Whose history?

 By Jan S. Gephardt and G.S. Norwood

They say that the winners get to decide whose history—that is, whose version of history—becomes the “official history.” But when it comes to the so-called “Lost Cause,” that isn’t necessarily so.

Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Independent.

The pro-slavery South has got to be working some kind of North American record for being persistent sore losers. They’re certainly not the only ones to hold a long-term grudge in world history, but they’ve hung in there for more than 150 years.

Who was it again, that lost the Civil War? Yes, well, we all know denial isn’t only a river in Egypt.

History and the First Amendment

Jan has written a lot of blog posts this summer inspired by the First Amendment. Since the rise of the Black Lives Matter protests, these rights have been on her heart.

 

Especially so, because the clashes turned violent. Violations of freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly and petition were thick on the ground this summer. We can’t afford not to pay attention.

 

Photo by Pat McDonough/Louisville Courier-Journal via CNN.

The renewed calls to take down Confederate monuments are a topic we haven’t tackled till now. For every call to remove them, others cry “you can’t erase history!” But when it comes to issues of erasure and representation, we’re not sure the sympathizers with the “Lost Cause” understand.

They don’t realize that ideologues such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy—who put up many of the monuments—were actually the ones who rewrote, and erased, important parts of our collective history.

The question of whose history we represent—and whose history we erase—is a modern-day minefield where the rules are changing almost as rapidly as the demographics of this country.

A case study in Parker County, TX

A recent episode illustrates some of the complexities of this problem. As she wrote to Jan recently, reports from Weatherford struck home for G., who lived in Parker County, Texas, from 1985 through 2010.

Photo by Charles Davis Smith, FAIA, via Reddit Snapshots.

“Twenty-five years. I liked the people I met there. They were smart, kind, generous people. Quick to volunteer money and time to worthy causes, they still believed in community groups like the Lions Club and the Masonic Lodge.

“They served on boards, organized rodeos, trail rides, and scholarship funds. They gave high school kids their first jobs, and made sure seniors citizens had hot lunches, affordable housing, and a nice place to go to socialize every day. There were black and Hispanic officers on the local police force and the regional Department of Public Safety (highway patrol) roster. Everybody turned out for the annual Peach Festival.

“I won’t pretend there wasn’t racism. I am white, so I probably didn’t see as much of it as the black professionals I worked beside, but I’m sure it was there, simply because it’s everywhere—especially in states that once belonged to the Confederacy.

The monument on the Courthouse grounds

“A generic stone statue of a nameless Confederate soldier had been placed on the Parker County courthouse lawn by the United Daughters of the Confederacy sometime in the past. Not a work of fine art—just a statement about the county’s history. And apparently its present reality, too.

Photo by Dreanna L. Belden/University of North Texas “Portal to Texas History.”

“I moved away from Parker County in July 2010. Almost exactly ten years later, on July 25, 2020, some local progressives decided to up their ongoing battle to remove the Confederate statue by leading a small protest march.

“Some sources say there were about 25 Black Lives Matter marchers making their way up South Main to the courthouse square in Weatherford that afternoon. Some estimates go as high as 50.

The counter-protest

All news sources agree that the crowd of counter-protestors who met them was nearly ten times bigger—anywhere from 250 to 500 people.

Photo by Walt Burns/Spectrum News.

“The counter-protesters came with Confederate Flags. They came with signs, denouncing the Black Lives Matter movement. And they came with guns. One guy even mounted a semi-automatic assault rifle in the back of his pickup truck, military style.

“There was a lot of yelling, some pushing and shoving, and three people were arrested. One of them turned out to be a white supremacist leader from Utah. Nobody was injured, but I was appalled.

I had loved Parker County. Loved Weatherford. Made it my home for many happy years. Never in all that time did I suspect that such ignorance and hatred lived just under the surface. I still don’t know how to process it.”

It’s a lot to process. But that question of “whose history?” certainly comes down to some very personal history. As it is many places, it’s deeply personal for many in Weatherford.

Whose history is important?

Some people, like Kim Milner, who grew up in Weatherford and started a petition to keep the statue, call themselves “Those who want to keep the monuments that reflect our history rather than tear them down.”

But “That Lost Cause propaganda,” as protester Courtney Craig called it in an interview last June with CBS 11’s Jason Allen, has drowned out all other historical perspectives for decades.

Doesn’t mean those perspectives went away, though—or aren’t real.

Photo by Walt Burns/Spectrum News.

