Please Don’t Protest that Way. It’s Very Inconvenient for Me.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the incredibly popular musical Hamilton, has always been very vocal about his political leanings. He has spoken out, both in public and to congress, in favor of debt and disaster relief for Puerto Rico, and he has worked both to improve and raise awareness of the situations immigrants in the U.S. find themselves in, even blasting Trump’s decision to end the DACA program in 2017. For Miranda, the line between his role as a creator and his role as an activist is non-existent, and anyone who is aware of what Hamilton is about should know this. Even if we avoided getting into minute scrutiny over Hamilton’s structure or themes, the fact remains that its mere premise involves the casting of people of color into the historical roles of the founding fathers; roles that, in any documentary that attempted an adherence to historical accuracy, would otherwise have been played by white actors. The message here is rather overt; the story of this nation’s founding, the story of America, is not one that belongs to white people alone. Every person of color that exists in this country today is just as American as the whites that founded it hundreds of years earlier. 

To argue that art cannot be political is ludicrous. The subtext may not always be easily accessible, but political influences have a long history of impacting artistic expression in western nations. Given that, it is easy to understand why, shortly after the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States in 2016, the cast of Hamilton added a little message after the end of their show directed at then Vice President-Elect Mike Pence who was in attendance at one of their shows. Brandon Victor Dixon, who played Aaron Burr, delivered the following statement; 

“Thank you for joining us at Hamilton: An American Musical. We are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. We hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values, and work on behalf of ALL of us. Thank you.”

What could and should have been considered a statement given in response to the rhetoric Trump employed in his 2016 presidential campaign that had emboldened white supremacists, as well as just a general encouragement of inclusivity when it comes to public policy, was instead characterized as “harassment” directed towards Pence. Then President-Elect Trump was quick to demand an apology on Twitter on Pence’s behalf. And Trump’s position is far from an isolated one; the idea that art must remain a sphere of pure escapism without entertaining politically-charged messaging is one that has been consistently held by conservatives. It is not uncommon, for instance, for Oscar recipients to use their speeches to push political agendas that they are personally passionate about. Leonardo DiCaprio used his 2016 win for The Revenant to talk about climate change, and staunch criticism of the Trump administration has been present in every awards show since he took office in 2017. The criticism of the political criticism coming from actors is always the same. They need to stay in their lanes. We pay them to entertain us, not to know what they feel about how the country is being run. They aren’t educated enough to know what they’re talking about. They’re just trying to stay relevant. Etcetera, etcetera.

What these arguments amount to is an assertion that we as citizens have the right to ignore and and avoid anything we find distasteful or otherwise disagree with. So if you want to take Hamilton out of its pro-immigrant context because you happen to lean towards the dangerously nationalistic rhetoric of the Trump administration, then it your right to view Hamilton in that light and how dare its actual creators ever tell you otherwise. It is an argument that seeks to preserve insulation, localized bubbles of ignorance bred from birthright privileges, regardless of the actual reality that lays just beyond. 

But what happens when you stay in that bubble for too long? What happens when the world outside gets worse and worse for people that don’t have the luxury to join you in it? Eventually you must be reminded, if not outright educated, about reality. Eventually that bubble must burst. 

Eventually, George Floyd happens. 

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an African-American man, was accused of purchasing cigarettes from a convenience store in Minneapolis, Missouri, with fake currency. The employees notified the police who later approached Floyd’s SUV, pulled him from his vehicle, and restrained him on the ground. Officers J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas K. Lane held Floyd’s back and legs down while officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck, all while he was lying on the street, for nearly nine minutes. Video recordings taken of the incident show Chauvin issuing orders to Floyd that he couldn’t possibly obey, such as being told to get in the police car while simultaneously being held down by three officers. Meanwhile, Floyd could be heard pleading for life, repeatedly saying things such as “I can’t breathe,” “don’t kill me,” and crying out for his mother. Within 25 minutes of the initial 9-1-1 call, Floyd was unresponsive, yet all four officers involved refused to let any bystanders intervene on Floyd’s behalf, such as checking his pulse or moving him into a more comfortable position, and Chauvin’s knee was still pressed firmly into Floyd’s neck for almost a minute after EMTs finally arrived. But by this time Floyd had no pulse, and 9:25 P.M. he was pronounced dead at the Hennepin County Medical Center. 

