America desperately needs heroes. It always has and it seems that it always will and when those heroes don’t present themselves through good deed or spectacular performance we tend to create them. Such is the case in our current racial upheavals in State Island, New York and Ferguson, Missouri.
Two acts of what was quite possibly murder have been used as catalysts for what some consider as a long overdue eruption of anger over the conduct of our various police departments and their treatment of minorities and maybe just the public in general across the nation. There have been demonstrations, there have been police reprisals, there have been acts of violence on both sides but mainly on the part of the police but there has mostly been orderly demonstration and finally a sense that the way to handle things is for the police to back off. But that is usually the death knell for protest. The result: a point unmade.
Anyone who has ever been involved in running a protest knows that the only way for it to be successful is for the authorities to overreact to it or for it to have a charismatic leader or hero who can lead or inspire the crowd. Without at least one of those elements, two is usually better, all protest dies the death of ennui. All good protest leaders know this. The leaders in Ferguson thought they had it happening when the police mobilized like the First Airborne to repel the ranks of “bloodthirsty” demonstrators and a few of the more unruly demonstrators threw rocks and looted stores but cooler heads soon prevailed and things quieted down. Just what nobody wanted.
Someone had the intelligence to tell Missouri’s brain dead governor to pull out the National Guard, a black cop, Captain Ron Johnson, took over the crowd control duties and knew what he was doing and some of the more moral leaders of the demonstrations were driven by altruistic goals to stop those among them that were more bent on ranting hatred than objecting to murder. That was good wasn’t it? Sure, unless you’re trying to make a point that gets face time on national TV.
So here they were the Al Sharptonites, with a great cause and a dying demonstration but they still weren’t whupped. They still had two rabbits in their hats, two carefully manufactured heroes they could sell to the always gullible public. Two dead punks who couldn’t say the wrong thing, couldn’t stupidly do something else wrong. And so the heroic images of Eric Gardner and Michael Brown were created out of whole cloth. Saturday in Ferguson the high school that Brown attended is having a football game in his honor. The fact that he went out for the football team, made it and then quit, possibly because there were too many guys his size who he couldn’t push around has nothing to do with his imminent sainthood. The video of Michael Brown bullying a guy a third his size and stealing from him has nothing to do with his projected canonization. The movement needs a saint. He was a gentle giant or so says Al (the mouth that roars) Sharpton and after all, the movement does need a saint around whom to rally the troops.
The same thing is happening in Staten Island. Eric Gardner wasn’t an arch criminal, he was just a punk who tried to grift his way through life and who, when he got caught tried to use his size to avoid taking the hit. Unfortunately it backfired and Eric Gardner is dead. And a couple of overzealous, possibly brutal cops have destroyed their lives – and oh yeah, the movement has another hero, as the demonstrators in Staten Island will be happy to tell you.
The Svengalis of the movement have done a terrific job creating just what they needed out of damaged materials. Now, at least the media will continue to pay attention to what was threatening to fade off into the sunset and in this case, especially in this case, it is important that what has happened not be forgotten. The principal is important, the message is important. But unfortunately neither of these guys was a Trayvon Martin, who is really what they needed.
The thinking people have already sat back and said, okay, something has to be done to stop this, but the thinking people aren’t the ones that get things done. They are the ones who write about getting things done. The achievers are the ones who are driven by emotion and they’re the ones who need the heroes. Let’s hope that the sculptor of these saintly images has found just enough useable clay to give his heroes the stature that will last long enough to get the job done., because the job is an important one, the country needs it to get done and to get done right. The creation of the martyrs is just what the movement needs. It’s too bad that they didn’t have the right basic materials to start with.