After the George Floyd killing and backlash over his killing, America exploded in protests that sprang up in seemingly every major city, starting obviously in Minneapolis (now famous for the looting of a Target store) and spreading around the country from New York City to Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, Washington D.C. (I'm just naming the ones where I saw notably raucous behavior on live feeds Friday night). It was compounded by the Lousville protests over the death of Breonna Taylor, which happened in March but is just as tragic as George Floyd's story, as Taylor was killed when police tried to enter her home due to suspicion of drug trafficking and Taylor got in the way of gunfire (unclear who fired first, someone inside the home that wasn't Breonna or the police, but this happens much too often regarding disputed stories and who shot whom and who fired whom).
I've never been part of a protest, I guess I'm not popular enough or well connected enough, or more likely, just not overly passionate about one particular cause to join in a protest. I certainly have witnessed them plenty, having lived in various cities in my life. The closest I was to joining an organized event was the 2017 Woman's March (after Trump got elected) which looped around Chicago's downtown. I also see plenty of teacher's strikes, worker's strikes, and a union protest outside the building I worked at in downtown L.A. in which the building seemed to entered into a dispute over hiring of certain groups of security guards (unclear). The point is, there are a lot of protests around the US, and around the world, although I'm not sure how effective they are. They certainly are a show of how many people feel a certain way about an issue, which is significant in itself, much like President Obama used to say he would read any petition signed by 100,000 people or more. Hopefully the protests are civil and peaceful, leading to nobody getting hurt or worse, dying, but apparently there have already been deaths resulting from the George Floyd protests, which just exacerbates a sad situation. I don't blame protesters for being mad; they are upset about a long string of cases of police brutality (I'm not sure about racism in some of the cases but am sure that there has been some abuse of police power, especially towards black people) in what is one of the most emotional issues for POC (people of color- I learned this today).
MJ reminds me that Korea seems to have effective protests, for example the Candlelight demonstration (촛불혁명) of 2016-2017 demanding the removal of office of President Park, then the Korean president. There were large groups of demonstrators (up to 2.3 million on 12/3/2016, a record for protests in Korean, which only has 50 million people total) protested, notably with few police being hurt. A notably smaller group of people also protested FOR President Park. The Korean protests seemed to have symbolic gestures like releasing yellow balloons and blowing out candles to send a message to President Park. America's most recent protests are more violent, intense, and dangerous in comparison, although they are dealing with a more emotional topic, race relations and murder of innocent people. Unfortunately for America, recent reports indicate that these protests extend an opportunity for looters to exploit the situation and ransack buildings, set fire, steal things from wherever they can, in the pretense of joining the cause. Some of the violence, though, is also general anger, as I saw some videos in various cities of ordinary citizens attacking police officers verbally and physically. Just a lot of anger, and a sense that things have gotten out of control in this country regarding race relations, so some citizens feel justified in taking it into their own hands, forgetting that the cops that they are attacking are not the ones who committed the heinous acts that they are protesting about, or that they are not attacking some leaders of the country who are making it worse.
Oh and this is all going on during a pandemic. Social distancing and stay-at-home policies have gone out the window. I applaud others to act and try to make change in the country, but I wonder if the protests that we've seen Friday night (and Saturday night as I'm writing this) have been effective in achieving those goals.
No comments:
Post a Comment