I hope Gianna Floyd is right. 

I hope her daddy did change the world. But what the trials of Kyle Rittenhouse and Travis McMichael show is that while he might have changed the world, he didn’t and probably couldn’t, change one thing: the confidence that systemic racism gives white supremacy. This is not a uniquely US problem, but it is particularly bad here, and our country is uniquely bad at addressing it. We could pretend that our dual systems of racist policing and white supremacy weren’t deeply interrelated, but I’m not sure that would make it better or worse. Different actions will be necessary to work on fixing both sides of our problem. White supremacy clearly influences racist policing — police forces are overwhelmingly white, they originated out of slave patrols, data shows police enforcement is heavily racially biased, and a disturbingly high number of officers are active in white supremacist groups.1 But it works the other direction as well. Because of racist policing, white supremacists just don’t give a fuck. They look at how the police oppress minority communities, how police officers murder Black folks, the incredibly over-militarized, antagonistic responses to protests for the lives and rights of our Black neighbors, and the lack of arrests, much less guilty verdicts returned by the legal system, and they see a clear message. White is right, the police are on your side.

George Floyd was lynched at the knee of a cowardly white man, with his hands in his pockets. That act of racist, white supremacist, state sponsored violence, only visible to white US residents because of the incredibly brave decision of Darnella Frazier, a Black 17-year-old woman, to film the encounter. Black people didn’t need Darnella’s video. That video was for white people. She said on the stand “When I look at George Floyd, I look at my dad, my brothers, my cousins, my uncles, because they are all Black...”2 When white people watch that video, they see George being murdered. When Darnella came upon George’s murder being perpetrated in broad daylight, she saw her friends, her family members, those who came before her, because that is the lived, known experience of being Black in America in 2021.

That doesn’t get fixed by hiring a more representative force, or promoting BIPOC officers into leadership within departments.
It certainly doesn’t get fixed by equipping police forces with mine resistant vehicles, military body armor, sonic and laser weapons designed for use on the battlefield.
It gets fixed by white people, talking to other white people.
It gets fixed, when white people decide to hold their white circles accountable for what they say and do.
It gets fixed when as a country, the majority within the white population who wasn’t so afraid of George Floyd just because he was Black that they would support his extrajudicial killing, stands up to affirm that Black Lives Matter.
It gets fixed when we talk about race and racism, and the benefits we’ve received from it, even if we strongly oppose it.
It gets fixed one person, one conversation, one sentence, one word, at a time.3
It gets fixed, when white people, like me, take our hands out of our pockets.

So what will it take? Us white folks are pretty dense it seems.  It takes 400 years of the abuse of Black bodies, from buying, selling and owning them like property via enslavement, to mass incarceration, environmental injustice, voter suppression, and educational and wealth gaps. It takes 60+ years of Black folks openly talking about the racism they face on a daily basis. It takes 5x the incarceration rate for Black Americans compared to their white neighbors, despite no evidence of a racial disparity in those who commit crimes. It takes videos, so, many, videos.

But we’re still not getting it. And not to take away anything from all of those who we lift up and #SayTheirName. Black women killed by police, but where there just isn’t a video to galvanize public sentiment: Michelle Cusseaux, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, India Kager, and going back to Eleanor Bumpurs almost 40 years ago.4 And those are just the names we know, those that go viral, or impact the national consciousness. Nor did we get the message in 2012 when Trayvon Martin was murdered, not at the hands of law enforcement, but by another private citizen who stalked, provoked, and attacked him, and then, suddenly, feared for his own life, “justifying” killing his victim. And now we see that again, in the cases of Rittenhouse and McMichael, where a white person, armed with a gun, and wrapped in the confidence that only white supremacy can provide.

vigilante: a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate)5
summarily: done quickly in a way that does not follow the normal process6

They are not vigilanties, as the reason they think they need to fear Black men (and boys) is because of over, not under-policing. And is that what we want?  Volunteer execution squads roaming our streets, attacking anyone they, the gun carrying, brainwashed, cosplaying toy soldiers think is threatening or suspicious? Are white death squads hunting people on the streets American? They certainly have been in the past,  here and under other fascist movements. But today those are the kind of things we denounce when they happen in other countries. But in their minds, nothing could stop them.  The police, judicial system, and white supremacy are all sending them the same messages.
They are right.
The other is a threat.
They can create a dangerous situation, stalk, instigate, and then kill.
They will not face punishment.
And based on the recent cases, they have a 50/50 chance of being right.
But over the longer term, they’re nearly undefeated.
They are white.