Protests were quickly organized across the country. Atlanta, D.C, New York, Minneapolis, and Houston are just some examples of where the demonstrations have been strongest, but at the time of writing over 40 cities in total have imposed curfews and National Guard members have been activated in at least 23 states.

The outrage that followed this tragic loss of life did not merely stem from the loss of another black life to police violence, but rather that it was done in so callous a manner. There was a distinct lack of sympathy, humanity, or any kind of emotion on Chauvin’s face as he slowly, torturously murdered a man for nine minutes over an alleged crime that, if true, would have amounted to petty theft of only $20 worth of goods. For many, the video of Chauvin functioned as a perfect metaphor for the general attitude of African-American/Police relations in this country; that the police felt entitled to take black lives whenever and wherever they pleased, and they would do so without even the most basic, fundamental acknowledgment of their humanity. To many members of the black community, the police’s slogan of “to protect and serve” has never applied to them, and the growing list of black bodies sacrificed on the pyre of police brutality had given credence to this feeling for years. George Floyd wasn’t just the straw that broke the camel’s back; the video documenting his death was seen as evidence of what police felt when taking the life of a man gasping for breath on the street and crying out for his mother. It’s the same answer to what they felt when they invaded the home of Breonna Taylor, a medical worker in Louisville, Kentucky, and killed her. And it’s the same thing they felt when Eric Garner was suffocated in a chokehold by officers in New York, weakly crying out “I can’t breathe.” 

And, at least in terms of what we see, they felt nothing. 

While the majority of the demonstrations in the aftermath of Floyd’s death were peaceful, protestors were largely denounced as “rioters,” the instances of collateral damage, such as large chains like Target being looted and some small businesses catching fire, were used to discredit the sentiment of the protestors at large. To these critics, it was not the cruel killing of George Floyd that warranted the most outrage; it was the hooliganism that resulted in the burning and looting of innocent bystander businesses that was the realcrime here. Whether those outraged at George Floyd’s death were righteous in their sentiment was irrelevant; the most important thing was that they needed to be told, convinced, that their display of anger wasn’t the “proper” display of anger. And of course the internet does what the internet does, and memes started circulating that juxtaposed a photo of a march led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a photo of a Target being looted. On Dr. King’s photo were the words “this is a protest.” On the photo of the Target, “this is a crime.” 

I don’t support looting in any circumstance. It is a crime, and the victims of collateral damage shouldn’t include businesses and corporations that have nothing to do with the protest in question. And yet, on the other hand, I find it difficult to imagine how else these protests could or should have turned out considering how their earlier incarnations were treated. 

Four years ago we had someone protest this very same issue in a significantly more pacifistic manner. In late 2016 Colin Kaepernick, then a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, began kneeling, rather than standing, when the U.S. national anthem played during his games. By this time the deaths of black men such as Eric Garner and Philando Castile had become national news stories, and Kaepernick’s response to questions of why he was kneeling was that he was protesting, in a very small manner, against police brutality and oppression against blacks in the country. He wasn’t making grandiose speeches nor had he entered firmly into the position of an activist in which he finds himself today, and yet his personal showing of solidarity with the black community still became the greatest controversy in his professional life. Among the vast sea of Kaepernick critics that characterized him as “unpatriotic” and as someone who should just leave the country if he hated it so much was, of course, Donald Trump himself. In September of 2017 Trump, now president, said that NFL owners should fire players who protested the national anthem as Kaepernick did, as by this point several players had begun kneeling with him in solidarity, with Trump even going so far as to consider Kaepernick and anyone who behaved like him a “son of a bitch.” The Trumpian and conservative backlash to Kaepernick’s “protest” ultimately appeared to have worked, as Kaepernick became a free agent after the season ended but could not find employment with any other team in the NFL. Now, three years later, Kapernick has still not officially retired from football, yet he remains unsigned. There is but one conclusion to be drawn here; the public abhorrence for political controversy in something that is considered an entertainment medium has effectively blacklisted one of the NFL’s most promising quarterbacks in the prime of his career. This was not so much a motion to remove a player from a sport as it was to remove a very minute political protest from the public eye. 

