MANSFIELD: Why Waste a Perfectly Good Violent Uprising?

Mansfield

City leaders of every ilk and stripe — from elected officials to clergy to members of the corporate community — are all nervously awaiting the verdict in the Brelo trial (the case of the cop who stood on the roof of a car carrying two unarmed individuals and fired over 40 shots), and for Sheriff Clifford Pinkney to wind up his investigation into the death of Tamir Rice, the 13-year-old that was killed at the Cudell Rec Center on Cleveland’s Westside. They’re all keeping their fingers crossed that violent protests — similar to the ones in Ferguson and Baltimore — won’t set Cleveland ablaze if cops are once again given a free pass.

While the pent-up frustrations of people oppressed by police brutality are palpable (and completely understandable), now might not be the time to initiate an uprising, no matter the verdict in the trail, or the results of the sheriff’s investigation and here’s why: The threat of a violent uprising may be more powerful in bringing about a change to the status quo than actually engaging in violence.

When a violent protest occurs, no matter the duration or the damage caused, once it’s over it’s over. Emotions are spent and the conscience of the community is pricked … provided of course it has one. Promises of change fly thick and fast as the city eventually goes back to normal; which, in too many cases, this means business as usual. Nonetheless the immediate pressure is off since second uprisings rarely, if ever, occur.

In the case of Cleveland, our city will no doubt be the beneficiary of the uprisings that occurred in Ferguson and Baltimore since those incidents helped to jumpstart the national dialogue that’s currently taking place across the country in regards to how police interact with the citizenry. Those conversations will, over time, bear the fruit of increased fairness in police/community relations. The genie is out of the bottle and, while things will change by fits and starts, nonetheless, change they will.

The timing is right to make America live up to the ideals our nation loudly professes to the rest of the world.

The changes won’t bring back Tamir Rice or Tanisha Anderson; it won’t undo the 137 shots fired at an unarmed couple. And indeed the justice system may still be too far away from working as it should to bring about fair and just outcomes for families of those victims of alleged police brutality; perhaps all of the cops responsible for those deaths will escape any punishment. But make no mistake, change in the way policing is carried out, and how cops are held accountable for their actions is in the works, in spite of the fact the wheels of our criminal justice system grinds so very slowly … and in the past they often never were engaged, no movement occurred.

But we have to have faith that this time is different; this time change — albeit slowly — is going to occur. I can feel it in my bones.

And the best way Clevelanders can help to bring about that change, both on a local and national level, is to hold off on the violent uprising, save it and use the threat of it, holding it over the heads of those in position to bring about changes like a Sword of Damocles.

The issues that have many citizens so upset are very legitimate, but once a violent uprising occurs, the powers that be tend to figure the price has been paid for whatever wrong that was committed. They should not be let off the hook so easily, allowed to avoid the tough decisions that will ultimately bring about change. The pressure and heat must be kept on our leaders.

And I posit that the best and most politically astute way of accomplishing this is to not waste our perfectly good violent uprising at this juncture.

mansfield250From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.

[Photo: Creative Commons]

 

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