HOW NEWARK HONORED GEORGE FLOYD . . . AND SCHOOLED AMERICA

HOW NEWARK HONORED GEORGE FLOYD . . .
AND SCHOOLED AMERICA

George Floyd was killed on Monday evening a week ago.

When he died laid out on a street in Minneapolis with a knee on his neck and two on his back, Floyd was a forty-six year old father, grandfather, and restaurant security guard. He had lived in Minnesota for five years.  He was born in North Carolina and raised in Houston, where he had been a star high school athlete.  He was also a black man.  Among his last words were "I can't breathe," "my neck hurts," "everything hurts," "I'm about to die,"  and "Don't kill me."

None of them mattered.

At the time Floyd died, three cops were on top of him.  One, Derek Chauvin, had his knee on Floyd's neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds. Two others were kneeling on Floyd's back and legs.  Another stood alongside Chauvin.  At some point, a bystander told the police to "get [Floyd] off the ground," and complained that "You could have put him in the car by now.  He's not resisting arrest or nothing."

Those words didn't matter either.

When EMS arrived, Floyd was non-responsive.  He was taken to a local hospital and pronounced dead at 9:25 pm.  The four cops were fired the next day,  and three days after that, Chauvin was arrested on charges of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.  He now sits in a maximum security jail with bail set at $500,000 but apparently not met, and is scheduled to appear in court for the first time on June 8.  The other three are at large and have not been charged at this time.

A county medical examiner  ruled Floyd’s death a homicide and an autopsy performed by Dr. Michael Baden, the world renowned forensic pathologist and NYC's one-time chief medical examiner, concluded that Floyd's death was caused by the three policemen who held him down.

In the week since, protests have broken out in 141 American cities and a handful of foreign ones. The protests were multi-racial and bi-partisan.  In many cases, the police themelves either participated or were openly supportive.  And they should have been.  Floyd's death is only the latest in a long line of blue on black excessive force that stretches back over the decades and too frequently results in the deaths of black men.

Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Amadou Diallo, et al.

The list is long.

It's also part of a systemic problem that plagues law enforcement.  There's a reason for "the conversation" every black parent has with his or her child; the one warning the kids to keep their hands visible and their mouths shut whenever a cop approaches.

The alternative can be death.

Though large numbers of the protests -- and protesters -- were peaceful, a not insignificant number were not.

A Minneapolis police precinct was torched on Thursday and in cities throughout the country rioters  have overturned and set police cars and utility vehicles ablaze; in New York City, two lawyers  threw a molotov cocktail into a police car in Brooklyn.  Looting is commonplace, with property damage running into the millions, and as of Monday, four thousand had been arrested.  In twenty-one states, the National Guard has been called up.  At least five people have died and dozens of mayors have imposed curfews.

One city, however, did not burn.

Newark, New Jersey lies fifteen miles west of Manhattan as the crow flies and is home to 282,000, 84% of whom are black or Hispanic.  This past Saturday afternoon, 12,000 of them took to the streets to protest George Floyd's death at the hands of three of Minnesota's supposed finest.  Among the protesters was the poet's son and city's Mayor, Ras Baraka.

During the protest, no one was arrested, no police cars were torched, no looting occurred, and (save for a few slashed tires) no property was damaged.  The police chief, a white guy, decided that the cops monitoring the protesters' march would not be wearing SWAT or riot gear, and a citizen-manned, fifty person community street team created six years ago self-deployed to de-escalate any tension.

And de-escalate they did.

At one point, a white protester started smashing the window of a Dunkin Donuts.  At another, a group moved toward buildings owned by Prudential Financial, a business anchor that has been in Newark for over 145 years. The street team stopped both. Later that night, outside the First Precinct where riots had begun in the 1960s, an angry crowd of close to a thousand apparently bent on destroying or  trashing the place was faced down by a line of cops . . .

And the hundreds of citizens who stood with them.

By 10:30 pm, the crowd began to disperse as the street team told any who didn't actually live in the city to leave.

Newark's official historian, Junus Williams,  was a law student in the '60s when Newark burned.  Over the weekend, he praised the Mayor. Said Williams: "[T]he people . . . don't see [Baraka] as an obstacle to their righteous anger.  They know that he's angry, too."  Prudential's CEO was even more direct. "You can't underestimate [Baraka's] influence in this. It's . . . an overall image . . .  that we can do more together than we can do apart."  The best praise, however, came from the Rev. Louise Scott-Rountree, the head of Newark's Interfaith Alliance,  and was extended to her flock.  "You better not mess with my family," said the Reverend,  "That's Newark."

No kidding.

Call it Ghandi and Dr. King's non-violence . . .

On steroids.

Yesterday, a little more than two hundred miles south of Newark, the President of the United States had a different idea.

In a conference call, he told the nation's governors that they were "fools" who had "to get much tougher" with the protesters.  "You have to dominate," said Trump.  "If you don't dominate, you're wasting your time.  They're going to run all over you, you'll look like a bunch of jerks."

Attorney General Bill Barr and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper were also on the call and echoed the president. Barr told them they needed "adequate force" to "dominate" and "control" the protesters.  Esper war-gamed the whole problem, telling the governors that they had to "dominate the battle space."  Following the call, and driving his point home, the President then announced that, if the governors didn't get tougher, he would invoke the Insurrection Act and send in the military to do the job "for them."

As with all things Trump, it's not at all clear that he has the power to do what he is now threatening to do.

The Insurrection Act was passed in 1807 and empowers the President to use the military to quell insurrection, civil disorder and rebellion in any state; to enforce federal law and protect Constitutional rights where the state cannot or refuses to do so; or when requested by a state's governor. None of those conditions have been met here, nor are they likely to be.  And a later law, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, expressly bars the use of the military to enforce any  president's domestic policies.

So, bluster aside, Trump either doesn't possess the power he so brazenly claims is his or that power has by no means been triggered.  Though he did order the military to  move a peaceful protest in DC's Lafayette Park yesterday so that he could walk across the street for a photo-op in front of St. John's church, he could do that only because DC is not a state.

From where I sit, if the governors want advice, they now have a choice.

They can call Cadet Bone Spurs -- the man-child  president who  never met a problem involving race that he didn't make worse (see, e.g., Charlottesville) -- and have him send in the marines . . . 

Or they can call Newark's Mayor Baraka.

I'd start with the Mayor.

His plan actually worked.