In an interview with the New York Times, one of the “militia” members notes there “were no good guys or bad guys” that day (except there were, 3 people were shot, and 1 shot them, killing 2).7 He also notes that they were there to help protect property and to stop any bad actors who might look to loot or burn down buildings. Uprising after uprising has shown a small number of actors, usually white and usually outsiders to the affected communities, do capitalize on confrontations with the police to break things and set fires. But are we giving them that stage? How many protests with laid back police, a stage with speeches, permitted to within an inch of their life have these unwanted violent instigators? Maybe if the police were less focused on violently and aggressively suppressing dissent they wouldn’t draw these kinds of violent actors in. And, you know, free speech and all. But these men, armed with weapons of war, were also outsiders, Rittenhouse included. And when did we vote to defend wood and nails, liquor, or electronics with the explicit threat of deadly force, often including those outsiders there to “protect” instigating confrontations all while being given a free pass from police. Odd how the self described “militia” members didn’t stop their fellow “militia” member from murdering a second person and shooting a third. Somehow the more men with guns didn’t solve the problem of a man with a gun. If the “militia” was there to keep the peace, or help, why didn’t any of them stop the deranged man shooting random civilians with his military grade firearm? They were with him, they probably wouldn’t have even needed to use force themselves. But maybe that’s what they were ultimately there looking for a chance to do, just like he was. They could have just approached him, taken his weapon away, and told him to sit down and wait for the police. Instead they stood by, while he killed another man, shot a third, and walked past the police with impunity.

The “militia” members were, by their own admission, not organized, not representing the country, not affiliated with the military so that means they were there to advance their political or religious ideology. So what was their political ideology they were there to stand for? They clearly weren’t against violence, they were there to stoke it, and did nothing when one of their own murdered two mens. They weren’t there to keep white people in line, since they watched their white buddy kill two people and did literally nothing. So maybe, just maybe, the ideology they were there to enforce was white supremacy. They were there united in and promoting their belief that Black lives do not matter. Why do the police see armed militants as being on their side?  Certainly not because they’re united in facilitating free speech and allowing dissenting voices to be heard.

Which brings us to protest. Following the murder of George Floyd the US experienced the most extensive period of protest since the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, if not ever. Despite a pandemic, despite threats of violence by the police, white supremacists, and those who fall into both buckets, people took over the streets to say, “this is not ok.” But those protests, in tactics, in spirit, in leadership, in desired ends all trace back to the protests of the Civil Rights Era. In many ways the crowd of people on that street in Minneapolis was the first, instantaneous protest of George Floyd being murdered. Those people did everything they could think of to stop his murder which was in progress before their eyes. And while we can, and should, evaluate what we would have done in their shoes, we cannot blame them for not doing more.8 From that first protest sprouted tens, hundreds, thousands, and by the time Chauvin was convicted, hundreds of thousands more protests. From those individuals who chose to stop, chose to warn, chose to film, millions were inspired to take to the streets, make signs, sit in, inform others, call for political action, and ultimately at the most base level, to say “I believe, Black Lives Matter.”

And it only grew from there. Various estimates peg the participation at 10-20 million people in the US alone.9 That means somewhere between 5 and 10 of every 100 adults in the country took to the streets, and many more felt compelled to support from afar due to COVID concerns. That also undercounts, as it only attempted to count adults, and one of the heartening things about the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd was how youth took the lead. This goes well beyond my bringing my daughter to a protest. These youth, young adults, really, have their own volition and spoke very clearly to the fact that this is not the country they will grow into adults in.

They get the intersectionality of their identities, their causes, their visions for the world. We’re going to be in good hands, but white people, we have to put in our work.

