Mediaboss Marketing

A woman wearing a face mask holds a placard as hundreds of supporters of the Michigan Conservative Coalition protest against the states extended stay-at-home order at the Capitol building in Lansing, Mich., April 15, 2020. (Seth Herald/Reuters)

My colleague Rich Lowry pens an excellent column that draws comparisons between those publicly protesting the excesses of the pandemic lockdowns and the Tea Party movement that erupted in 2009 in response to Big Governments push to get much bigger, and quickly.

The column serves as a timely opportunity to draw attention to a new study conducted by Anne Sorock Segal and Jack Sorock of the Frontier Center (I am a board member) on what they are calling the Reopen Movement. Their research seeks to understand and convey the motivations of citizens who are the strongest advocates including those engaged in defiant public protesting for reopening states under government-imposed stay at home orders. Segal and Sorock say that critics of the Reopen protestors are getting it wrong. Very much so.

The studys methods include polling (of 974 respondents) and, from a smaller contingent, behavioral event modeling a drill-down method that unveils the deep values that motivate either public action or vocal support for the protestors. In essence, the undertaking answers the fundamental question: Just who are these Reopeners? And the obvious comparison: Are they Tea Party 2.0? There are great similarities but also some major differences. Indeed, among the Reopeners, there is even a goodly amount of indifference to Tea Party 1.0.

Here are the four key finding the study (the abstract is here) has discovered:

This movement is not so much political as it is personal and self-definitional (a gut check on values that activate one to enter the public foray), selfless (this is not about getting my favorite bar back in the business of pouring pints), and also communal, all of it prompted by and occurring within a historical crisis for America. From the findings:

Reopeners said that, while this moment of crisis challenges their sense of who they are, their actions of defiance allow them to take pride in who they are. The tone of their defiance is bold, with two outcomes: First, their boldness works it causes authorities to back down. Second, their boldness matches the moment the scale and disposition of government action has been monumental, and Reopeners believe they are showing they understand the importance of this challenge to freedom. Reopeners say achieving a political victory in the short-term, though important, is secondary. The primary objective is to answer the question who am I? during what feels like a watershed moment. Reopeners are concerned they might not live up to the precedents of others who rose to meet similar moments in American and world history. For those who took action, they experienced boldness and courage, and learned they might be able to contribute or sacrifice going forward in ways that had never before been tested.

The study, which surveyed nearly 1,000 subjects, provides worthwhile numerical findings on make-up, where Reopeners stand politically, and on Trump, their views of the Tea Party, and more. Among the results:

Given the last point, it should not come as a surprise that the cancellation of church services on Easter played a big role in engendering this movement:

When Easter Sunday fell in the middle of the coronavirus shutdowns, many of the Reopener churchgoers took one of three paths: (1) they sought out a new church, often further away; (2) they held their own spiritual gathering in someones home, or; (3) they had time available to catch up on the news.

The research sought to get to the root of what made an individual actually take to the streets to protist. Numerous emotional factors and states of mind bear on this, but the study found that three events or circumstances in particular proved key to motivation. One is that Reopeners witnessed harm to others, which led them to take on the role of becoming advocates for others. Another: Reopeners formed the opinion that data and science presented to them were false, misleading, or inconclusive. And last: As the shutdowns provided people with time to reflect, investigate, and communicate, they increased the exchange of opinions with others, which in turn led them to seek out a broader community to evaluate the data, provide and receive support against hostility, and discuss next steps.

The studys appendix provides an interesting comparison of attributes between the Reopen Movement (required mental strength to defy) and the Tea Party (allows me to be proactive) and also with other recent mass movements, such as the antiScott Walker protests in Wisconsin, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter. Its worth the read.

So, if its not Tea Party 2.0, then . . . how best to describe the Reopeners? Segal and Sorock suggest considering them as The New Untamed. Heres the studys conclusion:

The conventional media narrative is that America is a fractured nation, perhaps irreparably. Media characterize competing views about Coronavirus as a divide between the selfish and the selfless, and view Reopeners as putting their self-interests first. Study 2 shows that they are generally, in fact, isolated and seek out others to express dissent quietly so as not to be shamed for their questions. Based on the panel survey data, we conclude that the Reopen movement does not appear to be a re-hash of conservative mass movements like the Tea Party, and that Reopeners are strongly faith-driven and new to political activism.