And that’s the curious thing about protests; we believe in them in theory. We believe in the First Amendment and we hope that when it comes time for us to introduce our own thoughts into the public space that the government will work on our behalf to preserve our right to voice those thoughts. But it’s a very self-centered understanding of that right, based on a presumption that it will be employed for us at some distant point in the future. But that is then, this is now. And in the now, everything is fine. We aren’t in the mood for controversy, because the controversy has nothing to do with us. We can’t be bothered with the grievances of others, and if those grievances should snake their way into our lives, where they are not welcome, where we are not ready to receive them, well, that’s when protestors become nuisances, thugs, agitators, wrong. And then they must be removed. 

It’s why we find it annoying when demonstrations shut down public transit areas or places of business, and why we find our experiences of escapism “soured” when an LGBT agenda becomes so overt that it is “forced down our throats.” The critics of protest, regardless of how small the protest is or what form it takes, assert their believed right to erase the protest from public discourse, or at least to preserve the bubble where they can pretend that the issues of the protest simply do not exist. This, of course, flies in the face of the very definition of protest. You cannot accomplish your goals if you are not part of the public discourse, and becoming part of the public discourse requires an element of disruption. Removing the right of protestors to sit at the table doesn’t magically make the underlying issue go away. Kaepernick’s “protest” was four years ago, and effectively censoring him from the NFL didn’t resolve the issues of police brutality that so personally affected him. Four years later, and blacks are still being killed by police officers for no good reason. So if weaving political messaging into entertainment media to make it more palatable elicits anger, and if Kaepernick’s non-violent demonstration also elicits anger, and neither approach results in the discussion needed to resolve the issues being bought to the forefront, why should the “thugs” and “rioters” that the adherents to Trumpism see fit to denigrate do anything different from what they’re doing right now? 

One cannot ignore the peaceful forms of protest and political awareness for years and then claim victimization once things turn significantly hostile. Ironically, the person who knew this best was perhaps Dr. King himself, who conservatives love to co-opt as a figure of what protests should look like whenever they want to belittle or demean those who have become too rowdy for their liking. But although Dr. King was a figure of nonviolence, he did not necessarily condemn the morality behind rioting. A quote frequently employed by Dr. King was “a riot is the language of the unheard.” In a 1966 interview with CBS’ Mike Wallace, King expanded on this quote, asking “what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over these last few years.” Additionally, in his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King wrote on the obstacle presented by “the white moderate.” 

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

Those that look upon the scenes of unrest across the country and feel for companies like Target have effectively become the very thing that Dr. King has criticized, even as they share his photo over the internet and champion him as a symbol for how these protestors should behave. Not only have they failed to hear the warnings of police brutality that Colin Kaepernick tried to talk about, or of the racial inequality in this country that Lin-Manuel Miranda and his cast were concerned with, but they have also become so engrossed in discussions over the methods of the protest that they have given little consideration at all to the purpose of these protests. 

And, strangely enough, do you know who disagrees with Target’s “sympathizers?” 

Target. 

On May 29, 2020, Brian Cornell, Chairman and CEO of Target, released a public letter that expressed solidarity with the protestors and announced that any employees that had been displaced due to the looting or had otherwise been removed for safety concerns would be “receiving their full pay and benefits in the coming weeks.” Despite the damage the protestors had caused, the merchandise stolen, and the employees frightened off, Cornell reaffirmed a desire to support the protestors in more than just a sentimental union; 

“As I write this, our merchant and distribution teams are preparing truckloads of first aid equipment and medicine, bottled water, baby formula, diapers and other essentials, to help ensure that no one within the areas of heaviest damage and demonstration is cut off from needed supplies… It’s hard to see now, but the day will come for healing—and our team will join our hearts, hands and resources in that journey.” 

Protest is messy. It’s inconvenient. It’s uncomfortable. But it’s necessary, and there is no one right way to do it, so long as the message is being heard. Dr. King understood that. Colin Kaepernick understood that. Brian Cornell understands that, as do many of the small business owners that have been impacted by local demonstrations. The only way to reach positive change is to engage in that which attempts to break into our bubbles. No more hiding. No more thrusting that which is uncomfortable from our sights. And certainly no more feigning surprise when those who have been ignored in the past scream louder to be heard. Resolve the problem and you resolve the protest; discussions about material damage can safely be saved for another time, if at all. For now, there is but one truth that must be accepted, and it is up to us, those who drifted aloft in our bubbles for so long, only ever occasionally glancing upon the true earth, to prove that we understand it. 

That black lives do matter.