Riots and Reason in Five Acts

Act I: Competing Visions

My condolences go out to the family and friends of George Floyd who died on May 25, 2020, in what his supporters call a death kneel and his detractors call police protocol.

To all Minneapolis school age children, we owe you a better future. To their adult caregivers — parents, educators, faith, civic, and private sector leaders — we are here to help you. The same is true for the people of Minneapolis in general.

What we see on the streets of Minneapolis and cities across the nation is a battle of competing visions.

The first vision consists of private beliefs about people’s role in the American social order, their right to power, and the ability to pick society’s winners and losers.

The second vision consists of public beliefs about the role of the criminal justice system in the lives of black people in the American social order, their access to power, and their ability to pick society’s winners and losers.

Each vision is layered into the American pie with healthy servings of fear, hope, and grace. How we slice it determines the portion of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness each of us receives.

Race complicates the translation and distribution of each vision, naturally.

Black people understand this well. They did not invent the concept of race, but bear its cross daily in the United States and throughout the Americas. No matter how many times their names changed in the United States between 1619 and 2020 — Negro, slave, colored, mixed, black, Afro-American, African American — they always spelled out inferior. This is one reason why they are not often afforded the power to pick a winner and a loser in the American social order.

White people are a complicated bunch in the race equation because the concept plays out unevenly among them. Centuries before whites left their homelands for the Americas, they drew lines of demarcation to identify superior and inferior within their ranks using religion, language, region, or literacy as a tool. Once in the United States, the meaning of “white” evolved in contrast to the proverbial “other” — then a skin-is-my-kin philosophy awarded them the benefit of the doubt when it was time to pick a winner and a loser in the American social order.

Minneapolis is the latest battleground for us to examine competing visions and translations of race. This is not new. It has been ongoing for generations, often articulated through the original social distancing policy — segregation.

Racial restriction covenants on housing deeds at the turn of the twentieth century are but one example. School desegregation battles in the 1970s, hiring practices for government and private sector jobs in the 1980s, and electoral politics in the 1990s are others. Regarding the socioeconomic landscape, in addition to geographic isolation and social stigma, black residents in Minneapolis tend to have some of the lowest median earnings and homeownership rates compared to their white counterparts in Minnesota and the nation. All of these factors play in the troubled history of policing in that city.

So, race and space must factor into any conversation about the protests in Minneapolis.

Act II: Broken Windows

“Why are they destroying their own community?”

This is a question the morally indignant ask when they see broken windows in Minneapolis. Whites, blacks, and others in this group believe the broken window is the problem.

This is a good question, and not a new one in regards to a riot. Millions of people asked the same question when sections of Detroit, Newark, and Washington, D.C. went up in flames after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968, or when protesters took to the streets in Ferguson and Baltimore in 2014 and 2015, respectively.

Although the question is legitimate, it is anchored to a concept of community that is loosely coupled to community in practice.

For instance, some protesters torched a Minneapolis police station during the early stages of the riot. Taxpayers in that community paid for the building, and the cost to rebuild it will be in the millions. Burning the police station to the ground, however, was not a decision that required a cost-benefit analysis. It simply had to go. Why? To the protesters, this public building located in their community was not a public good. At worst, it represented a public oppression.

Could a similar rationale hold true for private businesses?

Some protesters burned a Target, Wendy’s and AutoZone, to name a few. People living in the community were patrons or employees of those businesses beforehand. Some of the protestors responsible for burning or looting a business may have been patrons and employees as well. Similar to the scrutiny of the police station, did those private businesses serve a public good? Meaning, how many times did a dollar invested in those businesses recycle before leaving the community? Were the customers treated with respect or suspicion? Then again, maybe a public good analysis is insufficient. Maybe private greed was the motive.

Like it or not, some protesters do not consider the destruction of public and private property an act of destroying their community. Those buildings were located in the community, but were they of it? If this is the case in Minneapolis, to ask “Why are they destroying their own community?” is a non sequitur.

