Something is Happening Here

There are numerous differences between the Eric Garner and Michael Brown police homicides -- Garner's murder was a death by choking on the streets of Staten Island which took place several weeks before Brown's and involved a bevy of undercover cowboy cops; whereas Brown's shooting death was the result of a lone police gunman in a St. Louis suburb -- but the foremost difference is that Garner's murder was clearly caught on video; that, and the fact that the medical examiner ruled Eric Garner's death a homicide.

The video evidence and medical examiner's determination bolstered normally timid politicians, and hence we have calls from New York City's congressional delegation, along with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, for a federal investigation, something that the Justice Department has signaled it will undertake.

According to Vivian Yee, in what is the best single story in the Gray Lady today (and, to the Gray Lady's credit, there is ample coverage of the Staten Island grand jury's decision not to indict the police, Daniel Pantaleo, who murdered Eric Garner as well as the protests that broke out last night in New York City), " ‘I Can’t Breathe’ Is Echoed in Voices of Fury and Despair: In Chokehold Case, Protesters Revive a Staten Island Man's Dying Words":

“The failure to indict is a stunning miscarriage of justice, and makes clear that equal protection under the law does not exist for all Americans,” said Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from Brooklyn who, along with other members of New York’s congressional delegation, spoke at the Capitol to call for a federal investigation into Mr. Garner’s death. 

“What more does America need to see?” Mr. Jeffries said. “We are better than this as a country.” 

Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, called Mr. Garner’s death “a tragedy that demands accountability.”

To my knowledge, nothing similar happened -- no calls for a DOJ civil rights investigation were made by the St. Louis congressional delegation and Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill -- on behalf of Michael Brown.

Certainly, New York City is different from St. Louis. New York City is a multi-cultural Mecca and magnet for educated, aspiring youth; along with Los Angeles and Oakland and Portland and Seattle and San Francisco and D.C., it is a progressive city that at certain moments can tilt towards the radical. The multiple protests last night were an encouraging sign.

Staten Island, where the grand jury that refused to indict Pantaleo took place, is the reddest of New York City's five boroughs. While there are pockets of gumba white supremacy in Brooklyn and Queens, terra firma of white working-class ressentiment has always been Staten Island.

What makes Vivian Yee's article stand out is all the person-on-the-street quotes:

Yet this was no Ferguson, where conflicting witness accounts obscured the circumstances of the confrontation between Michael Brown and Darren Wilson, the white officer who shot him. This encounter was recorded at close range on a cellphone camera, the fact that kept many on Wednesday asking: How? Why? 

“You can see the video,” said Diane Moss, 63, of Staten Island, her voice strained with disbelief. “It’s one thing if it’s ‘he said, she said,’ but when you see the video — the guy wasn’t resisting.” 

Her neighbor, Marjorie Fabre, 53, seethed next to her.

“They keep on showing the tape on TV, over and over and over,” she said. The officer, Daniel Pantaleo, had been trying to arrest Mr. Garner for selling loose cigarettes. “I mean, over a cigarette?” 

What could you say, people asked, when the evidence could not seem clearer. What conclusion could you draw, other than: 

“It looks like there’s no change,” said Jesse Love, who was one of a few dozen protesters who gathered at the scene of Mr. Garner’s death, outside a beauty supply store and opposite a humble park. No change in police behavior, in the way African-Americans are treated by the legal system, in race relations. 

“We had a video. How can we win? We can’t win,” said a man who gave his name as James. 

The Staten Island grand jury's refusal to indict not only casts doubt on the legitimacy of the grand-jury process itself but on the merit of supplying police body cameras as a way to increase law enforcement accountability.

Something is happening here. The public reaction to the Michael Brown and Eric Garner verdicts strikes me as different from business as usual.

Once again when I emerged from the train station last night after work there were clumps of police arrayed in front of the big downtown department stores. A blatant show of force.

I walked a few blocks to the main public space in the heart of the downtown commercial district, the place where Occupy Seattle was launched over three years ago. The Christmas displays -- the Star of Bethlehem on the Macy's building, Santa's Corner, a busy Christmas carousel -- were prominent. There were TV trucks and lots of police, some in riot gear. The protest underway was tiny, sponsored I think by the Freedom Socialists. Some young guys with beards milled around handing out a leaflet on Jim Crow justice while a women angrily spoke into a bullhorn. A few steps a way children happily rode the rapidly circling Christmas carousel.

Bizarre. The police presence was total out of proportion to the protest. Why? I think the power elite, even at the city level, sense that a shift is occurring. People are fed up. Even if the number of protesters pale in comparison with previous popular mobilizations (Iraq, Occupy), there is a sense that the many lies that constitute the status quo are exposed. Plutocracy, white supremacy, the warfare state, underemployment. Just keep going on down the list. These things can no longer be credibly denied. A compelling canard is not available to paper over the injustice that is the everyday reality in the U.S. And that is scary for those in charge.