By the time 2014 rolled around many Americans were still fuming over the killing of Treyvon Martin in Florida and the 2013 acquittal of the man who shot him. As 2014 comes to a close that simmering anger had exploded into ongoing street protests, demands to reform the grand jury system, and a major racial and ideological divide in the country over the perception and reality of racism and police violence.
“A series of events all year has led up to where we are today,” said Michael Curry, the head of the Boston NAACP. Be recalls that the first of this year’s racial fires were set in April by NBA basketball team owner Donald Sterling. The LA Clippers former chief executive told his bi-racial girlfriend in a secretly recorded meeting not to bring her black boyfriends to the games, including former LA Laker’s star, Magic Johnson.
“You can do what ever you want with them. You can sleep with them You can bring them in. You can do whatever you want. The little I ask is not to promote it and not to bring them to my games. “
And what had been a private conversation turned into a public debate about race in which President Obama chimed in.
“When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance you don’t really have to do anything. You just let them talk.”
In July, the racial flames of 2014 were stoked further when a Staten Island, New York, policeman was caught on video choking an African American man to death.
Eric Garner’s last words, “I can’t breath”, would be repeated at protests here in Massachusetts and nationwide in the weeks that followed. Racial tensions turned to violence in August in a town few had ever heard of: Ferguson, Missouri. A white policeman, Darren Wilson, shot 18-year old Michael Brown six times, even though—according to most witness accounts—Brown was in the process of surrendering. Wilson said that Brown rushed him. Large peaceful protests followed. A much smaller group resorted to violence and looting. Ferguson and St. Louis police arriving on the scene were compared to an occupation force, driving military vehicles and dressed more like soldiers than cops.
Whatever the facts of the Brown and Garner cases they were interpreted by grand juries in both officers’ favor. Meanwhile, the killings of unarmed African-Americans in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Texas also failed to produce indictments against police officers.
“We’ve had a spate of police shootings in America,” said Michael Sussman, an attorney for the family of Danroy "DJ" Henry Jr., from Easton, who was killed by a cop four years ago in suburban New York. Sussman said non-indictments in such cases are an indictment of the grand jury system itself.
“I think one of the great lessons of these shootings is that local law enforcement officials—district attorneys office—are then left as with the Staten Island case with Mr. Garner to prosecute police officers with whom they work on a daily basis and whose credibility they must elevate to do their own jobs. Accordingly, there is an inherently institutional conflict between the role of the district attorney as prosecutor of numerous crimes and the role of the district attorney as the prosecutor of police officers who have committed serious crimes.”
Sussman and many others say special prosecutors should be appointed in such cases. That is a central demand of an opposition movement against police killings of unarmed black men that took shape in 2014 called Black Lives Matter.
The ACLU REPORT and Stop and Frisk
Closer to home, the Boston police came in for criticism in October from the ACLU, which released a report alleging that vastly disproportionate numbers of black and brown youth were stopped and frisked by police —often without cause—between 2007 and 2010. Police Commissioner William Evans rejected the implications of the report and pushed back.
Some Black Lives Matter demonstrators at the recent Christmas tree lighting in Boston chanted "no justice, no peace" as a line of police lined the park area. Some in the crowd –voicing an opinion of many in the US—shouted back at the demonstrators with one man angrily denouncing the protestors as “frauds”.
Race, Youth and Immigration
Immigration was also a flash point issue this year, which provoked ethnic and racial fears and near hysteria. Over the summer it was learned that nearly 60,000, unaccompanied Central American youth crossing into the US from Mexico had been detained and more were coming. Conservatives staged demonstrations from Murrieta, California to Bourne, Massachusetts opposing plans to shelter some of the undocumented youth.
Governor Deval Patrick backed away from his offer of temporary housing in the state. And in September, President Obama delayed an executive order permitting up to 5 million undocumented immigrants to remain in the US legally. Democrats in tight US Senate races had expressed fear that the President’s action would upend their campaigns. But the delay also succeeded in dampening Latino voter turnout in swing states like Colorado, where the Democratic incumbent was soundly defeated. When Obama finally announced the plan in October it was greeted enthusiastically in Massachusetts, but not by everyone:
“It is going to be hurtful to the people of Massachusetts," said Republican State Representative Shaunna O'Connell. "Gridlock does not justify ignoring the constitution and the will of the votes and I think the voters made a statement when they put Republicans in charge of the Senate and kept them in charge of the House,” She added that the President’s immigration order would lead to a rise in crime in Massachusetts.
“We’re going to see people convicted of crimes receiving amnesty.”
Frank Soults with the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition said such fears are unfounded.
“It’s so important to stress that this is not what opponents are calling amnesty.”
He said that many of the state’s estimated 150 thousand undocumented immigrants will qualify for deferred deportation. They will also pay taxes and fees. “But then they will not be guaranteed permanent status.”
And Julio Ricardo Verela of Latino Rebels believes that anti-Hispanic bigotry is at the heart of opposition to current efforts to assist undocumented immigrants living in the USA. “We do a lot with politicians that really have gone over the top… comparing immigrants to dogs, and there’s just so many stories.”
Time for a Conversation on Race
Tensions around race dominated headlines all year. And 2014 ends with the killing of two cops—Latino and Asian—by a clinically diagnosed mentally unstable man claiming revenge in the names of African-Americans killed by white cops. But at closer inspection, the murders—reflecting the triggerman’s mental history-- were spurred by hatred of a class of people, and of himself, it seems.
Race is the issue this year, says Michael Curry of the Boston NAACP. Curry analogizes the current tensions in the US to the simmering feuds within a dysfunctional family. Now, says Curry, everyone is forced to have a conversation long ignored:
“We haven’t had the kind of dialog that surrounds a broken police practice that racially profiles, that stops and frisks, that views us as devils and demons and violent offenders, and this is forcing the family to have a very very difficult conversation, a long over due conversation.”
