Mornië Alantië (A Promise Lives Within Us Now)

These may seem like darkness has indeed fallen, when Americans are being attacked while exercising their most fundamental freedom to protest, and the attackers are the agents of their own government. There have been some violent protests with destruction of public and private property, and a disproportionate number of attacks by heavily armed police on crowds marching to protest, ironically, the excessive use of force by the police. The president of the nation, in words reminiscent of Tsarist Russia or any absolutist government of your preference, has threatened to unleash the military against the civilian population, in the name of restoring "law and order"; one's attitude to this proclamation depends strongly on one's existing trust in his leadership. But a good sign of his true thoughts were revealed when he advised the states' governors that they needed to "dominate" their citizens through use of overwhelming force. Even more telling, however, was his statement in that same meeting that failure to crush the protests would make the governors look weak and foolish. And, so even as Washington DC is flooded by faceless but heavily armed paramilitary forces to help the president show his strength and courage, even as police cars mow into crowds of civilians, even as peaceful protesters are subjected to pepper balls that are not technically "tear gas" despite having much the same effect, even as crowds of Americans are attacked by police with batons and pepper spray, even on those nights when the nation burned and the shining city on the hill tethered on its foundations (seemingly made of sand, rather than the rock we always imagined), even in these darkest of times, I could not help but feel that things were never better, and was already smiling in anticipation of a much brighter tomorrow.

Let me start by saying that it's much easier for me to brush past the institutional racism suffered by most Black Americans. As an Indian, and a graduate engineer, I enjoy a position that is denied to black Americans who have been born in this country. But I am rejoicing not for myself, but for all victims of injustice in America. This is not the hopeful dream of a perennial optimist, but a reading of reality. As an outsider, I have the advantage of seeing the bigger picture in a way that is hidden to those living, and suffering, through the actual events. As a person, technically, of color (a term that I have the privilege to brush off without consequences, a privilege denied to black or Hispanic Americans), I do not suffer the burden of white Americans who struggle with the guilt of not having solved the obvious issues of racism and injustice, with the guilt by association of having family and friends who voted Donald Trump into power. Neither black or white Americans are free enough of their involvement in this tragedy unfolding before them to see that the dark clouds enveloping them have not a silver lining but that in fact the dark cloud is but a spot in a much larger bank of dazzlingly silver clouds.

The world has changed tremendously in the last dozen years. For black Americans, and for white Americans who are capable of human empathy, it may seem that the last eight years have seen nothing but a wall of shame covered with a mosaic of murdered Black men and women, people cut down for the crime of being black rather than any crime they may have actually committed. No crime deserves a death sentence, much less one executed before trial and with chilling finality. Eric Garner was selling cigarettes illegally,  Michael Brown had stolen a box of cigars using force, Walter Scott had an outstanding warrant over child support payments but not since medieval times have we executed people for such minor crimes; Trayvon Martin was walking home when a (non-police) vigilante followed him and an ensuing scuffle ended with him being killed, Philandro Castile was shot in a routine traffic stop, Tamir Rice was shot and killed for playing with a toy gun, Breona Taylor was shot in her home by police executing a "no knock" warrant (at the wrong place, just to make it worse, but that detail shouldn't even be important). On the face of it, George Floyd may seem like just another name on a long, endless and shameful list. But each death has moved the weight of public opinion towards its watershed moment. For the dead, for their families and for many in the communities that suffer and fear each day, the movement may seem glacial, and long overdue, and I cannot deny the justice in that sentiment. But I prefer to look at how the majority of the country is waking up to the injustice perpetrated in their name and finally they stood up and said, "No more!"

When Ferguson, MO exploded in anger, the right-leaning press could highlight that the race of the protesters and use that as rationale for ignoring their demands for justice. When Baltimore burned after another Black Man was shot by police, President Trump could insult the whole city and its black citizens and despite some objections, he could get away with it. But today, there are white people marching in the streets besides their black brethren. Liberal stalwarts of course have spoken up in the past, but too many other people sat quietly and allowed a matter of justice for all become by default a matter of the color of one's skin. When whites and Asians sat on the sidelines, the only voices raised in a demand for change were black and it was easy for their opponents to recast this as racial battle and racial issues make everyone uncomfortable and so too many of us walked on by like the priest on the road to Jericho. But not this time! Finally, we have seen that this is not just a matter of race, it is a matter of justice and equality and simple humanity. Of course, race played a role in the events that led to the murder of George Floyd and Breona Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery but they deserve justice, not because they were black or their killers white, but because no one should be killed the way they were murdered and finally America has realized that we are only as good as the worst of our responses. And so a chorus of new and powerful voices joined those who have struggled alone for years. Taylor Swift, once raised up as paragon of white womanhood by white supremacists (without her consent and against her desires) has gradually thrown of the shackles of fearful silence. She has found her voice now and leaped to the front lines (metaphorically) adding the power and reach of her enormous pulpit to spread the message.