This is consistent with an untamed mindset that the Frontier Center is tracking across many mass movements, ideologies, and topics. This mindset has many facets. Americans have been opting-out of safe and narrow paths in other areas, including by homeschooling, adopting cost-sharing plans to replace health insurance, and establishing home churches. The Frontier Center has also tracked a second pathway of compliance toward safety and peace of mind. Our values research with the Reopeners revealed a paradox: They find peace of mind through defiance, because it results in felt-freedom, understanding of their own mettle, holding authorities accountable, and standing up for others.

The data reveal that critics of the Reopen protesters are right that America needs renewed selflessness, but that they are wrong if they imagine that this results from compliance with flawed science and restricted freedom. A new selflessness can come from citizens who seek to remain untamed by authority. The Reopeners make clear that selflessness can be found in these everyday Americans who, while they do not seek to be political activists or agitators, feel compelled to act at what they believe is a defining moment in our history.

The protesters are demonstrating a new selflessness a sacrifice different from staying at home and closing nonessential businesses. Their selflessness requires moving into untamed territory, which in this case risks very real conflict with authorities. These Untamed are resisting out of duty to what they say is unlawful infringement of their rights based on unscientific, flawed premises that result in deeply troubling collateral damage to the American community.

The new untamed territory is a mindset. First, American society is profoundly divided over who is the hero and who is the antihero in our modern story. The threat of a pandemic reveals that selflessness based on fear isnt necessarily selflessness it may in fact be selfishness. Reopeners are demonstrating selflessness by their determination to overcome fear for what for them is a greater cause. The Frontier Center has found that this is a consistent factor in recent mass movements, and that the untamed mindset can be found across years, movements, political issues, and ideologies.

The New Untamed framework is critical for how we understand the meaning of the coronavirus conflict, and for what actions we take in the name of protecting America. Aggressive government efforts to stop the spread of Coronavirus makes sense if Americas health is defined by being protected from the virus. If that is an incorrect measure of Americas health, however, then shutdowns and restricting rights are counterproductive and harmful. They may weaken freedom, the true foundation of Americas health.

Far from being a threat to Americas health, Reopen protests may be its medicinesuggesting that American culture does not flourish by looking back but by retesting its convictions.

See more here:
The Tea Party and the New Untamed - National Review

Lawful protest in the American political process isnt the same as the lawless rioting, looting, and destruction of lives and property that became a threat to the public in the past week.

The death of a black man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white police officer May 25 in Minneapolis sparked widespread protests there and across America. Many of the demonstrations, despite the general lockdown and stay-at-home orders still in place during the coronavirus pandemic, have been peaceful.

However, in many cities, vandals and looters are destroying public and private property and ransacking minority-owned businesses among many others. Several people have been killed amid the violence.

Defacing a monument to the 54th Massachusetts, a regiment of all-volunteer black soldiers during the Civil War, hardly seems like an appropriate or reasonable protest of Floyds killing, or racism in America, or really anything else.

These shameful and destructive actions have been denounced by manyincluding Floyds familyand are a direct assault on the rule of law.

Unfortunately, some have taken to justifying the violence weve seen in recent days and have been making a direct comparison to the Boston Tea Party and other acts of rebellion in the American colonies leading up to the Revolutionary War.

The destruction of a police precinct is not only a tactically reasonable response to the crisis of policing, it is a quintessentially American response, and a predictable one, journalism professor Steven W. Thrasher at Northwestern University wrote in Slate, adding:

The uprising weve seen this week is speaking to the American police state in its own language, up to and including the use of fireworks to mark a battle victory. Property destruction for social change is as American as the Boston Tea Party.

The insinuation is that the destruction of the 3rd Precinct police station in Minneapolis, or looting and arson, is somehow in line with venerable American traditions and can lead to positive change within the American system of free government.

This is nonsense.

In the early 1770s, discontent was brewing in Boston and other parts of the British colonies in America in response to a series of acts passed in Parliament putting duties and taxes on various goods vital to the economy of the colonies.