So where does that leave us, the white olds? Those too old to be considered part of the youth movement. Those who have to ask, so just how young do you need to be to join the “Young <fill in the blank>”? The first place it leaves us is in service to a cause which is not ours. We must act respectfully, listen, and speak when spoken to. We cannot fully understand the fight we are joining, and it’s rude to ask someone who lives it day in and day out to explain it to you. But if you come across someone telling their story, listen, soak it in, dwell on it, take it personally. They don’t have a choice not to. One place I think there’s a lot of power to learn and be taught without asking someone to teach you is podcasts. I had this thought while listening to the episode “The Right White Friends?” from J.ill the Podcast in particular, but there are many great ones, including one for the 1619 Project, if reading isn’t your thing. Podcasts give us a way to learn, to hear answers to questions we shouldn’t burden someone by asking them directly, unless we’re paying them for their labor. In the medium the person talking has opted into teaching you, you’re not imposing on them. What we do need to ask is not for the history, not for the explanation, not for the recitation of the harm, embarrassment, and violence that has been someone else’s lived experience.  But what we do need to ask the groups, still protesting, still doing the work, is “Where can I show up? What can I provide? What do you need?” And then we need to listen to their answers and do those things, not question their wording or their choice of location.

One clear answer to these questions is we have to talk to other white people. People need to hear things from a trusted messenger, and for white supremacists, that means that messenger needs to be white. I’m not telling you to bust into your local KKK meeting (or Republican Party meeting as they might be sharing space) and start telling them how racist they are. I’m saying we need to start pushing back in our existing circles on the Fox News propaganda that’s being blasted into their brains 24/7. Pushing back on that latest mugshot of a child killed by police with a headline that declares they were “no angel” or had a “troubled past,” often because we criminalize poverty. Pushing back at (hopefully outdoor and/or fully vaccinated) Thanksgiving that “those people,” for whatever variety of “those people” your relatives choose to punch down about, are somehow any different from you and I because of the color of their skin, the lack of wealth their parents were allowed to accrue, or the houses and neighborhoods they were prevented from living in. Pushing back isn’t easy, but those folks need to hear it. It won’t be an instant change, and if possible you need to leave that door open for them to come back with questions. It’s no small ask, but wait for the next one.

The second place it leaves us is, again in consultation with leaders of affected communities and the groups working therein, to start protesting again. In addition to the staggering numbers around how many people came out to protest the murder of George Floyd, there was another impact. It caused people to have conversations about race, policing, and the systems our country is built on.10 But I don’t think anyone thinks these problems are now solved. Laws haven’t been passed, communities are still occupied by their police forces, Black people are still dying at the hands of civilians and the state. At least here in NJ, there was a ton of talk, politicians attending protests, cops kneeling at protests, commitments to continuing the conversation and trying to understand each other better. But there’s been very little action, few laws to reign in police (despite a literal blueprint for codifying civilian oversight of the police by the State Supreme Court), little done to close the racial wealth gap, even as COVID made these long standing disparities even more apparent. So how do we continue to ensure these huge, systemic issues get the attention they deserve?

We need to start protesting again. Or at least most of us do, if you’ve been protesting for Black Lives this whole time, thank you, how can we help? You could read the data to say, we protested, people heard, but they declined to make real change as a result. Or you could say we lost momentum when we stopped protesting, and it's protest that will get things unstuck again. I’m in the later camp, protests move people, not the other way around, so we need to be protesting. Regularly, visibly, loudly. As Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan capture in their book “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict”

A large and diverse population of participants that can be sustained over time.

The ability to create loyalty shifts among key regime-supporting groups such as business elites, state media, and—most important—security elites such as the police and the military.

A creative and imaginative variation in methods of resistance beyond mass protest.

The organizational discipline to face direct repression without having the movement fall apart or opt for violence.