One of the most uplifting and hopeful stories came from Minneapolis after the first nights of violence. A Bangladeshi immigrant restaurant owner saw his life's work burnt to the ground, and his response was, "let it burn, we need justice for George Floyd". He understood that the violence was not against him, that this fight was not just the fight of the blacks but a struggle for justice and as such it was  fight for all Americans - and coincidentally his restaurant was named Gandhi Mahal, honoring the greatest apostle of non-violent advocacy in modern history. The same sentiment was articulated by Hasan Minaj, in one of the rawest, most powerful segments of his Patriot Act I have ever seen. Now Hasan is not a surprising supporter of justice and equality but he turned the spotlight inward and challenged each of us, especially those with brown skin, to face up to our inner racist. Racism is not an easy issue, and is rarely defined in black and white, or between blacks and whites, but all Americans are now thinking of this, and only good can come from this introspection.

When Colin Kapernick knelt to protest police brutality, he was pilloried as unpatriotic and somehow the fight for justice morphed into respect for the troops. The only men who stood with him were black and white America complained that they did not want to see their football sullied with such unpatriotic behavior. That was three years ago, but today the world has changed and we have Carson Wentz and Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady speaking up for justice, voices that were conspicuously absent in the past. White coaches in the NBA like Greg Popovitch and Steve Kerr supported their black athletes, but the NFL remained tightly focused on their bottom line. Till today! Now we have thoughtful statements from a long line of football executives from Bill O'Brien to Brian Flores to John Elway admitting the mistake of their past silence. The few discordant statements from Vic Fangio and Drew Brees have been contested and since withdrawn - to be clear, they have every right to have their opinions, but they have been challenged and corrected on facts and have been forced to acknowledge reality. College coaches too have added their voices in support of change. For decades, the colossus that straddles the professional wrestling world has been a bastion of conservatism, and Vince McMahon has never been shy about casting all political positions he dislikes as unpatriotic and using the theater of the ring to humiliate those fictionalized and conveniently buffoonish enemies. But today a legion of his stars are standing proudly for justice, and some of them have marched in solidarity with the protesters. Like the NFL, other corporations are flocking to be counted on the right side of history, from Amazon to Nike to Uber and Lyft and United Airlines and Target and Snapchat and Twitter.

The swing in sentiment in Corporate America is telling. Corporations, and the NFL is one of them, have no moral compulsions, they do not make decisions because they are morally right. It is not a knock on corporations, per se - they are (with deference to the US Supreme Court) not people, they are amoral entities designed to maximize profit. They have not joined the calls for change because it is the morally right thing but because they realize that to oppose it, or even pretend that the problem does not exist, is against their own interests. The NFL and every other corporation are soulless but they depend on their workers and patrons and they have seen the signs - the public mood has shifted and it is time to align with the new winds of change or suffer loss of both staff and consumers. The change in the corporate mood is a sign that American sentiment has moved towards the light and the smarter and more nimble corporations are proving that reality.

The final, and most important proof that change has come, that it is now inevitable, is provided by no other than President Trump. His determination to crush the protests, his insistence on demonstration of strength stem for sheer terror on his side. He is scared, frightened that he can no longer bully the country nor gaslight them into apathy and his every move proves his weakness. When George Wallace threatened blacks during the civil rights movement, when Hosni Mubarak sent his army into the streets of Cairo, when Ferdinand Marcos did the same in Manila, when Indira Gandhi suspended the Indian parliament in 1975, when the Communist Politburo attempted a coup against Gorbachev in 1991 as the USSR crumbled, they were none of them acting as leaders secure in their position and they all fell before the strength of popular protests. Donald Trump is scared, as all those leaders were scared and his fantasies (and may they remain fantasies) of unleashing the military against American citizens stems from his knowledge of his own weakness, not matter how he may try to dress it up as strength. Strength never needs to strut and demonstrate its nature, a strong government has no fear of its own people. And in a democracy, the strength of a government derives from the support of the governed, not from the number of jack-booted stormtroopers it can line up in the streets.