The taxes were obnoxious enough, but what was truly intolerable to the American colonists was that they had no say in the laws, no avenue to have representation in the British Empires governing body.

The Tea Act of 1773, which led to the Boston Tea Party, actually was, in part, a lowering of a previous tax. This too was unacceptable. Yes, the taxes were bad enough, but the rate of taxation was not, ultimately, the issue at hand.

Instead, it was the colonists belief that they were living under an arbitrary and increasingly authoritarian government, that their pleas for change would be effectively ignored.

The American colonies, with a long history of self-rule and belief that they were British subjects just as much as those living in London, saw the actions of the British government as looming tyranny.

Instead of finding ways to accommodate the colonists fears, as some wiser statesmen such as Edmund Burke were imploring Parliament and King George IIIs ministry to do, the British government tightened the screws.

Confrontation was becoming inevitable.

Boston stewed with discontent in the winter of 1773. Colonists refused to let ships that brought tea owned by the East India Companyessentially a monopoly backed by Englandto be unloaded for sale in the city.

Its important to note too that colonists had negotiated for weeks simply to have the ships filled with tea sent back to England rather than force a confrontation. British law mandated that duties on goods aboard ships be paid within 20 days, or authorities would seize the ships and sell the items.

The owner of one of the tea-carrying ships, Francis Rotch, pleaded with the crown-appointed Massachusetts governor to allow him to sail back to England, but the governor repeatedly denied his request.

When Rotch returned to Boston on the evening of Dec. 26, 1773, and delivered the bad news to Bostons Committee of Correspondence that his request had been rejected, the die was cast.

A group of townspeople associated with a patriot group called the Sons of Liberty, many dressed as Mohawk warriors, went into action.

Historian Jack Rakove recounted what happened next in his book, Revolutionaries: Inventing an American Nation:

Once the Mohawks, numbering fifteen or twenty a vessel, boarded the ships, the crowd watched silently as 340 massive chests of East India Company tea were hauled on desk and whacked open with axes; then the contents were thrown overboard. By 9 P.M. a cargo valued at a hefty nine thousand pounds sterling was weakly brewing in the low-tide waters.

The Sons of Liberty carefully targeted their protest. They opposed an arbitrary and obnoxious tax, not a ship owner, and certainly didnt intend to harm Bostonians. They conducted themselves in as orderly afashion as possible.

In fact, Samuel Adams, one of the leaders of the Sons of Liberty, insisted that the protest occurred without the least Injury to the Vessels or any other property.

The Sons of Liberty broke a padlock to get to the tea inside, but replaced it the next day. They certainly didnt take that moment to rob their local businesses or burn buildings to the ground.

Not everyone was convinced. Notably, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin werent pleased with the property destruction, however justified, and disapproved when riots previously erupted in response to Parliaments Intolerable Acts, as they were called.

Franklin and Washington, like numerous other American colonists at the time, hoped that a lawful resolution was possible despite their opposition to the British governments actions in general.

Columnist Dan McLaughlin, writing in 2014 for The Federalist, was correct in saying the reason Americans so fondly remember the Boston Tea Party and other incidents of rebellion in the American colonies is not because rioting was morally justified or successful in bringing about its aims, but because we see the ultimate result that those outbursts led to the American Revolution.

The Boston Tea Party was an act of rebellion from a colony revolting against the use of arbitrary power, which the Declaration of Independence later explicitly cited as the reason for the colonies to separate from England.

The Constitution and the governing system created by the founding generation following the Revolution was designed to ensure that American citizens did not have to suffer arbitrary government. We, unlike the colonists of the 1770s, would have the chance to petition authorities, conduct elections, and seek representation in government.

Its worth noting that when groups of Americans organized militias to oppose taxes in the 1790s and threatened to topple local authorities in Pennsylvania, President George Washington personally led a military force to crush it.

Violent resistance to duly passed laws, whether good or not, would be met with force.

Laws may not change andas the world is not perfectinjustices will still occur under our system, but we have the tools to appeal to ballots over bullets that the colonists didnt. This is the cornerstone of liberty and self-government.