“Why are they killing us?”

This is a question the righteously angered ask when they witness the inhumanity of breathlessness on the streets in Minneapolis. Whites, blacks, and others in this group believe the broken window is not the problem.

It is a good question, and not a new one. Blacks in Minneapolis have asked this question for decades. And the issue is not unique to this city or our modern times. In 1963, Dr. King told America during the famous I Have A Dream Speech that, “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.” This phrase rarely gets attention, even though King mentioned it twice. It may now.

Although the question is legitimate, it speaks to a practice of policing a community that is anathema to the concept at the heart of the Minneapolis Police Department motto “To Protect with Courage, To Serve with Compassion.”

It is tough to watch the video of George Floyd’s death without asking that question. And to watch the trauma caught on camera, only to have this matter treated cavalierly by some city stakeholders, or worse, to have the seemingly lenient charge of the offending officer explained in the cold language of bureaucracy speak, is insulting and demeaning.

At the same time, we cannot assume this question about killing equates to death alone. It does not.

Killing is a process. Our criminal justice system is one place where the articulation occurs. One example includes some police, prosecutors, or prison authorities showing bias against black people from an arrest to release from incarceration. Another is when the legal concept of “due process” morphs into a cruel practice of this “dude’s process” when black-robed judges meet black-and-blue bodies. And if people feel its public system of criminal justice seems to criminalize just us, hopelessness runs wild.

If this is the situation in Minneapolis, “Why are they killing us?” tells us as much about the death of black people at the hands of police as it does the effects of psychological dying in a criminal justice system on life support.

In the end, each question asked by the morally indignant and righteously angered has a place in our conversation about Minneapolis. The answer to each question may or may not justify the existence of broken windows.

Act III: Broken Promises

Some people see broken windows. I see the residue of broken promises.

My assessment is not dispassionate. I was baptized in the chaos of a modern riot.

On April 29, 1992, I was a fifth grade teacher in Los Angeles when the acquittal of four white police officers in the Rodney King case led to days of riots that resulted in the death of more than 50 people, 2,000-plus injured, thousands jailed, and more than $1 billion in property damage. Schools closed and a curfew went into effect. The sight of 10,000 police, armed personnel, and federalized National Guards patrolling the streets in military trucks seemed more suitable for a documentary about war in the Middle East than a showdown in the second largest city in America.

Seeing all of this unfold near our homes, jobs, and restaurants where family and friends ate as children and adults impacts a person immeasurably. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

I saw the human experience in a state of nature. Emotions swayed between the extremes of “Turn the other cheek” by Jesus Christ to “The war of all against all“ by Thomas Hobbes. Churches, mosques, temples and places of worship were hubs to search for solace or to release frustration constructively. House parties and public parks were a gathering spot for Crips and Bloods who called a truce while playing songs by Zapp, N.W.A., and Parliament-Funkadelic.

Whites were targets for retribution — police and civilian. The beating of Reginald Denny was caught on film, but other trauma whites experienced was not. Asians were targeted too, particularly Koreans. All of this may not have made the mainstream news, but news about it spread among the street committees. Fistfights were the norm, and gunshots not uncommon. And some blacks were targets for retribution, too. At the same time, undocumented immigrants, legal residents, and citizens alike were targets for questioning by government authorities because they were Hispanic.

When not in the classroom, I attended dozens of community meetings where elected officials from the Los Angeles area asked us to be calm and let the process work itself out. That was easier said than done. Black business owners, for example, struggled to keep their businesses from being destroyed. Some posted “Black Owned” signs to ward off arsonists and looters. If they avoided damage, black owners worked to keep their business relevant at a time some residents saw them as part of the exploitation problem. At the same time, articulating what all of this meant for blacks and whites, for poverty and prosperity, was hoisted on the black middle class whether they wanted it or not. Concurrently, thousands of people were suddenly unemployed. Nothing seemed to make sense.

