"Don't pretend any of this is a surprise"

Seven stories to help make sense of this moment. [Mother Jones]( MoJo Reader, If you had told me a few weeks ago that this year would get even crazier, I probably would have…not been all that surprised. The killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others—and the response from protesters, police, and the president—are another example of the "normal" we should not return to. There's a lot we need to confront, and in the coming days I'll have more to say about journalism's role in all this, but for now I wanted to share some of MoJo's coverage as you try to make sense of this historic moment we're all living through. "['Not Who We Are'? This Is All America Has Ever Been](": Nathalie Baptiste wrote, back in early May, after the Ahmaud Arbery video surfaced: Is there anything new to be said about the killing of young Black men who are engaged in everyday activities until they attract the attention of white people who feel threatened and decide to kill them? How many times can we decry racism and beg to be seen as fully human? But while my colleagues and I felt exhausted, well-meaning people of all races littered my social media feeds with a rallying cry that is a variation on a theme as familiar as it is fundamentally empty. It boiled down to the old trope: "This is not who we are!" Soon my exhaustion turned to frustration: In fact, this is who we are. "[The Summer of 2020 Is Going to Be Long, Violent, and Necessary](": Jamilah King explains why, "while the brutal deaths of Black people are often the drumbeat of American life, this specific tone is deafening" as it plays out on the backdrop of a public health crisis and economic collapse that have disproportionately affected communities of color: 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. "[The Reliably Racist Cherry-Picking of the Word 'Riot'](" is where copy editor Daniel King traces the problematic usage of "rioters" and "looters" in headlines that vilify communities of color protesting police brutality: Who decides what these acts are called? Unfortunately, today, all too often it's all-white or majority-white newsrooms. "Riot" is a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd, and "rebellion" [is] resistance to authority or control, with some conditions: If no peace was in place to begin with, the disturbance-of-peace requirement for riot isn't met and the action may be a rebellion instead—if it's aimed at demanding rights. "Riot" tells you next to nothing about cause, context, or goals. "Rebellion" hints at each: A rebellion is against something, for something, with emphasis on both subject and object. "Riot" implies meaningless eruption, an isolated flare-up that ends when the violence stops, or a gust of empty destruction by "punks" or "thugs"—name your villain. "[What a World Without Cops Would Look Like:](" Madison Pauly interviews The End of Policing author and sociology professor Alex Vitale about growing demands to move past police reform and defund or abolish police departments altogether. Here's Vitale: The reality is a lot of people just don't call the police as it is because they feel like it's just going to make their lives worse. That is a deep truth. And so what we want to do is not just to leave them on their own, we want to try and start fixing their problems. Like domestic violence, which goes grossly underreported because huge numbers of survivors feel that getting the police involved is just going to make the situation worse. Where's the community resource center? Where are the supports for families, so that maybe they can fix their problems? Where are the outlets for women so that they can live independently, to get away from an abuser? Lots of people are wondering about the [political consequences]( of what's happening right now, so we asked historian Rick Perlstein—who knows perhaps more than anyone about the Nixon era and the politics of backlash—to give us an assessment. He writes: It's simply incorrect to argue that mass political violence inevitably spurs a backlash that benefits conservatives...When disorder is all around them, voters tend to blame the person in charge for the disorder—and, sometimes, punish those who exploit it for political gain. Which brings me to "[Trump Has Flooded DC With Law Enforcement Officers Who Won't Identify Themselves](" by Dan Friedman. His chilling photos and firsthand account of heavily armed, anonymous men set off a media storm and calls for action because "this is America, we're supposed to know who's policing us." Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon put it this way: This picture really troubles me. Armed forces in the nation’s capital, appearing to have been stripped of all badges and name tags—making them totally unaccountable to the people—is something I’d expect to see from a dictatorship, not a democracy. And last, I want to highlight a piece from a while back, where Fernanda Echavarri bravely shares the personal impact of covering these stories—a burden that reporters of color carry all the time. In "[I've Heard Anti-Latino Racism for Years. But the El Paso Massacre Weaponized It](," she wrote: Having covered immigration and the Latinx community as a reporter, having watched the dials getting cranked higher and higher in recent years, I find myself, in the wake of El Paso, suspended between a sense of shock and a sense of no shock at all. When the person in the highest position of power and authority in the country calls immigrants animals, invaders, gang members, rapists, murderers, it means something. When he only laughs off a comment from his supporters about shooting migrants to stop the invasion at the border, it means something. There are so many other stories I could highlight for you, but those seven really get to some of the underlying issues, and with so much news to process right now, I always find it helpful to zoom out and look at the big picture. Thank you, as always, for making these reporters' work possible with your support. There's a lot more to say about all of this, and I'll be in touch soon. [Clara] Monika Bauerlein Mother Jones [Donate]( [Mother Jones]( [Donate]( [Subscribe]( This message was sent to {EMAIL}. To change the messages you receive from us, you can [edit your email preferences]( or [unsubscribe from all mailings.]( For advertising opportunities see our online [media kit.]( Were you forwarded this email? [Sign up for Mother Jones' newsletters today.]( [www.MotherJones.com]( PO Box 8539, Big Sandy, TX 75755