Police, Protests, and Political Change in the United States
A series of reflections from May 2020
SUMMARY: Social media and protests are only effective in certain ways and under certain conditions as means to the end of changing our political system and are much more effective when they're motivated by a coherent programme of policy goals. The protest movement as it's currently constituted risks taking to the streets and inflaming public sentiment while changing nothing. If a hierarchical movement with concrete political change as its organizing principle doesn't emerge we might see the focus on this issue fade (as it will, eventually) until the next deplorable video emerges. This cycle has been playing out for years in this country with little tangible progress.
To anyone that is reading this more or less contemporaneously to my writing my motives in writing this and its application must seem clear. Of course I draft this in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbury and others and it is (partly) directed at the thousands of Americans that have taken to the streets to demand change. Some may read more into what I DON'T write about here than what I do. I do not address the issue of police brutality in the United States or the public policies that would best address the issue. I don't address the intersection between racism and police misconduct. I certainly don't explain the actual events, what seemed to happen and what the relevant laws might say or what the outcomes might be and their effects on American society. Some might think I have nothing to say – no opinion – on these matters. I've watched the videos (where they exist) and I have strong opinions on race, police brutality, and the applicable laws governing police conduct. The fact that I chose NOT to write about those things is simply a reflection of my belief that: 1.) there is enough awareness and public feeling surrounding the issue to instigate change, if properly focused, and 2.) meaningful change will only come if the mass energy currently on display is funneled into productive channels, using the history of political change in the United States as a guide. This is NOT a discussion of what those changes should be. This paper is purely about how to create political change in the abstract. It is an advice piece for frustrated citizens that feel unheard and neglected using my own understanding of modern American history and political science as a basis for analyzing how lasting change might be made in a certain direction. That is all.
Is social media a helpful conduit for change in American society?
Social media can be a powerful medium for sharing information and expressing beliefs. In purely cultural (memetic) matters social media can bring issues to the fore and even inform users in a meaningful way. Police misconduct and the attendant dangers for American citizens has always been an issue and has slowly grown in importance during the past decade. This is largely due to the changing media environment. It is a profound (if sometimes depressing) fact that one deplorable video can raise the importance of an issue in the public's perception more than the dedicated work of thousands of commentators, legislators, and political scientists. The video of Eric Garner and the story of Trayvon Martin seemed to arouse passions (for a time) and focus attention but with the deaths in the past weeks of several more black Americans, culminating in the video of the murder of Goerge Floyd, feeling has reached a fever pitch. This seems to be a unique opportunity to affect change in this area and that's why I write this.
Our political system is a structure of power and the only way to surely and predictably change the system is to change the structure. This is my main theme here. Social media (and other mechanisms for exerting influence) can have indirect effects on the system but without a change in legislators, executives, judges, laws, or policy we cannot ensure that the change will be real and lasting. Social media posts and Twitter hashtags only affect the political system indirectly, by changing the concerns of voters and affecting the flow of money to candidates, which then alters the composition of legislatures and affects the personalities and priorities of those that occupy executive office. Money and votes are the currency of American political change. To emphasize my point, consider the following for a moment: Black Lives Matter has been extant for years and arguably has never been stronger in views or support than it is now. Yet what have they changed? What elections have they determined? What laws have been passed? What trials have seen their outcomes swayed by this movement? (Note: the relationship between trials and public sentiment should NOT be the same in a democracy as that between public sentiment and laws themselves. Trying to influence judges and jurors is a mch more fraught and ethically questionable proposition than trying to influence the priorities of politicians. I discuss this at greater length in the section below: 'The Legal System and Public Sentiment'). Arguably, certain police commissioners have become more sensitive to the movement's concerns and there may have been changes in training procedures. Body Cameras are more widespread. The focus of certain people (even leaders) within the system is often only meaningful in avoiding controversy, however, and not in fostering real change. Many of the notable incidents of police violence in the recent past have been extensively captured on video, as well, and it didn't deter the police from using force or ensure their punishment in the event. I believe that if Black Lives Matter moved beyond the realms of Twitter and Facebook and began promoting legal reforms, raising money, and endorsing (or opposing) certain candidates their reach could truly be awesome. Why have they not? Partly I think it's because their users tend to be disproportionately young (typical of social media phenomena- see the section on 'Youth and Political Change') and partly it's because of the nature of social media.