Sometimes, governments manage to crush their people, as Deng Xiopeng did in Tienanmen Square. But the United States is still a democracy and I believe in the American Experiment. Despite all the damage done over the last three years, I believe in people and I believe that today a critical mass of the population has moved past sitting silently and passively while their fellow citizens suffer. And with each act of violence by the police, the case for change is made ever more clear. Perhaps Trump will survive this, perhaps the protests will dissipate, but I do not think it will be that easy. Change is coming and in the words of Viktor Lazlo (Casblanca), "This time I know we will win!"

When the night is overcome, may you rise to see the sun!

Police and Public: A Two Way Steet That's Closed

It's been over four months since the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO shone a light on a part of the American politic that most citizens would rather not face or acknowledge. Race in America is always a sensitive subject, and more importantly, certain to stir deep passions. When an unarmed young black man is shot by police, it is certain to cause great anger within his community, no matter the exact circumstances. When the shooting occurs in a Southern city, when the police of that predominantly black township is predominantly white and when the reaction on all sides seems tone-deaf at best, it would seems inevitable that trouble would follow. In the following months, more young black men were shot by police. More accurately, in the following months the press reported about more young black men who were shot by police. And this week, the next, and equally inevitable chapter was written, when two police were murdered while on duty, gunned down in cold blood by a young black man.

And yet, we have yet to acknowledge the real problems, of which all the violence and angst of these past months is but a symptom. While the New York police may blame the death of their colleagues on the rhetoric of their mayor, a bit of introspection should tell them that the badly disturbed killer was not taking his cues from Bill DiBlasio, especially when he first shot his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore before heading to New York. If anything could destroy the righteous anger of the thousands protesting peacefully, it was this senseless act, and the greatest tragedy in a tale marked by more than its share will be that protesters will now be reluctant to air their legitimate concerns and that the supporters of harsh police action will feel and act vindicated. In weeks past, athletes on the biggest TV stages made a quiet statement with mute gestures as they entered the stadium or a simple T-shirt message.

Perhaps the saddest aspect of this sordid mess has been the response of the police to these protests, or in fact any protests. The St. Louis police demanded that the Rams football team apologize for drawing attention to the fact that Michael Brown was unarmed when shot, as were the victims in so many other similar cases. The police do not understand the frustration and anger in the communities they serve and in turn feel that those protesting their actions do not appreciate the risks they face daily, every moment that they are in uniform. That is essentially the same feeling that has led to a almost juvenile behavior of the New York police, when the mindlessly lash out at the Mayor for his empathy with an unarmed man who died in a police choke hold; they ignored the equal empathy he wished to display when their fellow officers were murdered in cold blood last week, in part because they feel that his earlier criticism denies him the right to condole with them in their loss.

Like a couple in a bad marriage, both the police and the minority communities do not see each others point of view and every act is seen through a prism of distrust. Add in a racial filter and it's all too easy for the two sides to neither hear nor understand each other. In reality, all the anger has obscured an important fact: these deaths are not about race, they are not about a police force out of control, it's most certainly not about the wrong and overeager use of lethal force or prohibited choke holds. Those are all valid concerns, but they are simply symptoms of the actual underlying problems. Not surprisingly, both problems are fairly uniquely American and that in part makes them both harder to recognize and certainly far more difficult to address.

The problem starts with manpower and cost. The US has always struggled with the high cost, and shortage of, manpower and the police forces have been no exception. It's generally left fewer officers on the street than might be ideal, and police departments have always turned to technology to extend their reach with fewer personnel. We've seen police switch from foot patrols to police cruisers; in the last twenty years, most departments have switched from a pair of officers per cruiser to just the one officer in each car. This definitely extends the reach and coverage of units with limited personnel, but it exacerbates  a different problem that I will address below. However, the most obvious effect has been to create a gap between the officers and the neighborhoods they police. A modern police force, reflecting the modern view of policing, should interact with the community. Totalitarian states, echoing the concept from colonial nations of yesteryear, use their police to suppress and control their population and the police serve the ruler, not the people, but in a liberal democracy one would expect the police to live up to the idea that they serve the community. It's a concept that receives plenty of lip service (after all, nearly every department has "To protect and serve" in its motto) but without a real interaction between the groups on either side of the blue line that sentiment rings hollow. The problem goes far beyond just a lack of information on criminal activity; when the police force is insulated from the people there is a lack of empathy in both groups and a real lack of understanding of the issues that the other side faces.

