WARIGI: Floyd: Protesters are making history in the streets – literally

In the US, police brutality against blacks is so commonplace they have come to internalise it like the air they breathe. Police extrajudicial killings of unarmed black men is routine. If ever the culprits get prosecuted, acquittal by the courts is nearly always automatic, thanks to powerful police unions in cahoots with prosecutors who are reluctant to bring rogue white police officers to justice.

The case of George Floyd, the black man murdered two weeks ago by a white policeman in the city of Minneapolis, is extraordinary only in the sense that it has defied the script. It helped that a harrowing video of the killer cop strangling a handcuffed Floyd with his knee went viral. For once, the black community that for ages has suffered these outrages in stoic resignation said enough was enough. No more turning the other cheek.

The demonstrations that erupted across America were of an intensity never seen in that country since the turbulent '60s. They took the “Black Lives Matter” movement – launched in 2014 to protest against police extrajudicial killings of blacks – to an altogether new level. Dozens of cities have come under curfews or called in National Guard troops after their police departments got overwhelmed.

There was something else new and uplifting about the Floyd protests. They were not driven only by black activists. They quickly became interracial, with young blacks and whites and Latinos marching together waving banners written “I Can’t Breathe,” which were Floyd’s last words as his tormentors suffocated him to death.

Equally remarkable was the international solidarity with the US protesters. Rallies of support have been held in London, Paris, Berlin, The Hague, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and the Palestinian territories. And in a rare and hugely symbolic act, the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa condemned Floyd’s “murder” and the “continuing discriminatory practices against black citizens of the USA”.

At first, the Minneapolis police authorities looked like they would play the usual games US police jurisdictions do of shielding brutish colleagues. But that was not to be amid the massive public anger on the streets.

Eventually the main culprit was charged with second degree murder and three colleagues charged as accomplices. There were other undercurrents that guaranteed the Floyd story would turn combustible.

There is coronavirus. The worst hit country in the world by the pandemic is the US, with over 100,000 deaths (and counting), and a devastated economy that has left 40 million Americans unemployed.

Ah, and then there is Donald Trump. He is at the centre of the Floyd story not just because he is the President, but precisely for enabling the toxic climate in which the racism Floyd was a victim of thrives. He’s on record saluting white supremacist groups as “very fine people”.

Typically, his handling of the Floyd blowback has been terrible and totally lacking in empathy. He has described the demonstrators as “domestic terrorists” and “scum”.

Naturally, the White House has been a central focus of the protesters in Washington DC. At one point when things got really hot and the protesters tried to breach the heavily guarded perimeter of the presidential mansion, Trump’s Secret Service minders rushed him and his family into a fortified bunker under the building.

While there, he fielded a conference call with state governors whom he berated as “weak” for not employing harsh measures to crush the countrywide unrest. Emerging from his hideout later, he issued a proclamation that he would call in the military to deal with the protesters. It was a directive so stunning that commentators had trouble absorbing its unprecedented legal implications.

Afterwards, Trump walked to a church just near the White House where he posed holding up a Bible. He hadn’t come to pray. He had come for a cynical photo-op meant to convey a message to his loyal evangelical voter base.

Perhaps to signal to them he was macho and was not hiding in a bunker. Or probably to assure the base that his hardline, tone-deaf response to the protests had divine sanction. All across America, history was unfolding on the streets in real time – literally.

Some powerful moments will remain etched in memory. Like that of Minneapolis police officers “taking a knee” in front of demonstrators (“taking a knee” is a poignant act of acknowledgement, and protest, at the injustices African-Americans face that was inspired by American football star Colin Kaepernick). Or the Michigan sheriff who shed his uniform to join protesters.

The Floyd protest movement started as a cry against police brutality, racial profiling and the unfair US criminal justice system. It has gradually grown bigger to become a voice against inequality, discrimination, systemic racism and the false creed of white supremacy that underpins it. It is no less than a reckoning with the dark legacy of slavery.

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