After a pause, Abe, the lawyer, replies, “Not a single bit of that was news to me.”

Rob continues, “It seems like everyone knows how f—ed up it is. But it is a system that has its own momentum.” It’s far more chaotic than a prison, and perhaps a worse place to be during a pandemic. Almost no one wore a mask, even though they were issued one with their sandals. Even the nurse whose job it was to check his temperature was not wearing a mask. When Rob questioned her about it, she angrily retorted that it was her “Constitutional right” not to wear the mask. She held her temperature gun so far away from him that there is no way she measured anything. “Hygiene theater” prevailed.

Overnight, Rob curled up in a corner of the concrete cell and tried to use his jail-issued sandals as a pillow, but he didn’t sleep much. The deputies reminded him and the other inmates on a regular basis “how horrible this is.” He was fortunate enough to be bailed out early in the “lottery” the next afternoon.

He and his wife—who just left her job to try to start a new career—are scrambling to collect the money to pay the retainer for a good lawyer, who says he will take the case despite having little sympathy for the Black Lives Matter movement. As Rob put it, “At one point he called my actions on the street “childish and the acts of a p—y.” The attorney reminded Rob that this is exactly what the prosecutors will tell the jury. “They will say to the jury, “What if your wife was giving birth and this guy was blocking traffic and you couldn’t get through to the hospital?” That is the easy story that a prosecutor will tell. And you’re obstructing motorists why? Because you’re a f—ing asshole?”  Even the attorney thinks that it is a risk to go to a jury; even the attorney thinks that the prosecutor’s story is better.

On the one hand, Rob isn’t suffering the same treatment as other protesters over the last few months. He wasn’t roughed up, wasn’t thrown into a truly desperate financial situation.[1] But he’s scared.

Rob’s case is a startling demonstration of just how distorted our understanding is of what is happening this year. The US Crisis Monitor tracked over 10,000 demonstrations and protests across the United States since the killing of George Floyd. Fewer than 600 involved any sort of violence by demonstrators. What’s more, a high percentage of that violence appears to have been instigated by far-right agitators—Boogaloo, Three-Percenters, Hells Angels, Aryan Cowboys—not the BLM protestors themselves.[2] As Rob emphatically stated, his group assertively tamped down on even emotional reactions, like shouting at the police. When he was arrested, he was stopping cars so that protestors could cross the street. This comports exactly with all the protest marches I’ve been involved with this year or learned about from others in other cities. We march against police violence. We know that the police are not friendly to us marching against them. Why would we want to incite it?

There’s statistical information, and then there’s anecdote. I want to believe that the majority of educated people rely largely on the former and can see that protesters are only asking for police brutality to be curbed, in part by diverting funds from hugely swelling police budgets spent in part on military-grade hardware, and toward the kinds of white-collar professionals who can help vulnerable citizens without beating, shooting, or arresting them.[3] Nonetheless, despite the fact that the BLM marches this summer were some of the largest in American history, only a small fraction of Americans actually took part in them. That means that what most people “experience” is what appears on television and on social media. When the media proclaims that there is a terrifying organization called Antifa out there, that BLM protests are really just a cover for Antifa, and that American cities are on the verge of exploding into looting and violence, the under-informed power structures operate under that assumption. That’s the world into which Rob has been swept. Abe’s years of experience working with police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges in multiple cities at the municipal, state, and even federal level affirms this reading.

As we enter Labor Day weekend, it feels like America is turning another corner. The rush of empathy for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and so many others that translated into the BLM marches in late May has dissipated somewhat.[4] Most of the nation’s schools will be open by next Tuesday. Universities are already dealing with exploding cases of coronavirus. Some, like my own, shrug off the consequences for students, staff, administrators, and faculty. Telework is now firmly in place. Masks are either being worn or aggressively not. With most football out of commission, the news media seems to have one sport on their minds: a game that pits those who say, along with ESPN commentator Kirk Herbstreit that “we have to do better” against those who want “twelve more years,” of this.[5]

Notes

[1] Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve and Somil Trivedi, “Why Prosecutors Keep Letting Police Get Away With Murder,” Slate Magazine, June 5, 2020, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/why-prosecutors-keep-letting-police-get-away-with-murder.html.

[2] Sam Jones, “US Crisis Monitor Releases Full Data for Summer 2020,” Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, August 31, 2020, https://acleddata.com/2020/08/31/us-crisis-monitor-releases-full-data-for-summer-2020/.

[3] https://twitter.com/businessinsider/status/1295950122971549696?s=20

[4] Perry Bacon Jr, “Could A Backlash Against Black Lives Matter Hurt Biden? The Two Don’t Appear Linked So Far.,” FiveThirtyEight (blog), August 27, 2020, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/could-a-backlash-against-black-lives-matter-hurt-biden-the-two-dont-appear-linked-so-far/.

[5] Jeff Sharlet, “‘Say 12 More Years’: At the RNC, Trump’s Authoritarian ‘Joke’ Slips Closer to Reality,” Vanity Fair, August 24, 2020, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/08/at-repulibcan-national-convention-trump-authoritarian-joke-slips-closer-to-reality; Umut Uras, “Portland Police Make ‘multiple Arrests’ as Protests near 100 Days,” Al Jazeera, September 4, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/09/portland-police-multiple-arrests-protests-100-days-200905090951359.html.