When things finally calmed down, public and private stakeholders utilized the riot as an impetus to rebuild sections of Los Angeles. More than a billion dollars flowed into the city. Contracts were doled out to friends of the connected, expectedly, but other entrepreneurs received contracts and jobs too. Simultaneously, residents put their money in black-owned banks and saving and loan companies, and a corps of volunteers swept glass from the sidewalks, painted buildings, and patronized local businesses. Those gestures uplifted people’s spirits.

At the same time, public and private stakeholders built their career on the Los Angeles riots, or refashioned their image as a champion of the people. On face value this is not a nefarious act. They turned a crisis into an opportunity. Thousands of people in their area benefitted from it.

But could we have helped more people if “rebuilding” was the real desire?

Act IV: Reality Checklist

One enduring takeaway about the Los Angeles riots, and my study of similar rebuild efforts in cities after a natural or man-made disaster, is people most in need of services are often the ones left behind or not invited to the decision-making table. Sadly, regular people became pawns in the crisis game.

People of Minneapolis — do not let this happen. Please keep the following themes in mind when you design and implement a master plan to rebuild parts of your city and its image.

Emergency executive orders and declarations are no joke. The first and only black mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, declared a state of emergency a few hours after the riots began on April 29, 1992. Governor Pete Wilson sent the California National Guard personnel to Los Angeles. On May 1, 1992, President George H.W. Bush delivered a televised national broadcast about the riot and expressed his goal to restore order in Los Angeles. To this end, Bush issued Proclamation 6427 and Executive Order 12804 to address “domestic violence” and its impact on the “laws of the United States.”

With federal orders came funds and regulations to implement a federal program. The Weed and Seed Initiative is one example. Its goal was to identify and remove criminal elements in a community (weed) and replace them with new elements (seed). Debates about who determined what is and is not a “weed” and where a “seed” should be planted were very controversial. This is an instance of competing visions at work.

As this relates to Minneapolis, Washington’s involvement in state and local affairs is nuanced for two reasons.

First, Minnesota governor Tim Waltz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey each issued a state of emergency declaration for Covid-19 in mid-March. In late May, the governor issued an emergency executive order to activate the Minnesota National Guard to address dangerous activities that damaged public and private property. The mayor also issued a declaration of emergency to deal with the riots. So multiple man-made and health-related emergency policies are at play simultaneously.

Second, a declaration of emergency invites federal institutions to weigh-in on the administration of justice in local and state matters. That is not a bad thing. Resources are necessary to rebuild a city. The bad thing is to be unaware of what is written in an emergency document, what your public officials are signing residents up for, and repercussions for noncompliance. It is essential to read every emergency document signed by the mayor, governor, and President Donald Trump.

People will hijack a riot to promote other agendas. Blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians and others were equal opportunity looters during the Los Angeles riots in 1992. The media focused on South Central Los Angeles as the only hot spot for vandalism. It was not. Residents smashed windows and robbed stores of shoes, liquor, electronics, and clothes in other places. Why? To get back at “the powers that be” for police brutality against blacks. What did they demand “the powers that be” do to prove they condemned it? Improve the criminal justice system? Not necessarily. Some people pushed an agenda to address smog control, the price of wine production in northern California, and coastal erosion. All are important issues. The people most impacted by the riots and police brutality, however, did not ask for any of this.

Expect the same thing to occur in Minneapolis.

National personalities fly in. Entertainers, athletes, and public intellectuals brought a lot of attention to issues of racism, police brutality, and inequality in Los Angeles in 1992; and by extension, Inglewood, Watts, Compton, and Long Beach. Celebrities invested money in community-owned and operated institutions, while others used the media to raise funds to support the rebuild effort. But national personalities eventually leave. And when the concert-style atmosphere subsides, and many speeches are given, homegrown Los Angeles leaders whose work was overshadowed by the larger-than-life personalities remained to do the real work.

One of the surest ways to have a rebuild Minneapolis effort fail is for local stakeholders to genuflect too often before the cult of national personality.