So sustaining is key, and it’s white people, myself included, who have failed to sustain, at least in my area. Creativity and imagination are important too, not just shutting down the same street, in the same neighborhood, over and over again. But it’s about engagement. “And although the exact dynamics will depend on many factors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change.”11

In the US that’s about 12 million people, just about the threshold we hit following the murder of George Floyd. We just failed to sustain it. We have to gain trust and solicit input from the communities we’re trying to support, but it seems clear to me, both anecdotally and via the data we have, that white people paid attention when there were protests and stopped when the protests stopped.
Not just protests in Minneapolis.
Not just protests in Washington DC.
Not just protests in major cities.
Youth run protests on their own Main St.
Protests in some of the most uniformly white towns, counties, and states in the country.
Protests raise awareness, they demonstrate commitment, they get the word out, they by their very design seek, and hold, attention.12 We need attention, particularly white people’s attention, because as King noted, it is the white moderate who is the biggest impediment.13 Those white folks, who live comfortably, without having to see the lives of Black folks in their town or county. Those white folks who don't want to rock the boat, don’t want to change their experience with the police by talking about defunding, or trying to impose civilian oversight, who don’t have to think about this issue on a daily basis. Those white folks who support the status quo, while having that nagging notion in the back of their brain that the status quo just might be a little bit racist. Those seem to be the folks that were moved by protest, so we have to give them what they want. And white folks who are in no way moderate, white folks like me — we have to facilitate, organize, and engage those folks who won’t hear the message coming from others.

At an Essex County Commissioner meeting a resident of Newark, the largest city in NJ, came and asked when the last time white folks protesting in Newark had shut down a street to protest where they live. It’s a very valid point. Sometimes residents will see these protests as a show of support for them. But other times we’re just another occupying force, one that will disburse and go back to not paying attention the other 364 days of the year. So bring the protests to your circles, where they’re at. Stand on the side of the road with a Black Lives Matter sign. Go alone (if you feel safe doing that) the first time, post it on your social media, invite others to join you the next time. Commit to a schedule, monthly, weekly, whatever you can reliably do. And then stick with it. Sure, we need larger protests too. And that’s where the need for coordination lies.
We need to close down streets.
We need vigils, memorials, celebrations, and marches.
We need to hear from speakers who share their stories.
We need to hear as folks share their visions for how we topple our country’s system of racism that has been built up, brick by brick, day by day, for the last 400 years.
We need to be heartened (and as an introvert simultaneously uneasy) as we look out across the assembled masses. Whether that count is in the thousands, or the tens, they wouldn’t be there without the spark, without the push, without the call to action. We can’t make that protest happen alone, especially not as a white person, especially those of us who don’t live in neighborhoods that experience oppressive policing. But we can be the one who asks. The one who offers, “let's do one in my town,” “I’ll help organize and get the word out.”

But we must be willing to assume risk.
Assume the risk of being the organizer who fails to turn people out.
Assume the risk of interacting with the police if they choose to get aggressive.
Assume the risk of the anger of those white supremacists who see your protest and understand it’s a threat to their beliefs, their supremacy.
But it’s no risk that a Black man, or a Black woman, or a Black child don’t face every day when they have to go out their front door. Obviously, the risk of this suggestion varies by geography. If your state has made protesting illegal, or has passed laws that drivers can run you down with impunity, or you live in say, Wisconsin, where apparently hunting protestors is now legal, then you face far greater risks than I do here in NJ. So act accordingly, talk to lawyers, talk to people who have done this for years, make sure you’re being safe and clear eyed. But get out there, somehow, at some scale, in a way that you determine is safe for you in your identity and situation.

Winter might strike you as not prime protest weather in many parts of the country. There’s some merit to that. But also, as of today, there’s only 4+ months to plan a protest in April. It’s going to take a lot of time and organizing to get people to come out. And that’s assuming there isn’t another murder, another video, another unspeakably unjust verdict we need to be ready for in the meantime. I don’t like those odds. But in the meantime, we can organize, socialize the idea in our virtual and real life circles. Push Legislatures and Federal Representatives to make big moves. Amplify the voices of our affected neighbors when they chose to share things. Have a virtual book club or podcast club and start discussing how to have these discussions. And begin to push back, your family member or friend from high school’s latest super racist Facebook post is due any minute.

Thanks to Stephen for reviewing, suggesting, and as always, making it better.

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