Notes from the Revolution, 6/16/20

. . . a revolution of hearts and minds . . .

Police chief Joseph Wysocki marching with protesters
last week in Camden, New Jersey.

Starting Over: "The City That Really Did Abolish the Police," at Politico. Excerpt:

As a movement grows in American cities and suburbs to overhaul police departments and confront their long records of racially unjust, violent enforcement, Camden [New Jersey] is one rare—and complicated—success story, a city that really did manage to overhaul its police force and change how it operated. And it took a move as radical and controversial as what some activists are calling for today: Camden really did abolish its police department.

And then the city set about rebuilding the police force with an entirely new one under county control, using the opportunity to increase the number of cops on the streets and push through a number of now-heralded progressive police reforms. And with time, the changes started to stick in a department that just years earlier seemed unfixable.

Over the past two weeks, Camden has become an example of reform that works—cited in articles, tweets and on network shows as an example of what can go right. And it’s true that the reforms produced real change in the statistics: The excessive use of force rates plummeted. The homicide rate decreased. And new incentives laid the groundwork for a completely new understanding of what it meant to be a good cop.

“You had to change the underlying principles of the way police officers were being trained and taught, and the culture in the department,” said former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who supported the changes in Camden. “The most effective way to do that was to start over.”

Then and Now: CNN asked black activists who were on the front line of civil rights protests in the 1960s to comment on the current demonstrations.  Excerpt:

It's not that things have gotten so much worse (now). It's just it is so much more obvious and apparent to everybody.--Charles Black, a leader of the 1960s Atlanta Student Movement

You've never seen as many white people marching (as now) -- never in history. We've been carrying this burden by ourselves, and you feel, they say, (like you are) carrying the cross. You feel like the cross is a little lighter today because you see other people carrying the cross with you.--Miller Green, one of the Freedom Riders

What's different is the variety of people at those marches, and that is sweet sunshine from heaven to me ... This is a wake-up call, and more people woke up this time than before.--Dr. Melba Pattillo Beals, one of the Little Rock Nine

The March on Washington, 1963

Dancing in the Street: Last week in Atlanta, National Guard troops and protesters danced together - something that never happened in the 1960s:





Also last week, Politico interviewed ten National Guard troops about their presence in Washington, D. C., in the now-notorious Lafayette Square photo op:

Many Guardsmen said they felt uncomfortable with the way they were used to handle the unrest because demonstrators lumped them in with the police. They felt that while they swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, their presence at times intimidated Americans from expressing their opinions and even escalated the tension.

And in the case of Guardsmen involved in the Lafayette incident, some felt used.

“As a military officer, what I saw was more or less really f---ed up,” said one D.C. Guardsman who was deployed to Lafayette Square last Monday and who, like some others, spoke on condition of anonymity to speak freely. The official line from the White House that the protesters had turned violent, he said, is false.

“The crowd was loud but peaceful, and at no point did I feel in danger, and I was standing right there in the front of the line,” he said. “A lot of us are still struggling to process this, but in a lot of ways, I believe I saw civil rights being violated in order for a photo op."

What I Say:  It has done my heart good to see the innate respect for civil liberties and American ideals shown by many police and military all across the nation, from the front lines right on up to the highest command levels.  Despite the killings and beatings and horribly bad decisions some have made, it does seem to me, surveying the scene from my seat high up in the digital bleachers, that the majority of police and military people are - like most civilians - aghast at George Floyd's brutal murder as well as committed to safeguarding every American's inherent right peaceably to assemble and to seek redress of grievances.

Last week, a two-block-long parade of demonstrators marched right by the house here, and the police were marching with them, escorting them through town with police cars fore and aft: protesters and police all moving together with a common goal of peaceful assembly at the town square - which is as it should be.  Unfortunately, your Head Trucker was asleep at the time; had I been awake, I would have gone out and waved my American and rainbow flags in support.

If you were to survey the list of recent protests all across the nation, especially in the South, as I have done over on Wikipedia, and if you were to take the trouble to look at the source citations, as I have done, and watch the local news videos from all sorts of small towns and small cities, as I have done, you would notice crowds of blacks and whites mingling freely with united purpose.   This would not, could not have happened in my childhood in the segregated South.

This is not to deny the existence of racist attitudes in all parts of this country, as the nightly news keeps reminding us.  To be sure, hateful bigots still infest the backwoods and back alleys of the South and North - some of them are highly placed, and some are even pillars of the church - but there are many good and decent folks in those small towns too.  And in almost every demonstration I looked at in those small Southern towns, the police, the sheriff's deputies, and often the mayor were out in force - not against the protesters, but in solidarity with them, guaranteeing their right to safely protest.

In other words, they and we are all one American people, in or out of uniform, regardless of race, creed, sex, or color: a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  And that gives me hope that we will all get through this time of outrage and sorrow together, make right what is wrong, and build a more perfect union - the unending task and high duty of every generation in these United States.