The Summer of 2020 Is Going to Be Long, Violent, and Necessary

While the brutal deaths of Black people are often the drumbeat of American life, this specific tone is deafening.

Protesters move a wooden cask together into a fire in an attempt to burn down the Minneapolis 3rd police precinct after riots broke out all over the Twin Cities over the police killing of George Floyd. Chris Juhn/Zuma

The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

For nearly a week, protesters have taken to the streets in dozens of American cities. It’s a swelling of outrage and, thanks largely to militarized police forces, violence not seen in the United States since 1968, when a confluence of very preventable events—the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., escalation of the war in Vietnam, a bitter presidential election—pushed nearly anyone with a political conscience into physical action.

The specific circumstances of today’s unrest are different, and arguably more heartbreaking. In the first several months of 2020, at least a handful of Black people have been wantonly killed by police or white vigilantes. Ahmaud Arbery was jogging around his Brunswick, Georgia, neighborhood when white men chased him down in a pickup truck and shot him multiple times. Breonna Taylor was sleeping in her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment when cops executing a no-knock search warrant barged into her home. George Floyd was confronted by police in Minneapolis and effectively choked to death as an officer knelt down on his neck before a crowd of onlookers. Tony McDade was shot to death by an officer in Tallahassee, Florida.

While the violent deaths of Black people are often the drumbeat of American life, this specific tone is deafening. Converging at the same time, of course, is the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 100,000 people in America. Black communities have borne a disproportionate number of those deaths. A months-long lockdown has effectively shuttered the American economy and 40 million people have filed for unemployment. Stay-at-home orders issued by mayors and governors across the country to slow the spread of the virus have also had the unintended but inevitable effect of plunging even privileged people with safe homes and steady jobs to the brink of mental crisis. That’s to say nothing of the desperation felt by people without those safe homes or steady jobs.

I could keep listing the awful things, but I won’t. On some level, every one of us is stuck in our own private world of controlled chaos. To be human now is to be isolated, uncertain, and scared. It’s no wonder that so many people have taken to the streets. Outrage is a unifying emotion. It’s intimate and collective.

Listen to this essay, and more protest reporting from across the country, on this week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast:

Not even the bleakest of pessimists could have anticipated that the first term of Donald Trump’s presidency would end just like this. But don’t pretend any of this is a surprise. For three and a half years the president of the United States has used outright racism as a rallying call, baiting his followers to act. And they have. The seemingly small actions at barbecues and of bird watching had to inevitably lead to something larger. I was in a near catatonic state this weekend when I thought about reading James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time to write this piece, but I was too dejected to do it. Instead, one line from Mos Def’s 1999 Black on Both Sides kept playing in my head: “Why did one straw break the camel’s back? Here’s the secret: the million other straws underneath it.”          

America’s long, violent summer has begun. Buildings will burn and people will die because people have been dying—in their homes, at local hospitals, and in detention centers. It would be naive and downright dangerous to expect anything different. 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate