ON THE SURREAL SITUATION WE FIND OURSELVES IN

ON THE SURREAL SITUATION WE FIND OURSELVES IN

by Connie Willis

The first thing I thought of when I saw the horrific police murder of George Floyd was the Salem witch trials. Most people think the innocent victims of those monstrous trials were burned at the stake, but they weren’t–they were hanged. Mostly. Fourteen women, five men, and two dogs were executed by hanging. And one, an eighty-one-year-old farmer named Giles Corey, was pressed to death by putting a large flat stone on his chest and then piling more stones on top of it till they crushed the life out of him.

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The atrocities in Salem were precipitated by a belief that Evil was loose in their community.

It was, but it didn’t reside in the helpless slaves and old women and religious dissenters (and people who dared to speak out against what was happening) who were “tried” for witchcraft and executed.

The terrible irony of Salem is that the evil they were trying so hard to stamp out resided in the pious Christian town folk who accused them and the self-righteous judges who presided over their mock trials– “spectral evidence” was allowed, and they were pronounced guilty of crimes they had supposedly committed in the town even though they were locked up in jail at the time–and sentenced them to death.

The crimes brought to light by the death of George Floyd haven’t just been the murders of other African-Americans killed by the police, but other crimes the police have committed and are committing: the brutalizing of people exercising their First Amendment rights, the calling out of troops against the citizens they’re supposed to protect, and administration officials directing them to do so, calling for violence against their own people. Crimes by so-called law-abiding citizens and the officials they’ve put in office to “serve and protect” the public.

Law enforcement agencies sent out a tweet earlier this week asking for protesters to send them videos of people committing crimes at the protests.

People did.

The videos were all of the police as they engaged in savage attacks on protesters.

As one person tweeted, only half in jest, “The call’s coming from inside the house.”

It is, indeed, and for the last two weeks we’ve all watched in horror and disbelief as we witnessed things we never thought we’d ever see happen:

–a man being murdered ON TAPE by a police officer with his hand in his pocket
–police cars driving straight into a crowd of protesters, just like at Charlottesville, only this time it was the police doing it
–officers pushing a 75-year-old man down to the ground and leaving him there, bleeding from his ear, and then lying about what happened, claiming he had “tripped” (what really happened is right there on video)
–police dragging a couple from their car and tasing them
–an Indianapolis cop groping a female protester and beating her with a baton, and then, when she tried to get away from him, shouting to his fellow officers to “Hit her! Hit her!” and holding her as they shot her with pepper balls at close range
–National Guard troops unleashing tear gas and explosives on clergy and peaceful protesters to send them fleeing so the President could have his photo taken in front of a church
–troops knocking down journalists, arresting them, and shooting them with rubber bullets while they were trying to report on the protests
–barricades and fences going up around the White House (which actually belongs to us)
–military trucks and armored Humvees rolling down the streets of the nation’s capital
–helicopters buzzing protesters just like they did terrorists in Fallujah
–troops in riot gear standing three-deep in front of the Lincoln Memorial and looking exactly like stormtroopers
–the President of the United States threatening protesters with “ominous weapons” and “the most vicious dogs” (which immediately evoked memories of Civil Rights marchers in the Sixties being attacked by dogs and having fire hoses turned on them)

And in the middle of all this, Senator Rand Paul blocking the passage of an anti-lynching bill in the Senate.

Senator Paul said he was against the bill because the language was “too broad.”

Well, it needs to broad.

Broad enough to include:
–murdering someone by kneeling on their neck for eight minutes and forty seconds
–chasing down a jogger and shooting him ON FILM
–chaining a homeless black man to the back of a truck and dragging him behind it till he dies
–asking a motorist for his ID and then shooting him when he reaches for his wallet
–shooting a teenager walking home from the store where he’d bought Skittles and a Coke
–gunning down a deli worker for selling cigarettes on the street
–shooting a woman EIGHT TIMES as she lay in bed while searching for suspects who were already in jail
–shackling a man in the back of a police van and then driving around till his spine severed
–and shooting a black shopkeeper THREE DAYS AGO (the officers who did it–oops, accidentally had their body cameras turned off.)

I am, like all those protesters jamming the streets and all those athletes and movie stars and generals speaking out, beyond outrage at the rank injustice of what’s happening and the callous response of elected officials. And beyond fury at President Trump, who constantly fans the flames of the violence and cruelty we’re seeing, quoting a police chief who threatened Civil Rights marchers with shotguns and told them, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” warning governors that if they don’t “crack down” on the protesters, he’ll send in “thousands of heavily armed soldiers” and “solve their problem for them,” threatening to unleash “the unlimited power of the military” on us.

Oh, my God, they’re right.
The call’s coming from inside the house.

Just like it was in Salem.

Salem is now remembered as a terrifying and shameful example of what happens when societies abuse their power and give way to their fear and hatred.

And if we don’t all stand up and speak out now, we risk becoming just like Salem, a symbol of cruelty and madness and rampant injustice.

And evil.

#BlackLivesMatter