Associating the violent destruction of a police station and wanton looting of businesses this past week with the Boston Tea Party is an abuse of history. It makes a mockery of our constitutional, free government.

Read more:
Stop Using the Boston Tea Party to Justify Violence in Modern America - Daily Signal

George Floyd's family has called for protests in his honor to be peaceful, and many of them around the world are. Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO Shahid Buttar, a Black Lives Matter activist running for Congress against fellow Democrat and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,has been protesting in the streets for 20 years.

He knows the cost ofcivil dissent canbe high. Protesters can be injured or killed as evidenced by sometimesviolent confrontations between demonstrators and police in the ongoing national protests over the death of George Floyd, whodied after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for roughly nine minutes on Memorial Day.

ButButtar is confident the time-honored tactic will once again spur societal change.

"This won't be a fast struggle," he says. "But we need to stay active and mobilize."

The United States has a long, storied history of protests and uprisings, starting withthe Boston Tea Party's rebellion against British rule. Fast forward two centuries later, public pressure is once again being brought to bear on a society that remains vexed by institutional racism born out of the nation's slave-owning roots.

When citizens clash with government forces, the effect is powerful, tugging at emotions and stealing headlines. But their power is not episodic but cumulative, historians say, with the most successful civil rights demonstrations creating change through incremental steps,building on one another to, at times, remakethe U.S. political landscape.

Protesters in downtown Detroit march and stop at the Detroit Police Station for a second night of protests on May 30, 2020.(Photo: Kelly Jordan, Detroit Free Press - USA TODAY Network)

Protest is the highest form of patriotism, its a way to say to our government, Hey, we are here! says Aaron Bryant, curator at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Protests draw attention to needs, and then ideally other people become part of the movement, in boardrooms or museums or newspapers, and the dialog goes to another level.

The lesson for today's activists, experts say, is that protests should be seen asone tool in a box that must also include sustained grassroots organizing, meaningful change at the ballot box and shifts in cultural norms.

One need only look at the long road from overt Jim Crow discrimination to a more veiled racism that persists in American society today to see the struggle thats required to achieve lasting change,says Harold McDougall, a professor at Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C.

The first level of action is people in the streets saying we cant take it anymore, but we also need the help of those trained to fight within the system, says McDougall, who is at work on a book called Democracy at a Human Scale. More than anything, if youre going to move the dial, you have to keep at it.

The civil rights movement protests that flared in the mid-20th century have many signature moments that led to notable societal changes.

In 1954, protests helped spur the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling, in which the Supreme Court deemed racial segregation in public schoolsunconstitutional.

In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat in the colored section of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white passenger, eventually sparking a bus boycott led by a little known preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr.. A year later, the Supreme Court ruled against segregated public buses.

In this 1960 photo, student sit-in leader Rodney Powell, standing, talks with two of his companions after the lunch counter at a downtown Nashville Walgreen's Drug Store, which was closed by its owner when the sit-ins started. Protesters were aiming to desegregate such locales, and eventually succeeded as the nation's attention was drawn to their struggle. (Via OlyDrop)(Photo: Jimmy Ellis, Nashville Tennessean)

In 1960, black and white protesters staged sit-ins at segregated diners across the South, leading to a desegregation of public places in cities such as Nashville and Greensboro, North Carolina.

In 1963, 250,000 people joined King for his I Have a Dream speech at the March on Washington for equality and justice and focused a nation on the plight of black Americans and the poor.

And then a watershed: A year later, Democratic President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which was followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and then the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

But as compelling as these results are, "it's not like someone does a dramatic protest action and policy changes the next day," saysDavid Meyer, professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine and author of Politics of Protest: Social Movements in America.

"These actions only work in concert with some element of mainstream politics responding for its own reasons, whether they're morally or electorally motivated," he says. "With LBJ, you had both for example. The civil rights movement gave him political incentives to take action."

Meyer likens successful social protest movements to cracking a safe with multiple locks.

Its not about getting one lock to open, its opening multiple locks over time that ultimately leads to change," he says.

Indeed, those landmark legal cases and legislation came amidyears of protests and much death ranging from a bomb that killed four little girls in Birmingham to the assassination of King in 1968.

The Washington Memorial is seen behind the "Stone of Hope" statue at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. on March 19, 2019.(Photo: MANDEL NGAN, AFP/Getty Images)

Andfoesunwilling to embrace the spirit of the new laws worked quickly to undermine them,says Peter Levy, professor of history at York College of Pennsylvania and author of The Great Uprising: Race Riots in Urban America During the 1960s.

Levy points out that after a wave of civil rights reforms and, in fact, likely because of these changes Americans voted in 1968 to electRepublican Richard Nixon, who ran on a law and order platform and launched the War on Drugs that sent hundreds of thousands of black people to prison in subsequent decades.

A general unwillingness of the nation to commit itself to undoing a legacy of discrimination in the education, employment and the justice system insured that systematic racism persisted, says Levy. In many ways, the issues on the streets today are the same issues that existed in the 60s and went unresolved.

Undaunted, activists persist, oftenfeeding their movement with a successful use of the media.

Sending shocking images around the nation and globe via television, magazines and newspaper stories in the 60s was critical to the success of Kings non-violent protest movement, says Todd Boyd, who holds the Katherine and Frank Price Endowed Chair for the Study of Race and Popular Culture at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

In this May 3, 1963 file photo, Walter Gadsden, 17, defies an anti-parade ordinance of Birmingham, Alabama, and is attacked by a police dog. Such images from the Civil Rights Movement played a big role in turning the nation's attention to the plight of African Americans and eventually led to the passage of a variety of laws meant to give people of color more rights.(Photo: Bill Hudson, AP)

His idea was, if people see this they might join our cause, Boyd says, referencing now infamous 1963 photographs and TV footage of police dogs and fire hoses being turned on black protesters by the police force in Birmingham, Alabama.

Decades later, when Rodney King was caught on tape being beaten by Los Angeles police officers in 1991, the images shocked most Americans if not black Americans.

Now, with the ubiquity of smart phones,nearly everyone has a camera in their pockets. Even if that hasnt stemmed the tide of death,its exposed whats already out there, but its made a difference," says Boyd. "Ive had a number of white people say that although they werent familiar with this sort of police behavior personally, this all is obviously very wrong.

As horrific as past incidents of police brutality against people of color have been, including the filmed shooting of Georgia jogger Ahmaud Arbery by armed white residents in February, the recent video of Floyd unsuccessfully begging for his life has shook the nation.

That video helps people try and walk in the shoes of their fellow African American citizens, says Omar Wasou, associate professor of politics at Princeton University in New Jerseyand a co-founder of the dot-com-era website, BlackPlanet. Theres no complexity. Its eightminutes and 46 seconds of a cop killing him before our eyes. Seeing that visceral and intimate act of state violence makes it hard to talk around.

Civil rights figures lead marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge during the recreation of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march in Selma, Alabama, March 4, 1990. From left are Hosea Williams of Atlanta, Georgia Congressman John Lewis, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Evelyn Lowery, SCLC President Joseph Lowery and Coretta Scott King (glasses).(Photo: Jamie Sturtevant, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Wasou studies protest movements and their impact on politics and elections. His analysis of the 60s civil Rights protests shows that activists then were trying to appeal to white moderates who wanted to promote racial equality but not at the expense of public order. By marching in southern cities apt to crack down on protesters, they were hoping to use television cameras to provoke a sense of outrage.

There are moments in all protest movements when theyre able to have their voices heard by a larger audience, because then as now, what the media covers has an effect on what the general public thinks, says Wasou.

For Janai Nelson, associate director and counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, todays protests seem familiar and like something new.

She says black America has always used protests to force the country to live up to its ideals, and often those protests have stemmed from killings.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, gestures during his "I Have a Dream" speech as he addresses thousands of civil rights supporters gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, D.C., Aug. 28, 1963. Actor-singer Sammy Davis Jr. can be seen at extreme right, bottom.(Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

There was Emmett Till, 14, lynched in 1955 for allegedly speaking to a white woman, a death that helped spur the civil rights movement. Jimmie Lee Jackson, 26, a civil rights activist killed by an Alabama State Trooper in 1965, which led to the Selma to Montgomery marches and later that year to the Voting Rights Act. And Trayvon Martin, 17, whose killing by neighborhood watchmanGeorge Zimmerman in 2012 led to the launch a year later of theBlack Lives Matter movement.