Given the generally enlightened attitudes on race, so far removed from just fifty years ago, I cannot imagine that even a predominantly white police force walking the streets of an inner city populated by black people or Hispanics would be unable to reach out and develop a rapport with the people. But this can happen only if the officers can interact face to face with the people. Human interaction should never be underestimated, and it can transform the way people think about each other and the way they act. Conversely, when police and citizens are separated, there is a dehumanizing aspect - think about rap music referring to police as "pigs" - and when forced into confrontation, it is a lot easier to employ lethal force against someone that isn't really seen as a fellow human being. Once the first step of separation is taken, the gap simply widens. Today, even when one encounters police out of their cruisers, there is a lack of interaction. Given that their paths will rarely cross again, neither  the citizens nor the police make much effort to even greet each other more than perfunctorily. When police do respond to a call for their services, they tend to be professional (in the best sense) but there is a lack of human contact in the meeting; we are but statistics, mere numbers in a spreadsheet rather than people. Again, this is not a failing of the officers at a personal level - when given the chance, police officers have reacted with great warmth and sincerity - but the system in which we live today makes such events few and far between. In the end, the best chance one has to meet a police officer today is when one is a victim. Or, sadly, suspected of wrongdoing. Given the relative time we spend not in either role, it's not surprising that we barely know each other. When the only interaction between the police and people is suspected crimes, as is the case for so many young black men, it is hardly surprising that the only emotion between them is suspicion, fear, resentment and anger.

This lack of interaction plays no small role in the other major problem plaguing police-civilian relations, and as I mentioned before, this too is a quintessentially American problem: guns. Now admittedly, I am strongly in favor of gun control and naturally any case involving a shooting death will prompt me to urge greater control of firearms. It seems so self-evident to me that an overabundance of guns, coupled with ever less control on who may carry them or where they may be taken, is the greatest reason that police will react with lethal force in any confrontation. In the case of Ferguson, MO, the police officer has testified that Michael Brown lunged towards him, and he reacted instinctively to protect himself. Leaving aside the possibility that his story is not strictly true, the fact is that a police officer would be not unjustified in suspecting that every person he confronts may be armed and willing to shoot back. When police confront a person, they fear him or her, just as much as the person fears them. Just this past weekend, an officer in Flagstaff, AZ was shot dead when he responded to a domestic violence call. When an officer in Cleveland shot and killed twelve year old Tamir Rice, he was responding to a report of an "armed man"; as it turns out that was a kid with a toy (but realistic looking) gun who refused to obey an order. From the kids viewpoint nothing made sense - a police officer (who he was probably conditioned to distrust) order him to drop his gun and lie flat, as though he he some dangerous criminal. For a young kid on the cusp of becoming a teen, refusing an order would seem the most natural thing in the world. For a policeman, lacking any empathy with the boy he's confronting, who may be armed and dangerous, that refusal was enough to trigger his deadly reaction. No one was wrong and no one was right - but a child died because he had a toy gun.

The fact is police face a danger every minute they are on duty. They are alone, stripped of wingmen - costs and manpower shortages have reduced patrol cars to just one officer per vehicle - so many stops involve two and three cruisers converging on a single vehicle before the police approach. If the person stopped turns violent, the police have little chance to protect themselves from the first strike and hence they respond with measures designed to give themselves some protection, but which are humiliating for those on the receiving end. Now when you add in racial tensions, and a lack of empathy between police and civilians, every move by one is viewed through a hateful prism of distrust and even the smallest, most innocent actions are interpreted in the most negative manner possible.

These are not problems that can be solved easily. Having the same number of police per capita as say France, would involve increasing the total number of officers by fifty percent, a cost increase that is beyond unimaginable. Even were that possible, our sprawling suburbs would make foot patrols impossible and even if we had the men to walk the streets, they would find contact rare; in the inner cities, decades of distrust will not vanish overnight even if we could triple or quadruple the number of officers and worse yet would probably lead to an initial feeling of being invaded and occupied. Guns are so deep a part of American culture that removing them from the equation between police and community is not even worth a thought today. Until America awakens to the consequences of universal gun ownership, nothing will happen, and so far the attitude has pure denial. Meanwhile we will continue to send our police for more training and we will write lengthy directives on the correct protocols for employing deadly force. But our police will remain removed from the community around them, suspicion and distrust will continue and increase, and the next confrontation will end as always - in a death, that whether it's that of a child, a young adult or a police officer is just as tragic.

(On a sidenote: for those who think that more guns would reduce crime and killing consider that two armed officers of the NYPD were shot down before they or anyone else could react. Two trained police officers could not save themselves from a less than emotionally stable civilian; what chance then for a bunch of people who have never trained to react to a shooting situation?)


Some interesting links:
Today more and more police wear body armor while on duty -  http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/lpd07.pdf.
A comparison of police manpower levels around the world -     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_police_officers