But the streets are also raging because George Floyd’s death is not exceptional. In March, just after lockdowns started, Louisville, Kentucky police issued a no-knock warrant to raid the home of Kenneth Walker and Breonna Taylor at 1am. With no warning, officers barged into Walker and Taylor’s house in the middle of the night. Walker, who thought that a home invasion was happening, shot an officer in the leg. Eight officers fired into their home 22 times, killing Breonna Taylor. Police claim that the home was being used as a drug drop site, but searches found no evidence of that. Protests have been ongoing as police do nothing to address what is being called a botched raid.[2] Not one cop has been arrested or indicted for Breonna Taylor’s murder. Last night, seven people in the Louisville protests were shot. Police say it wasn’t them.[3]

George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and on and on. The system of racism—the entrenched power inequities—are bleeding out on pavements, on shop floors, even inside the supposed sanctum of homes. The racism that was supposed to have been addressed in the 1960s and ’70s—after the Civil Rights Act, after the Black Panthers and the Weathermen and SNCC, after Miranda Rights and all the rest. But after seeing that video of the police officer’s knee on the neck and back of George Floyd for eight grinding minutes, it is hard to feel anything other than insensate fury. Without a trial, without so much as an “attorney will be appointed for you,” a man’s life was squeezed out of him as coldly as if a python had dropped onto him from out of a tree. A woman was gunned down in her home. A man was chased down and lynched on camera. Our country needs a massive correction, or, it needs to be torn down so we can try again from scratch. Hell yes, people need to hit the streets.

Even Tim Walz recognizes that many in his audience do not believe him when he promises that he and the city government will address the crisis, that people need to go home. He acknowledges generations of distrust towards the police and the government among the African American community.

Governor Tim Walz: (01:19:40)
Right now I know there’s a lot of folks out there listening that their answers should be I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ll believe it when justice is carried out. I’ll believe it when equity actually means something. I’ll believe it when the policies change. I’ll believe it when my child gets the same education as your child and that color didn’t matter. I get it right now. We’re asking an awful lot to be based on faith and that has not panned out.[4]

Indeed. Maybe this can help to explain why the looting is happening. We all may love a protest, filled with noble images of Gandhi fasting and Martin Luther King marching across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama. But in some cases—the Boston Tea Party, for instance—looting seems called for. Across the internet, a quote of King’s is appearing for just this occasion: “…a riot is the language of the unheard.”

Tonight, it gets real. Starting at around 7pm CT, looters hit businesses in Minneapolis: a supermarket, a Wendy’s, an AutoZone, the local Target. Police stand on top of the 3^rd Street Precinct occasionally firing flash grenades and tear gas into the protesters on Lake Street, who are not looting, just chanting. At 9:30 PM, a group of those police come down off the building and form a cordon. Firefighters arrive at the AutoZone, which is very much ablaze by now. A half-hour later, police gradually push what is left of the protesters and very many bystanders—many of whom look young—down the street. On my computer screen, it looks like they are firing flashbangs and tear gas indiscriminately. Meanwhile, another group sets the 3^rd Police Precinct ablaze—police must have abandoned it sometime during the evening.[5]

That’s the “breaking news” constantly flashing across screens. While people who feel powerless protest and burn, the powerful use the pandemic and the outcry against police brutality that these marches are calling for in order to maintain control.

More and more, this year is starting to feel like 1918 and 1928 crashed into 1968. This has become a year of multiple epidemics. Coronavirus, of course, has disproportionately affected communities of color, both urban and rural. But that’s followed by ascending police violence. Unemployment. Rampant corruption. A deeply divided presidential election coming. Leadership that seems careless at best, possibly even malevolent. A country that has forgotten how to communicate across ideological lines. A slippage in empathy. It trickles down from the top. Looting by a citizenry echoing the looting by its elected officials.