Tony Crawford, one of the organizers of the Parker County protesters, told Spectrum News, “My family was lynched on that square,” he said. “I’m going about this knowing full well that after that statue comes down, it may be too dangerous for me to ever step foot in Weatherford again.”

History’s context

Whose history do we value? Whose history do we preserve? Jan and G. believe that history’s lessons are the most rich and meaningful when we remember the voices, thoughts, and memories of all who had a stake in the events of the times.

That means not glorifying any single narrative over all the others. It also means placing things in context. And sometimes that means removing them from one place to another. Along with Courtney Craig, we believe that there may be places where Confederate monuments could be displayed. Confederate cemeteries, perhaps. Museums.

We do not, however, believe that monuments placed years after the end of the Civil War and intended as propagandistic declarations of domination by “Jim Crow” racists should remain on their pedestals overshadowing public spaces. Or stay in places where justice should be upheld.

IMAGE CREDITS:

All of our image sources come from great online articles and other sources that will reward you if you’re interested in learning more. Please dig deeper to your heart’s content. Many thanks to the Milwaukee Independent for the photo of “Lost Cause” books and memorabilia.

We also want to thank photographer Pat McDonough, The Louisville Courier-Journal, and CNN for the photo of John B. Castleman’s equestrian statue being removed from Louisville’s Cherokee Triangle. There’s a video of the removal in the Louisville C-J article, and an in-depth, illustrated list of other removals in the CNN article.

We’re grateful to Charlies Davis Smith, FAIA, via Reddit Snapshots, for the amazing drone shot of the Parker County Courthouse. And we’re also indebted to Dreanna L. Belden and University of North Texas “Portal to Texas History” for the photo of the Confederate monument at the center of the Weatherford controversy.

Double thanks to Walt Burns and Spectrum News for the two photos from the Weatherford protests, both the “Jail Transport” and “You’re doing it right now!” images. They really captured the range of ideas on the march that day.

And finally, we appreciate Mitch Landrieu’s words about the place of Confederate monuments in New Orleans today, made available via the beautifully-produced video from the Atlantic and YouTube.

Many thanks to all!

Unidentified Federal Officers

 A troubling rash of UF0 sightings—Unidentified Federal Officers—cropped up in June and July. They showed up first in Washington DC, and then in Portland, OR.

Unidentified Federal Officers are a problem

Unlike the more widely-known UFOs, as in the Unidentified Flying Objects of science fiction and popular culture, these UFOs are all too verifiable.

Just . . . not that easy to trace. And that’s a huge problem.

Prickly City for 8/4/2020 is ©2020 by Scott Stantis/Uclick/GoComics

They showed up to oppose what often had been mostly-peaceful protesters who were exercising their First Amendment rights. But especially in Portland, the protesters shifted their focus to opposing the Federal agents.

Officials in the District of Columbia and Oregon opposed them, too.

Authoritarian echoes

Portland protesters reported multiple arrests by unidentified officers who seemingly plucked random people off the streets and took them away in unmarked vans. For some idea of how terrifying this looks, a video tweeted by the Sparrow Project captures one such arrest (warning: some onlookers use profanity).

Unidentified Federal Officers detain a woman in Portland. Photo from “Unlawful Whatever” via The Sparrow Project/Twitter/WSWS screen-capture.

This presents such a frightening similarity to actions in authoritarian regimes that many people had visceral reactions. The now-famous “Wall of Moms” came out in their yellow T-shirts to oppose this in particular. Their movement has now become controversial. But when it first occurred, the immediate comparison I drew was to the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

Yes, I’m once again gonna mark myself as old,because I personally remember when people said the rumors about “the disappeared” must be an exaggeration. Surely not, in a civilized society such as Argentina! Maybe some of those disclaimers were made because the “Dirty War” was secretly supported by the United States. But it turned out the grandmothers were right.

Why is the anonymity so ominous?

The most disturbing part of this development, for me and for others, was the anonymity of the officers. Yes, I know some police briefly claimed they might remove ids to avoid doxxing—which they feared might occur.

I worry more about the lack of accountability. If you can’t tell what agency—if any—the soldier-looking guys came from, how can you call them out for overreach? How can you tell whether they’re actual Federal agents, or well-equipped right wing militia members?

If the Wall of Moms can buy matching T-shirts, couldn’t the Proud Boys or some other group buy matching camo? And those tactical helmets with gas masks conceal as much of a person’s face as any Ku Klux Klan disguise (even pre-hood).

I also worry about the rumor that the president and some of his supporters tried to spark a culture war on the chance it might improve his polling numbers. If that could be a motivation, what else might be?

Turns out these UFOs in Washington DC were a riot team from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty.