I truly hope this moment we are living through will continue, says Nelson. For the black people living this, they know if they relent it will be back to business as usual.

In many ways, activists and historians say, todays protests do feel noticeably different.

They are drawing a rainbow coalition of races and economic groups. And they are demanding systemic changes across a range of issues, from police reform to economic inequality, against a backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic and climate change,Buttar, the congressional candidate,said.

Shahid Buttar, who is running for Congress against fellow Democrat and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is shown here at a No War With Iran protest in San Francisco in January. Buttar is a veteran of 20 years of street protests.(Photo: Derrick Liu / Shahid Buttar for Congress Campaign)

The Internet is what makes these protests different from those in the 1960s, he says. It connects us and amplifies the message that this is a constitutional crisis in the middle of an economic and health crisis. Theres no pretense the status quo is OK.

Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, saysstreets will stay filled until change comes. Until a poster that has meaning now but was spotted during the 1963 March on Washington We demand an end to police brutality now! no longer has relevance, she says.

Protests are a global signal that the collective has tried everything else and that hasnt worked, says Cullors, whose organizations name has come to embody the essence of the outrage from blacks and many whites alike over the plight of African Americans.

People being in the streets reminds us of our agency and our power, she says. Often were not safe out there. Not safe jogging, not safe driving, not safe walking. So when we challenge the status quo and step into those streets, were saying we are taking our power back.

Autoplay

Show Thumbnails

Show Captions

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/05/george-floyd-and-black-lives-matter-protests-can-learn-1960-s/3124949001/

The rest is here:
'You have to keep at it': What Black Lives Matter demonstrators can learn from civil rights protests of the past - USA TODAY

The words of the First Amendment are quite straightforward:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Especially simple is that last clause "the right of people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

It was heartfelt. When the First Amendment was adopted in 1791, our founders may have been channeling the Boston Tea Party of Dec. 16, 1773. That was when American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing "taxation without representation," staged one of our country's first protests. And while they were at it, they engaged in a bit of vandalism. At Griffin's Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts, a crowd of some 7,000 American colonists gathered more or less peacefully to watch fellow colonists dressed as Mohawk Indians chop open 342 tea chests and dump them and their contents into the Boston Harbor.

In response, the British ministry, which was using a tariff to try to create a monopoly for the English trading corporation East India Company, closed the port of Boston, altered the colony's charter and ordered British troops to occupy the town.

Sound familiar? And with neither side willing to back down, the stage was set for the final acts leading to the American Revolution.

Perhaps its no wonder that so many military leaders pushed back last week on King Donald Trump's talk of invoking the Insurrection Act and using the military to quell protests in U.S. cities.

You know Trump, the guy who, after giving a law-and-order speech in the Rose Garden on Monday, had federal law enforcement officials fire tear gas and rubber bullets at peaceful demonstrators so he could walk across the street from the White House to the front of St. John's Episcopal Church for a not-so-presidential photo op and hold up a Bible. The church had been slightly damaged by fire in a previous protest.

More than one observer has since noted that Trump didn't bother to open the Bible. Didn't bother to quote from it. Didn't even read Psalm 23 the Lord is my shepherd to calm a stressed nation.

No. His message in the Rose Garden was more like vengeance is mine, sayeth King Trump.

Thankfully, there was almost no audio in the shameful and awkward photo op in front of the historic church where Abraham Lincoln went to pray most every night of the Civil War. Trump said very little mostly his usual babble about making the country greater than ever.

This great country that, under his race-baiting taunts, still wrestles with the rights of any or all of its citizens to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Grievances like dying while a police knee is on your neck for nearly nine minutes. Grievances like being tear-gassed so the president can have a photo op. Grievances like most Americans having to choose between voting or staying healthy as a pandemic rages.

No. This president wants militarized street control.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Wednesday differed with his commander in chief: "The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort and only in the most urgent and dire of situations," Esper said. "We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act."

