RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL (Opinion) I’m old enough to remember very clearly October 1962 when Russian ships carrying missiles were just hours away from landing in Cuba and President Kennedy had issued a stern warning to the Kremlin to turn the ships back or else. Or else: what?
We anxiously waited to find out. It was going to be either nuclear Armageddon or a stand-down and return to pre-confrontational normal. We asked ourselves again and again: What next: where is all this leading?
In fact, it changed things for the better. Khrushchev and Kennedy found an acceptable and face-saving compromise, the ships turned around, the crisis wound down and relations between the nations changed for the better.
If it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, this image of a demonstration against the horrific murder of a black man, George Floyd, at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department last week, expresses better than any words the anguish of the community, in the face of yet another example of the racist brutality we are witnessing more and more in the US and Brazil. These are not the faces of idle demonstrators. They are genuinely hurt and angry.
This fire must be partly fueled by the frustration of weeks of pandemic seclusion. As 27-year-old Jason Phillips of Queens said, at a Manhattan protest: “I’m just really tired of sitting at home and just doing nothing, basically watching this happen. I need to be a part of history. I need to be a part of the change.”
Is this angst simply magnified by the pandemic and triggered by particularly egregious events and only now bursting into flame? Or are we on the cusp of some form of major change in our societies’ glaring inequalities; if so, how will those changes manifest themselves in the months to come?
What’s next: where is this leading?
Perhaps it is leading towards a seismic change in attitudes and actions that move to reduce economic and social inequality, honestly address racial grievances, and make police brutality totally unacceptable. Or more dangerously, as some on the radical right would like, we will experience an increase in violent civil strife, creating anarchistic chaos leading in the direction of revolution or civil war? At this point in time it is hard to predict.
The effect of the lengthy quarantines and the Minneapolis police killing seen by millions on live TV and the Bolsonaro-supported rallies of “hundreds of diehard, far-right protesters in Brasília” must certainly be factors. But they are just the tip of the racial and economic inequality iceberg.
The danger created by the vacuum of leadership in both Brazil and the US is palpable. If, like Jason Phillips, one is hoping for historic change, it is not encouraging to listen to Trump and Bolsonaro’s exclamations or to assess their actions.
“Bolsonaro, who favors reopening the country against the advice of public health experts, is increasingly at war with anyone in the government who does not bend their knee to him, which includes representatives of almost every democratic institution in the country — stoking fears that Brazil is accelerating its slide toward another dictatorship” writes ‘The Intercept’. He noisily encourages his followers to break the masking and social distancing regulations and coyly threatens military intervention if frustrated by the legislature or the courts.
Trump, watching his house of cards collapsing around him and his re-election chances trending downwards, has loudly condemned the largely black demonstrators in Minneapolis and other cities.
He referred to the demonstrators, who are startlingly reminiscent of the Black Lives Matter movement six years ago, as “thugs”, a racially charged term. Unlike his assertion, after the 2017 Charlottesville demonstration, that “you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides”, this time, there were no ‘both sides’.
Trump also noted that the military is standing by and could be used in the city and his accompanying Tweet; “When the looting starts,” he warned, “the shooting starts.” This was too much even for Twitter, which tagged the president’s tweet with a warning message that the president’s tweet was ‘glorifying violence’ and, while allowing it to stay on the platform, Twitter restricted its forwarding, etc.
At this writing the demonstrations are spreading and growing across America.
Opined ‘The NY Times’, “The escalating violence and destruction felt like a warning that this moment could be spinning out of control both because of the limitations of a largely spontaneous, leaderless movement and because, protesters and officials warned, there were indications it was also being undermined by agitators trying to sabotage it.” It is impossible to predict the outcome.
What is certain is that the pandemic has shined a spotlight on the enduring racial and economic inequalities in both countries and the time for change is now. Or else.