The peaceful moat that is the Atlanta Way was forcefully breached Friday night. As the world watched, the City Too Busy to Hate recoiled at endemic frustrations igniting on downtown streets.
Vandals set fire to police cars, thieves smashed windows and a smattering of opportunistic looters substituted thievery for the well-intentioned pursuit of the best of American ideals. And the entire globe witnessed an upheaval that many Atlantans had labored and sacrificed greatly to keep from our midst.
The at-times violent, and largely discordant and disorganized bedlam downtown is of a piece with current national events. It’s unrealistic in hindsight to believe that the vaunted Atlanta Way of co-existence and pursuit of peaceful change could have fully shielded us from the anger and rancor that’s engulfed for now much of the ideal we sum up as the American Way.
At this point, the largest patch of common ground in America may be that rage and bitterness are the broadest attribute we collectively hold at this moment. It threatens to make the “United” in our country’s full name an ironically bitter afterthought. Pointing fingers at each other will only widen the divides.
We have lost the ability to hear each other, to be empathetic with others’ individual and collective situations and stations in life. That is a dangerous land for any nation to occupy – and especially so for one as diverse in viewpoints and ethnicity as today’s America. Despite what some may wish, our diversity isn’t a dirty word or a bad thing – nor is it likely to change in any of our lifetimes.
So it should be no surprise that America’s streets – and Atlanta’s — are echoing loudly now with booming calls for change. There is ample justification for peaceful protests, we believe. Thanks to modern technology, the reasons can be seen in videos of the violent episodes that have taken the lives of black men and women, seemingly without any sound reason. A suffocating knee to the neck in Minnesota or deadly blast from a shotgun on a Georgia road are only two of the latest examples of an American history that has been marked across centuries by a long ledger of appalling murders of African-Americans and, yes, others who also fell victim while trying to bring the best of America’s promise to life for all. The list of even the most-recent of these episodes is too long to repeat here.
Scripture and common sense both attest to the truth that a house divided cannot stand. Atlanta’s most famous son posed an important question in this regard a half-century ago. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., in a 1967 speech, rhetorically asked, “Where do we go from here?”
His answer in part was this: “Now in order to answer the question, ‘Where do we go from here?’ … we must first honestly recognize where we are now.”
Indeed we must, as Atlanta and this nation reel through tumult of a level not seen in decades, if not a century.
The dominant and driving cause behind the demonstrations now on America’s streets is a hunger and demand for justice against what appear by every reasonable measure to be unjust killings of African-Americans, either by law enforcement officers, or those who apparently feel privileged enough to cravenly employ lethal force with the belief that legal repercussions will not be forthcoming. The tortured history of race relations in America provides substantial reasons for that ill-guided faith.
The unacceptable actions of looters and other associated common criminals should not be allowed to distract attention from the just cause of pursuing equal protection under the law for anyone of any color. Laws can be applied more effectively and rapidly against petty street thieves than they have been to date toward those who’ve committed the homicides that have driven protesters to act.
In another, passionate speech in Michigan only three weeks before an assassin’s bullet killed him, King famously remarked “that a riot is the language of the unheard.” He then said, “And what is it that America has failed to hear?” “It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met.”
His penetrating remarks frightened many – then and, no doubt still to this day. King’s words were prophetic in that they eerily echo today, even down to the sailor who interrupted the 1968 speech, saying that “he didn’t fight for communism, traitors and I didn’t fight to be sold down the drain.” Those sentiments are still hurled today in Tweets and other commentary marked more by angry accusation than any attempt at civil discourse or gaining mutual understanding.
As he moved toward his conclusion, King spoke a truth that is essential if America is to endure this latest civil storm. He said this nation somehow had to “come to see that however much we dislike it, the destinies of white and black America are tied together.”
King was right on that point. And Americans on all sides must come to realize that.
That is especially true for the young people who’re taking to the streets in scattershot efforts to assume the vanguard of leadership in pushing for still-necessary change.
All Americans should know that protesting for a just cause is a thread running fully across and through our national fabric. It is evident in the Declaration of Independence that led to a war for freedom from British domination. It was the backbone of a bloody Civil War fought on our Southern soil, as well as the Civil Rights Movement that came nearly a century later.
We hope that those behind today’s social media-organized protests can fully study and embrace our common history and better empower its lessons as they continue to agitate – peacefully yet forcefully – for change. History holds knowledge, and as the saying goes, knowledge is power.
It’s worth noting, as non-preachily as we can, that the civil rights lions of yore who changed the world didn’t do so by smashing windows and making off with armfuls of stolen clothing and liquor. We believe that’s a minority of those of all colors who’ve taken to the streets now to demand justice and change. But we also know that bad actors can draw the most attention, and thereby introduce dysfunctional static that acts against clearly hearing what must be both said – and heard — by all sides.
The activists of past generations – they were called “radicals” then, too – for a long time managed to largely police their ranks on the streets where it counted. That kept the focus on their big picture of non-violently pursuing change by winning over hearts and minds.
It’s important to note that last week’s protesters abused a sympathetic mayor and police chief. Given the latitude to conduct a peaceful march, the protests turned senselessly violent, even after police endured obvious baiting. Now law enforcement can no longer be so tolerant and must attend to one of their foremost duties – to protect citizens, their property and their businesses – and keep protests from turning violent again.
The nonviolent warriors of 50 years ago achieved lasting change the time-tested way, by being organized to a fault, tightly disciplined and brave in the face of a system that literally posed a very real threat to their personal safety. In multiple instances, they willingly paid for our freedom with their own lives. Their sacrifices large and small crafted a better America for us all.
In their work, the Civil Rights Movement’s activists outsmarted segregationist opponents at every turn, using brilliant tactics to nonviolently disarm a culture quick to deploy an often-insincere, “aw shucks” Southern gentility that thinly cloaked a system of legal inequality that was readily willing to use violence, or threat of same, to maintain an unjust status quo.
Using tactics that were above reproach, these leaders and ordinary people changed America and the world it leads in a positive way.
That is the task and ideal still before those now taking to the nation’s streets. Reaching the next level of America’s awesome potential for us all remains an incomplete work. Doing so peacefully and energetically should be the North Star that guides them – and the rest of us.
It is the best, and most-effective, path forward. We should all take it.
The Editorial Board.
About the Author