Social media generally pursues a no-cost model for the user, instead generating revenue by selling advertisements to buyers and (increasingly) by monetizing their vast store of user data to predict purchases, political participation, and other social activities that involve financial activity. For both of these revenue generators, the trend is clear: more user attention and engagement leads to more ad viewing and more data to be collected. It didn't take the companies (and there are few-this is truly an oligopoly) long to realize that no human emotion (not love, not admiration, not envy-all traditional emotional levers used by advertisers) was as powerful in drawing in users as anger. For those who wish to read more about this (especially how this fact was exploited by Russia in its bid to influence American elections by fracturing the culture) it was covered (incompletely and controversially) in open Congressional hearings in 2017 and written about (and spoken about in some excellent podcasts) by Renee DiResta and many others. In a sense, then, social media is a ready-made medium for events like the killing of Mr. Floyd. It is a reliable way to spread content and generate anger around issues. Most people seem to stop there. This is my great and enduring criticism of the 'social media as tool for change' stance. Social media gives a feeling of discourse, and participation, and emotional investment for the user, but often little else. It seems entirely possible to me that social media might be doing more harm than good on certain issues by (sometimes) spreading misinformation and by creating an illusion of civic participation but actually fostering cynicism and complacency towards the tried and true methods for effecting political change: voting, fund-raising, lobbying, and organizing.
Social media was a much-praised element of the victorious Obama presidential campaign in 2015-2016. The covert use of the personal data millions of users by (the now disbanded) Cambridge Analytica was an even more important (if secretive) feature of the Trump campaign in 2019-2020. I think it's probably the case that the MOST effective manner to create change (in this area or another) would be a combination of social media and more traditional avenues of political organization. I'm not well-versed enough on the dynamics of social media (I still don't know how to create an Instagram story, for instance) or the details of the American political system to propose the precise combination that would yield the best results; I imagine it depends on the issue involved and the citizens' goals. Using social media to make people around the country aware of an issue and to arouse passion is obviously a winning strategy. It's also effective in gauging the popular mood, day to day, and organizing events and generating contact lists. I'm 100% certain that the potential capabilities of the medium stretch far beyond this, and that I simply don't understand them. For political social-media initiatives to have maximum effect, though, they should observe a few general principles:
1.) Build your movement around an issue and a platform – don't just get people to care; suggest what should be done about it and make your proposals simple, few, and politically feasible.
2.) Focus on politicians – they are notoriously fickle in their public pronouncements, and that's why it is important to know exactly what changes you want your movement to make. If they don't act toward this, then social media can be used to advertise their unreliability and build opposition, either within their party (during a primary election) or across party lines (in a general election).
3.) Money trumps votes – the turnout for state and local elections is depressingly low. Even 5% of the constituents in a given district can be crucial in such an election's outcome but even more influential than votes is money. National congresspeople spend more time (approximately 80% currently, by some estimates) raising funds and building financial support than ever before and the trend is only deepening.
If Black Lives Matter (BLM) and other social media-based movements truly want to prompt change they should begin molding their movement into a traditional political advocacy organization. They will lose some support in the virtual space and they will lose flexibility but, again, affecting a change in public policy is the only reliable way to change the behavior of police and their relationship with citizens.
A Note on Cultural Shifts:
Careful readers might already have formed objections to this theme. One particularly compelling counter-idea is the paradigm of cultural change. One could make the argument that racism is a cultural phenomenon and therefore a medium that tracks and shapes the culture more dynamically and powerfully than any medium before (and social media is certainly such a medium) is the proper forum for action in this area. I want to reiterate my belief that social media can cause real and even fast social change. That change can only be reflected in the power structure when laws change, though.
For example, the stance towards homosexuality has probably changed more quickly than any cultural attitude in the United States. Twenty years ago, a solid majority were against the right of gay people to marry their partners. By now an even more solid majority supports that right and it's the law of the land, thanks to the Obergefell v. Hodges decision (2015) in the U.S. Supreme Court. Until 2012 a progressive community organizer and Illinois legislator named Barack Obama was publicly opposed to legalizing marriage for same sex couples. The jarring memory of that fact barely eight years later emphasizes the progress our country has made in this area. There are many factors that contributed to the public's belief shift on this issue and I think it's a fact that a large (if unstated) reason the Supreme Court ruled as they did was because they saw the direction our society was headed and (graciously) wanted law to reflect society or (cynically) didn't want to be remembered by history as legalistic bigots.
If the changing social attitudes preceded the court's decision and if social media is a catalyst to those changes, isn't social media an effective platform for policy changes? To that question I would pose a few cautions. One is that it took decades of public debate and the development of other contributing factors (the decline of religiosity in the U.S., the attendant stigma towards sexual puritanism, years of work by focused and organized political advocacy organizations like what I'm recommending here) before we saw change. The second is, of course, that real change only emerged with the court's reinterpretation of the Constitution. The attitude shift of the public was a necessary but not a sufficient condition for real political change. If the phenomenon had stayed in the realm of social media and general public discourse same-sex couples would still be barred from marriage. No matter how much public attitude shifts in recognizing racism and police violence as problems those shifts will not provide consistent protections for citizens until they're encoded in enforceable and enforced laws.