A July protest letter from 27 Senators reflects this unease over unaccountable anonymous agents acting against the First Amendment rights of protesters. And apparently they made a difference. All of the unidentified Federal officers withdrew from Washington, DC and Portland by late July. So far, no one has deployed them elsewhere.

IMAGE CREDITS

Many thanks to “Unlawful Whatever” via The Sparrow Project for taking that chilling video from Portland and sharing it on Twitter. And to WSWS for the screen-capture.

I’m deeply grateful to Scott Stantis for exactly capturing my feelings on this topic, and I’m hoping to goodness that he and Andrews McMeel will see this as fair use, especially considering their “Contact Us” link kept returning a 404 Error, and GoComics sent me to an additional, unhelpful place. I really did try, people!

And finally I really want to thank CNN and Brendan Smialowski, via AFP/Getty, for the photo of the unidentified group on 14^th Street in Washington DC, later identified as a Bureau of Prisons riot team.

Ripe for protests

 We were ripe for protests. We should have seen them coming. Some of us undoubtedly did.

The COVID-19 pandemic stripped all the systemic problems and weaknesses in our racist, inequitable society bare. They stare us in the face every day of our transformed lives. Every news cycle, the horrors pile up.

Cascades of catastrophe

An ever-changing number of states show uncontrolled spread of COVID. We’ve recorded more than five million cases of COVID in the USA. And more than 160,000 deaths. By the time this post goes live, there will be more. Of course—inevitably—Black, brown, and non-gender-conforming groups and communities take the hardest hit. Always.

From the New York Times

Approximately 16.4 million people currently face unemployment in the US. Our GDP dropped off the bottom of the chart in the second quarter. It’s officially a recession, but Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson recently called for us to “call it what it is,” a Pandemic Depression. His arguments are compelling.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans are staring homelessness in the face, as short-term pandemic aid from the Federal Government runs out. Thanks to Senate inactivity, nothing is there to replace it.

If past is prelude, protests were inevitable

Oh, yes, we were ripe for protests. At crisis points like the one we’re in, people always take to the streets. A recent National Geographic article surveyed earlier protests in the USA, but you don’t have to stop at our borders. Just look at the unrest that swept several continents in 1848. Driven by civil unrest, famine, and accumulated outrage, these uprisings toppled governments and transformed many parts of the world—including the USA.

Courtesy of National Geographic

Crisis breeds desperate measures. Five hundred years ago, a climate crisis drove the Chimú people of Peru (the empire that preceded the Inca) to sacrifice hundreds of their own children.

We haven’t gone that far, but some of us do seem willing to send them, their teachers, and other school personnel back into classrooms with less-than-ideal safeguards. Was anyone surprised to see the North Paulding High School close after only a week?

Photo by Hannah Waters, via AP and The Washington Post

Yes, it’s getting more violent. That was predictable, too.

When I started the First Amendment series, I had protests in mind. I thought it was important to remember that the First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Dr. Martin Luther King called riots “the language of the unheard” in a 1966 interview with Mike Wallace on the TV show 60 Minutes. He explained how people can be pushed to violence, yet steadfastly argued for nonviolent protest. Unfortunately, many today have grown impatient.

Back at the start of the summer, the protests were mostly peaceful—except when exacerbated by forceful curfew enforcement, or a minority of agitators. Lately, however, we’ve seen a troubling uptick in violence.

Why the violence? Why now? It may be deepening desperation, sparked by the worsening death toll and unemployment picture. Perhaps it's growing disillusionment, after a summer of protests that have sparked conversation—but no real action in response to people’s deepening needs. And it might be a partial reaction to the clear disregard by police and some authorities for the arguments protesters make.

We’re still ripe for protests. And I fear we’ll continue to be a powder keg till inequalities are ameliorated, help is delivered, and the pandemic abates.

In other words, don’t hold your breath. It’s not nearly over.

IMAGE CREDITS:

I deeply appreciate the New York Times for providing a graphic demonstration of the Second-Quarter 2020 drop in the US Gross Domestic Product, as compared with previous decades. Many thanks to National Geographic for the photo of the archaeological excavation of child-sacrifice graves in Peru. All respect to Hannah Waters, the brave 15-year-old who blew the whistle on her alma mater, North Paulding High School, with thanks to the AP and the Washington Post for making her photo available. Finally, I want to thank You Tube and 60 Minutes, for the historic Mike Wallace interview with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This post wouldn't be the same without you!

