Rebellion is etched into American, and human, history. When people are systematically beaten, killed and not given the resources to thrive, rebellion becomes inevitable. It serves as a human response to conditions that become so untenable that rising up becomes instinctual, despite the consequences. Social transformation has long been forged in the ashes of rebellion, though today rebellion is only acknowledged as a potent tool in retrospect.
A local store called the police on George Floyd after he allegedly tried to use a counterfeit $20 bill. Soon after, George Floyd was gratuitously murdered by four police officers. In the days following, protests erupted in Minneapolis and spread throughout the country. In many cities, people protesting against police violence have been met with even more police violence.
The protests are about George Floyd, and so many others that are harassed, brutalized and killed by police every day. They are also about broader systems, structured by capitalism, that do not work in the interest of a majority of Americans. Forty million unemployed Americans, a significant percentage of whom have less than $400 in savings, has made this painfully clear.
Now, a wave of videos focusing on individuals looting, setting fire and destroying property amid the George Floyd protests have circulated, including the destruction of the third precinct of the Minneapolis police department and police cars across the country. Some commentators have gone as far as calling the actions “violent”. However, framing matters, especially when an object-focused definition of violence is mobilized to justify aggressive responses from local and federal governments. Police violence, white vigilantism and poverty – all of which directly threaten people’s very existence – are true violence. This is what this week’s protests are reminding us.
At its core, the rebellions are about people’s everyday experiences of disorder – which for black people includes the precarity of life itself – and the state’s desire to regain order through the aggressive use of police, and now, the military. For many, the status quo is so unjust and violent that it has led to an uprising against the systems that have failed them.
In 1967, Martin Luther King stated an idea that has circulated widely in recent days:
A riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? … It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity … as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again.
As King suggested, rebellion is inevitable in an unjust society that renders life stifled by a status quo that prioritizes comfort over justice, and as he would also make clear throughout his activism, profit over people.
After King was assassinated, urban rebellions rocked hundreds of cities across the country, resulting in millions of dollars of property damage as well as clashes with the police and national guard. As a result of the pressure that these rebellions placed on leading public officials, President Johnson quickly signed the 1968 Civil Rights Act into law. But policymakers missed their opportunity to truly transform the conditions that have contributed to the rebellions today.
As was the case during the civil rights period, and whether people like it or not, urban rebellions have often transformed and accelerated change. At the same time, they have also engendered backlash responses that included the exponential growth of policing, incarceration and punishment namely in black communities. Moving forward, it will be critical to challenge the expansion of this carceral state, which in many ways led to the militarization of police we see today, but also the underlying issues that give rise to rebellions, which are broader than police violence itself.
Capitalism, which is inextricably tied to race, has created a society filled with unnecessary pain, suffering and premature death. People inevitably target businesses during rebellions because capitalism and policing are linked: police protect capital, business and property. It was a store that called the police on George Floyd when they could have mediated the encounter without police involvement altogether. But businesses use police during disputes because they know police will immediately serve their interest, even if it means murdering a black person. The destruction of police precincts and cars today have become targets because, for some, they serve not only as symbols, but as the material life that has facilitated police violence.
The coronavirus pandemic has added even more pressures for many of all races, as millions of people have become unemployed with little government intervention. Rent and other bills have not been cancelled, and government failure has resulted in catastrophic, avoidable death, especially in black communities.
Rebellion cannot be reduced to a case of natural opportunism that will occur when there is no law and order. Rather it is an indication, especially when it happens at the scale that it has across races, that the status quo is not working and people are fed up.
The distinction between good protesters and bad protesters has been used time and time again to shift focus from the conditions which sparked the rebellion in the first place. The strategy is also used to divide and criminalize certain people in order to make it easier for aggressive and violent punitive backlash against them.
It’s far less likely that we would be witnessing the widespread, multiracial rebellion that we are seeing today if black communities – and all other marginalized communities – had the resources to thrive, weren’t brutalized and killed by police, and had access to free healthcare, a universal basic income, safe and comfortable housing, dignified work and quality schools.
No amount of law and order can repress the desire to live full lives, where people’s basic needs are met, and their lives are not plagued by routine violence and cut short by premature death.
The murder of George Floyd was a spark. But the powder keg is fueled by legacies of routine anti-black racism, police harassment and violence, mass incarceration, poverty and an economic system that places profit over people.
Philip V McHarris is a writer and PhD candidate at Yale. His work focuses on race, housing and policing
On Tuesday 9 June at 7pm BST (2pm EDT) the Guardian is holding a live-streamed event about the meaning of George Floyd’s killing, featuring Guardian journalists including US southern bureau chief Oliver Laughland, reporter Kenya Evelyn, writer Chris McGreal and columnist Malaika Jabali. Book tickets here