Youth and Political Change
I think it's a good assumption that many of the protest movements that have emerged in the past decade are social media-based (Black Lives Matter, Me Too, Occupy Wall Street, et. al.) because young people engage highly with the medium. Youth-centered movements for political change have certain tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses (totally aside from the factor of social media). We can debate my characterization but please try to keep in mind that the generalizations I'm about to make are abstractions and may apply only partly to Black Lives Matter. When you read the paragraphs below do you think they're relevant? Or do you think I've mischaracterized the movement? I'd like to hear your thoughts.
Young people see the world differently. Some of that is neurochemistry, some is a function of the different social roles and expectations of young people, some (perhaps most, in the view of older people) is due to their relative lack of experience. Their perspective relates to politics in the following ways: they are more likely to moralize and be absolutist in their stance (i.e., dissenters aren't just wrong, they're evil and compromise is simply caving to evil); they value idealism over pragmatism; they are suspicious of authority (since authority generally correlates positively with age).
As an example of this last item consider U.S. history in the late 1960's and early 1970's. During this period dissent for the Vietnam war became popular among (generally) young and liberal citizens, before moving into the mainstream. There were a number of political movements birthed during this time (or within a decade of it): the Black Panther Party, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Youth International Party ('Yippies'). They were all countercultural political initiatives in which young people had leading roles (sometimes nearly exclusively) and this was because of the feeling among young people that older America had compromised ethics in pursuit of money and power. There was a generational divide in interests and perspectives, it was felt, and older citizens couldn't usually be trusted to act in the name of racial justice, or true democracy, or young people around the world. Astute readers might notice something else about these movements and other 'Nixon-era' initiatives: they barely exist any more. Whether it's political youth organizing in the Baby Boomer-era United States, the student revolts in Paris in 1968, or the Cultural Revolution in Mao's China, youth-based movements have a persistent tendency to value enthusiasm over organization, purity over compromise, and idealism over pragmatism. They can change the world, but often in unpredictable and even counter-productive ways and they are difficult to control or maintain in the mid- or long-term.
The Legal System and Public Sentiment
In the past few weeks people have taken to the streets to protest what is widely seen as a problem. While I worry that outrage will fade without reform happening, leading to greater levels of political disaffection, I grant that this is a unique opportunity to effect change on an important issue. I think it's fairly clear that the District Attorney in Minneapolis has made additional arrests and is treating these cases very differently due to the huge degree of public exposure generated by social media and the protests. In this case, then, public pressure may very well serve justice.
We should be careful about pushing our legal system too often to obey the desires of the public, though, even when the cause seems righteous. Laws should be drafted to serve the public interest but, once drafted, the system should operate consistently and objectively without regard to race, belief, or popularity. That's often a fantasy, I realize. It wasn't long ago that racist public sentiment and its starkly prejudicial and toxic effects on trials and sentences (and its alternate manifestation in mob violence and vigilante justice) was the dread of black Americans nationwide. I saw a black man recently comment on an article announcing the arrest of the police implicated in Mr Floyd's death. He advocated the abandonment of trial justice altogether and the swift and public execution of the police involved. When your cause seems just that's often a satisfying thought. When the public perception is inaccurate or you or those you care about are the ones condemned by the public, though, your perspective will shift suddenly. In 'A Theory of Justice' John Rawls essentially writes that the most ethical perspective to assume when deciding laws or state policies is to assume you are totally blind as to your position in the society (you should view the laws' effects from multiple perspectives, behind a 'veil of ignorance'). In trying to guarantee all citizens access to counsel and fair trials we are promoting that idea and, while an abstraction, it's a just one and an ideal to strive for. If you believe that your community is underserved or victimized by the justice system the answer cannot be the abandonment of the ideal of justice altogether in favor of vigilante justice. It can only be more and better justice.