With disrespect for all: When authorities attack journalists and protesters

American authorities attack journalists and protesters? That just ain’t right! As the First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of . . . the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Hyoung Chang, a Denver Post photographer, took this photo of his broken press pass after police fired “a projectile” at him. USA Today later reported the “projectile” actually was “two pepper balls [fired] directly at him.” (Hyoung Chang, via the New York Times)

Freedom of the Press has met The Right to Peaceably Assemble in the streets of many cities all over the USA, this summer. And both provisions of the First Amendment have too often been trampled by authorities who should know better.

When police themselves break the law

Don’t believe it? Watch this short video from VICE News.

 

No, these were clearly members of the press. Licensed and trained sworn officers should have known they had a right to be there. Law enforcement agents who knowingly break the law vividly illustrate why so many people have begun to protest that they need to be defunded, abolished, or at least redefined. If they themselves can’t be trusted to follow the law, why are we paying them and maintaining a police force at all?

Unfortunately, these aren’t the only documented cases. Journalists from two different agencies, The US Press Freedom Tracker and Nick Waters of Bellingcat, who created a Twitter thread to count incidents, each independently identified about 100 instances, just in the first weeks of protests. By June 6, Forbes reported “328 . . . and counting.”

As I write this, The US Press Freedom Tracker’s count is considerably higher: “600+ aggressions against the press during national Black Lives Matter protests,” 157 journalists attacked, and 51 journalists arrested. Their equipment hasn’t been spared, either. The US Press Freedom Tracker says police damaged equipment 43 times, and have searched or seized it 10 times.

The next video, from The Washington Post, shows new examples, in addition to some shown in the previous video.

I’ll share a link to one more video, to offer an even more comprehensive overview, and an international perspective. Although the video is in English, DW is a German news agency (hint: the part about attacks on the press ends 2 minutes before the video does).

How much harm are they doing?

When authorities attack journalists and protesters, it does a lot of harm. Trampled Constitutional rights are serious breaches of the law and deeply un-American. But these attacks also can do serious physical and psychological harm.

Most of the protests have been peaceful. And journalists should be completely off-limits. But this summer police have freely used a variety of so-called “less-lethal” weapons on both groups.

What is a “less-lethal” weapon? Police have a variety at their disposal. They used to be called “nonlethal,” but that turns out to be wrong. They can and have caused death.

 

(Washington Post)

Projectile weapons can leave bruises, lacerations, broken bones. If you’re hit in the eye like photographer Linda Tirado, you can be blinded. That’s why the American Academy of Ophthalmology called for a nationwide ban on the use of rubber bullets against protesters.

In a recent article USA Today quoted Charlie Mesloh, a certified instructor on the use of police projectiles and a professor at Northern Michigan University, who said, “On day one of training, they tell you, ‘Don’t shoot anywhere near the head or neck.’ That’s considered deadly force.”

Eye doctors are no fans of tear gas or other chemical irritants, either. Neither are experts on respiratory diseases—especially in a time of COVID-19 pandemic. Tear gas causes a variety of effects. Most go away after a while. But people with respiratory problems can struggle with the effects for a long time.

Minneapolis police advance through tear gas toward a group of protesters. (Scott Olson/Getty Images, via NPR).

Why are the police acting this way?

This kind of police aggression toward journalists is not only unconstitutional. It’s also not normal. Why act this way? Why now?

As I discussed in previous post, it’s very difficult to hold police accountable in the current legal climate. But perhaps they feel more empowered than usual. Many commentators point to the president as part of the reason why that might be.

He’s been an outspoken critic—to the point where he’s used inflammatory, authoritarian phrases such as “enemy of the people” when speaking of the press. Various groups have protested this treatment, to no avail.

I don't mean to say the president is the only reason for this change. Am I his fan? No. Is he the first president to have issues with the press? Hardly! Speaking truth to power is dangerous. But there’s something at work here that goes beyond Mr. Trump.

Police officers and police departments feel empowered to lash out against journalists as they never have before this summer. All too predictably, many of the journalists targeted also appear to be BIPOC and/or women.

When American authorities attack journalists and protesters, this is new in the Twenty-First Century. This is disturbing.

This  is dangerous.

IMAGE CREDITS

I really want to thank Hyoung Chang, via the New York Times, for the photo of his broken press badge. I appreciate YouTube and VICE News for the first video, YouTube and The Washington Post for the second video, and YouTube and DW for the third. Many thanks also to the Washington Post for the excellent illustration and article on “Less-Lethal” police weapons and their dangers. And to NPR and photographer Scott Olson for the image of Minneapolis police in riot gear, striding through billows of tear gas smoke.