Principals are essential to the healing process. Teachers dealt with a lot of post-riot trauma when schools reopened in Los Angeles. Some of our students cried because a family member was arrested, or worse. Others witnessed violence or participated in it. They showed us the scars. At a deeper level, many students questioned what it meant to be black (or brown) in America — not just in Los Angeles. There was no “How to talk to children, youth, and teens after a riot” course for any of us to use. Besides, teachers were traumatized, too. The L.A. superintendent and board of education members did their part to help transition students back to school. Leaders of private school networks and single-site schools did the same. Ultimately, principals took the lead to provide school-building leadership and inspiration teachers, students, staff, and families so desperately needed.

This is why any rebuild Minneapolis effort must include principals at the decision-making table.

The gray hairs. Seniors in Los Angeles at the time of the riot had lived through a number of crises already. I was 25 years old at the time. Listening to older people’s stories about how they addressed, and at times overcame, challenges of racism, sexism, or employment discrimination was inspiring for me. I believe it was for others.

Minneapolis has elders who can do the same, be they black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native, or Hmong.

Government incentives. Corporate trustees and small employers whose businesses were destroyed in 1992 asked themselves an important question once the looting and fires subsided: Should I stay, or should I go? (Employers asked the same question after the Watts riots in 1965.) California officials provided tax breaks, credits, temporary regulatory relief, and other financial incentives to encourage employers to stay. Some stayed or reopened. Others did not.

Minnesota officials must address this issue, and it is complicated. Why? In a political season when the elimination of “corporate welfare” is popular, and rightfully it is something elected officials must evaluate, is providing financial incentives to employers to avoid “corporate farewell” the right thing to do at this time?

Entrepreneurship matters. From a crisis came creativity. In 1993, a teacher and students at Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles created a company called Food from the Hood. This company sold produce and salad dressings to neighborhood residents and at farmers’ markets. In addition to making money to reinvest in the business, the young entrepreneurs donated money to local charitable events and created a college scholarship fund. Adults too were involved in entrepreneurial endeavors to create jobs and opportunity throughout Los Angeles.

The entrepreneurial spirit is alive in Minneapolis, and has been for years. Please invest in local talent.

Reforming a police department. Complaints by blacks in Los Angeles about racism and excessive use of force by police were well known before footage of the beating of Rodney King captured by George Holliday on March 3, 1991 appeared on the national news. In the aftermath, Mayor Tom Bradley, a former 21-year police officer in Los Angeles, empaneled a commission to assess the Los Angeles Police Department from top to bottom. Attorney Warren Christopher chaired a commission that published the Report of the Independent Commission of the Los Angeles Police Department in 1991. This report created a platform city and state stakeholders used to begin a conversation about reforming police-community relations, and it also identified sexism, homophobia, and other biases as issues in need of attention, too. After the riot of 1992, former director of the FBI and CIA, William Webster, chaired a commission to evaluate the Los Angeles Police Department. This commission also produced a report.

Minneapolis stakeholders should read each report as they design a reform agenda for the police department and practices of policing. Another report to read is Violence in the City — An End or the Beginning? The McCone Commission published it following the riot in the Watts section of Los Angeles in 1965. These three reports offer historical insight into the politics and administrative amendments necessary to reorganize an arm of local government, as well as a glimpse into the power dynamics of race and class at play in an urban city.[i]

Act V: The Road Ahead

Minneapolis is the latest epicenter in a centuries-old conversation about race relations and policing — or as some people call it — a battle for the soul of American democracy. Decisions made in the next 365 days about criminal justice, jobs, education, housing, and public-private partnerships will impact Minneapolis for the next 50 years. Who will be winners and losers in this particular battle of competing visions? Time will tell.

For now, Minneapolis is our necessary purgatory.

[i] My condolences go out to people in Minneapolis and communities across the nation who were killed or injured during protest activities — police and civilians alike — and to employers and employees whose economic livelihood were destroyed or impacted by arson and looting.