Was That a Firecracker or a Gunshot? Unpredictability on America’s Streets (original) (raw)
U.S.|Was That a Firecracker or a Gunshot? Unpredictability on America’s Streets
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/us/george-floyd-protests-minneapolis.html
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Police officers formed a cordon around the site of mass arrests in Minneapolis on Sunday after a protest against the killing of George Floyd.Credit...Peter Van Agtmael for The New York Times
Hundreds of confrontations are playing out between protesters and police officers nationwide, some devolving into violence in a finger snap.
Police officers formed a cordon around the site of mass arrests in Minneapolis on Sunday after a protest against the killing of George Floyd.Credit...Peter Van Agtmael for The New York Times
- June 2, 2020
If one element binds the demonstrations that have roiled the cities and towns of America for the last week — beyond the full-throated cry for an end to racial and social injustice — it is the nerve-jangling unpredictability: the uneasy sense that everything could change in an instant.
All that has been required is the firing of one rubber bullet. The spraying of one can of mace. The tossing of one lighted firecracker. One precipitating action.
Take Sunday, for example, the last day of a difficult May. Hundreds of fraught confrontations played out across the country between protesters and police officers, some devolving into violence in a finger snap.
In Atlanta, a mostly peaceful protest march turned into a hailstorm of tear-gas canisters after demonstrators toppled a fence. In Denver, a bearded young man in a sea of protesters crumpled to the ground when a projectile fired by the police struck him in the face. And in Washington, a tense standoff quickly became a conflagration that included a fire in the basement of a historic church that President Trump would briefly stand in front of for a photo op — presumably to convey order — the next day.
Unpredictability infuses the air.
And what does unpredictability smell like? It is the commingling of street sweat and fire smoke and tear gas. The smoke smacks of destruction, while the tear gas seems to set your face aflame, burning your throat and causing your eyes to tear so badly that it seems you may never stop crying.
In this protracted state of unrest not seen in this country in a half-century, any certainty was absent, with the anger, fear and opportunism of demonstrations filling the void. Was that a firecracker or a gunshot?
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