General Recommendations (A Conclusion)
It's difficult for me to avoid cynicism. It's partly my nature, and it's partly a reaction to current events. I see professional athletes kneeling during the National Anthem (which I'm not offended by and firmly believe is the right of any American to do), yet if just one of them hired a political operative and started a PAC and enlisted his wealthy friends to rally public support and donate a small fraction of their incomes they could effect profound and lasting change in cities across America. Police misconduct has been a controversial and important issue for years, yet because one shocking video is released (after many other shocking videos, over years) every celebrity and corporation pays lip service to the cause, posting content and issuing public statements that accomplish very little, add nothing to the debate, and merely (from my view) send a signal to all comers: 'Look! I care! I'm on the right side of this!'. To be clear, I'm not opposed to anyone making public statements on any topic and it contributes something to the cause to express unanimity of support. But these are (mosly) people who apparently didn't care enough (even in the aftermath of the death of Ahmad Arbury, before the video of Mr. Floyd's murder went viral) to make statements and, more importantly, these are people with vast collective resources, beyond their digital platforms. I don't doubt that most of them feel upset about the video and I don't doubt that they would support reforms of the issue if it cost them very little personally. I also don't believe that this is a moral or courageous stance, though. There's no risk and little value in taking a stand on an issue that most other people already know of and feel strongly about, especially when your energy and resources could promote real reform and you choose not to devote them. Celebrities are primarily concerned with their careers and self-promotion. Companies are concerned with profits and their shareholders. They generally will only make statements when those goods aren't threatened and I think they should be honest about this. I don't believe that athletes that sacrifice nothing to kneel during the national anthem are making a brave gesture. If their jobs or sponsorships were at risk I would feel differently, but in that case how many would be doing it? Pat Tillman was a professional athlete and a hero. In this age of relentless self-promotion we should recognize the difference. It is possible to be brave in defense of the victimized in the United States but it requires sacrifice. There can be no courage without the possibility of personal loss.
This is all leaving aside the issue that race is only distantly related to the problem that is being highlighted, and the scale and nature of racism’s intersection with policing is badly misunderstood. If police misconduct is an issue then we should object to all of it. BLM seems grimly committed to making racism the issue, which means that the (mostly) white victims of police misconduct are ignored and every advertised collision of a black citizen with police is seen through a particular lens, which CANNOT apply in each case (and, I would arguse, applies in very few). This is something I’ve written about at length elsewhere.
What can be done? If social media is only (sometimes) a contributor to change and BLM is a stagnant and inchoate movement, what should people do?
Vote – The one opportunity all citizens have to affect our system is through the ballot box. Presidential election turnouts hover around 50%. Congressional elections are somewhat less and primary, state, and local elections are less still. If all the protestors did not take to the streets but instead voted on this issue primarily or exclusively we would see radical political reform in this country within two years. Obviously there's no reason people can't protest AND vote. If you're dissatisfied enough to demonstrate, then vote. Your potential influence is potentially THOUSANDS of times greater in state and local elections than in presidential ones and these are the layers of government that most closely govern most laws and influence police hiring and training procedures.
Donate – money speaks louder than votes. Find an effective political movement (or start one-anyone can) and contribute towards its goals. The NRA has influence on voting patterns but arguably its main source of power comes from funding the campaigns of friendly legislators. If millions of people use their money instead of just their voice or social media profiles to support candidates that are deeply concerned about this issue you will see MANY more candidates become concerned about the issue, nearly overnight.
Educate Yourself and Others - If you haven't read material about this or other issues (from reputable, scientific sources) and you have decided what you think about the problem on the basis of a few videos online you simply will not be as effective as a political thinker and advocate. This is also not a substitute to protest-it's a useful addition to it. Don't just pursue thinkers and publications that support your predetermined biases. Challenge yourself. When you have such a deep understanding that you can state the position of ideological opponents with more succinctness and profundity than they themselves AND you hold a position you'll be ready to engage publicly with this and other issues.
Act in Support of Larger and Measurable Goals, Not to Satisfy Emotion – this is the basic message of this long document. I agree police brutality is bad. I also agree that childhood malnutrition is bad, and genocide, and viral infections. I'm not aware of any protests around the latter three items and it's not because they aren't widely opposed. People recognize that protest must be used FOR something but if they're not focused and based on a larger strategy protests will often be ultimately ignored by policy makers.
Examine History in Deciding How to Protest – I have opinions on the relative value of peaceful protests, civil disobedience, and violence (which includes destruction of property). Depending on the society any one of these methods could be optimal. Generally it's some combination. A general observation, though: even in culturally racist societies, if there is a measure of goodwill and compassion in the average citizen, the moral high ground can be a powerful position to occupy. To spur change it's often necessary to provoke power to react violently but if you can consistently occupy a victim's role you can push the issue to the fore for a domestic (as happened in the sit-in protests and peaceful demonstrations in the Jim Crow-era South) or international (as happened in the actions against Apartheid in South Africa) audience and arouse formrly complacent people to care and support your cause, even privately. This is unsatisfying to those who are already protesting what they see as unjust violence, but, as a protest organizer, it's your choice: do you want catharsis and a chance to vent or do you want change? Sometimes no civil action is sufficient (often when the society is so repressive or united against your movement that no significant sympathy can be gained or, once gained, cannot be effective). This is the case for the Rohignya in Myanmar or was for the Jews or Communists in Nazi Germany. I don't believe our system is so broken or misdirected that revolution would be an effective solution for anybody. Even if you disagree, your position should still be informed by a careful reading of history and an acknowledgement of the progress we’ve already made.