Is writing about it from my position simply something I do to feel better about myself?
I don't know the answers.
But I also know that the inaction of silence can never be the preferable alternative.
The repercussions of George Floyd's murder at the hands of Minneapolis police continue to unfold. Pouring fuel on the flames that have erupted, Donald Trump, true to form, unleashed an abysmal dog-whistle Tweet heard loud and clear by his baying, salivating followers:
He knew precisely the origins and implications of that Tweet:
Twitter said early Friday that a post by President Donald Trump about the protests overnight in Minneapolis glorified violence because of the historical context of his last line: "When the looting starts, the shooting starts."And now America is led by a racist rabid dog intent on totally destroying whatever shreds of credibility remain in the first part of his country's name.
The phrase was used by Miami's police chief, Walter Headley, in 1967, when he addressed his department's "crackdown on ... slum hoodlums," according to a United Press International article from the time.
Headley, who was chief of police in Miami for 20 years, said that law enforcement was going after “young hoodlums, from 15 to 21, who have taken advantage of the civil rights campaign. ... We don't mind being accused of police brutality."
Miami hadn't faced "racial disturbances and looting," Headley added, because he let word filter down that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."
The phrase was considered to have contributed to the city's race riots in the late 1960s, according to The Washington Post.
Headley, who died only a few months later in 1968 and had been denounced by civil rights leaders, was described in an Associated Press obituary as the "architect of a crime crackdown that sent police dogs and shotgun-toting patrolmen into Miami's slums in force."
Requiescat in pace, oh moribund nation.