Retired Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George W. Bush and Barack Obama put it a better way: "Our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must never become so," Mullen wrote in The Atlantic, adding that he was "sickened" to watch security personnel clear a path for Trump's photo op.

Retired Marine General and former defense secretary Jim Mattis excoriated the president: We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square," he wrote in a statement Wednesday to The Atlantic. "Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American peopledoes not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us."

Former President Bush, too, released a rare statement. In it he not only commended Americans demonstrating against racial injustice but criticized those who try to silence them. "There is a better way the way of empathy, and shared commitment, and bold action, and a peace rooted in justice," he said.

Former president Barack Obama, noting the number of violent protesters is tiny compared to the peaceful ones, reminded us that, "Every step of progress in this country, every expansion of freedom, every expression of our deepest ideals have been won through efforts that made the status quo uncomfortable. And we should all be thankful for folks who are willing, in a peaceful, disciplined way, to be out there making a difference."

Most Americans black and white get it. Just look at the diversity of protesters in news photos and videos.

Maybe that's exactly what so frightens Trump. That we Americans may in fact be far more united than we've ever been. We don't see color so much anymore. But, oh, yeah, we see injustice. And we're seeing it trumpeted by our wanna-be king Trump himself.

Continue reading here:
Sohn: Just what is it that so frightens King Trump? The First Amendment, or our growing unity against injustice? - Chattanooga Times Free Press

By AARON WALKERIndependent CandidateLos Alamos County Council

First of all, I need to address the issue of George Floyds death. This is extremely hard for me to write as a white male. I dont understand first hand the struggles that many people have in this country.

I feel it would be irresponsible of me not to attempt to overcome the awkwardness. This is a national issue, but I would be undermining the major changes this country needs to make by ignoring them. I was very proud to see the turnout at Ashley Pond on Sunday for the peaceful protest.

I was also heartened by the comments that Chief of Police Dino Sgambellone had in response. This country needs radical changes to address the issue of systemic racism and discrimination. We cannot have a nation where all lives matter until we make certain that black lives matter. Rioting and looting are both poor choices.

However, we have a community within our nation that is in pain, angry, and tired of the way things are. Progress is painful and ugly sometimes, but protesting is not meant to make people comfortable. Its meant to evoke emotion and acknowledge that there is a problem. Never forget that it was a riot, damage to possessions, and protest (The Boston Tea Party) that ignited the rebellion that created this country. You dont have to like the rioting and the looting, but its time we all accept that there is a major issue of race in this country. NOTHING can discount or discredit that.

I am running for county council to change the way our local government thinks and acts. It feels and appears like there is no integrity left within the county. Unquarked is finally getting their hearing.

The problem here is that there is zero chance that they get a fair hearing. The fact that the county manager is on the appeals board is unacceptable. Since he has a supervisory role over the Community Development Department (CDD), he has a vested interest in how this hearing turns out. The county attorney is representing both the county and the Council Chair. How have the optics of this not been thought about and rectified in advance? Now, with news coming out of the plaza where Unquarked is located being sold, the optics continue to get worse. Why are our small businesses being treated like this?

The optics of this issue, and ones that have come before dont paint a pretty picture for businesses within the county. I know that I wouldnt want to open a business here if I had to deal with CDD. WHY is this accepted and defended? Regardless of which side is truly at fault here, we will likely see the obvious outcome: The county will defend their actions to the death, and the lopsided hearing will indefinitely turn out in their favor. The real loser here is the small business owners, potential small business owners, and the people of the county. Because the county must have total control, this hearing is over before it begins.

That type of mentality is unacceptable to me. We MUST have integrity and accountability within our county. As a county councilor, I will strive to hold the county accountable for its actions and poor responses. I will do everything I can to ensure this county becomes a place that welcomes small businesses and works WITH them, not against them.

I am getting closer to my signature goal to qualify for the ballot. I still need your assistance however. Since I am still not canvassing and knocking on doors due to COVID-19 concerns, you can contact me at walker4cc@gmail.com and I will set up a time to drop off a petition to you with no contact. Thank you for your support.

Read more:
Letter To The Editor: George Floyd's Death; Small Business - Los Alamos Daily Post