have started shooting at them the minute they started to rush at the police.” said BLM activist Deray Mckesson to the Washington Post. This is ridiculous. Jan. 7, 2021. Please note that the posts on The Blogs are contributed by third parties. 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