What I Can Tell You About the Protests in Omaha
(5/30/2020) Tonight I witnessed the savage display of the power of the state. Large men with tiny souls dressed to the nines in tactical garb occupied an Omaha intersection. Here in the largest city of my home state I witnessed the abuse of many of my fellow citizens. I witnessed a protest concerning no singular event but rather an extension of the very common American catastrophe known as police brutality.
In February of this year in Brunswick County, Georgia, a citizen was lynched while out jogging. His name was Ahmaud Arbery. The whole scenario had consumed the media’s attention. Mainstream media played out it’s old charade of character assassination as anger mounted and national tensions were once again stoked by the passions of a tired, agitated, and angry America.
Then, a mere 5 days ago, a Minneapolis citizen was assaulted, stuffed into the back of a police cruiser and beaten by several police officers. Somehow, the struggle ended up on the street, with George Floyd’s face on the concrete, and Derek Chauvin’s knee crushing the back of his head and neck. The scuffle that ended Floyd’s life and the tumultuous career of what we have come to know as an often violent, hardly accountable police officer sparked a powder keg of racial tensions in at least 28 cities across the country.
Brunswick, Georgia is over 1,200 miles away. Minneapolis is almost 400 miles away. But enough people, from enough cities — and including this one — identified with George Floyd and the countless lives predating his death that have been taken by a pure, genuine barbarism called “Law and Order.” It has become known as police brutality. It is warfare. It is being waged on unarmed citizens, and has been for generations. This all sounds very rehearsed, and I suppose that’s the brunt of it, because we’ve heard it so many times before in so many different situations in every major city in the United States that it’s beginning to sound like the radio DJ left a record on an infinite loop.
It is fascism. To the Americans that care enough to speak, stand, or kneel against the power that enables such blatant abuses, seeing it in person does not hold any surprises except for the most unaware and disconnected of us…those in the armchairs calling for civility. What I saw was an unaccountable, heavily militarized faction of brutes, eager for a fight.
I dare you to see for yourself.
I come from a well-to-do white middle class family, which isn’t really unique in any way to anyone but me; and I only mention it to illustrate solidarity on the matter, because in the common white American family there is a shortage of experience and an overabundance of opinion. This is why I write you tonight.
There can be discourse, there can be understanding, there can be anger and passion; there can be a sharp kneading tension. But no matter how you feel about police, it would be pretty tough to stand on the corners of 72nd and Dodge the past two nights — or the nights to come — and watch police pick off and arrest the most vulnerable protestors without admitting overkill. Then turn to angry crowds who witnessed an injustice piled on top of a large, organized protest against that same injustice, and without hesitation fire tear gas, pepper balls, and rubber bullets at onlooking protestors. I could tell you about what I saw, about the clashes with police to clear an already closed street. In the age of fake news, I could tell you just about anything I wanted. If it’s absurd enough, the President may even retweet me.
I could tell you all about police violence or it’s historical connection to racism. I could tell you its long history in America, it’s history in Omaha even; I could tell you about the countless murders of unarmed citizens by police, and how they’re almost always black men. I could tell you about how our prison system actively and systematically targets people of color. I could tell you how people profit from this absurd excuse for a civil democracy. Or you can go see for yourself.
I could tell you the story of how an unassuming, kneeling bystander who was separated from the bulk of the protest crowd was ripped from the street and stuffed in the back of a cop car. How trigger happy, confrontational, and ultimately insecure men in full riot gear manhandled innocent bystanders and arrested them. I could tell you about these men in full combat gear arriving by the busload courtesy of the Omaha Metro; who then stood in front of machines of war and fired tear gas on peaceful protestors. Then, I could tell you how they charged the picket line and trapped the protestors in a phalanx formation in the Target parking lot and continued to spray chemical weapons through all the police-induced mayhem. I could even tell you how, as a patrol car blasted through a megaphone the words, “THIS IS AN UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY, LEAVE NOW,” while actively arresting panicked, pepper sprayed, and tear gassed people as they attempted to leave the area. I could tell you all of this, and it would be quite a story, emboldened by the fact that it is all true, and that it happened hundreds of miles from the event that sparked it. But nothing I could tell you would do more than seeing it for yourself. Nothing I can say can change the mind of an armchair enthusiast that 1) has never seen such an event with their own eyes, and 2) may not change their mind despite it being a cold truth draped in hard facts. I could tell you a great deal of things and they may all be true, but nothing I can tell you can prepare you for staring down the barrel of fascism.
I can say that I saw everything discussed here in person, with my own eyes, and swear it is all true; but real courage from you, my dear reader and fellow Nebraskan, would be to stand next to me tomorrow on 72nd and Dodge and stare your political opinions and voting decisions in the face. Nothing I can say will stop the violence, nothing I can do will prevent violence being done unto my fellow citizens, so I write to you tonight, as a white man to ask: who is the aggressor?
