Several hundred people gathered on Saturday, December 6th, during the popular annual holiday event in Midtown Detroit, Noel Night, to march and to hold a die-in. My older daughter and I were among them.
A little background is in order for those who are not familiar with the event or with this part of the city.
Midtown Detroit, formerly known as the Cultural Center, is located about three miles away from the Detroit Riverfront, along Woodward Avenue and the couple of streets on either side of it, between (roughly) Mack Avenue and Antoinette, including a stretch of the Cass Corridor. The area contains most of the major "cultural" institutions of Detroit, ranging from the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Detroit Public Library; the Detroit Historical Museum, the Michigan Science Center, and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History; Wayne State University and the College for Creative Studies. In addition to these important anchors for the city, there are now many galleries, studios, theaters, restaurants, and boutiques capitalizing on the recent and still-fragile resurgence of the area. This will be the northern terminus of the new light-rail line being installed along Woodward Avenue, the other end at the foot of Woodward at the Detroit River. It is one of the few relatively busy parts of town, with a modest night-life and skyrocketing rents.
Noel Night is the major annual event for Midtown. The various music festivals so important still to Detroit tend to be located along the riverfront, either in Hart Plaza or at Chene Park. But those are good-weather activities. Noel Night, marking its 42nd year in 2014, happens in early December to boost holiday traffic to local vendors, introduce attendees to the glories of the arts institutions, and offer a showcase for local musical groups, bands and choruses of all sizes and genres. It's estimated that up to 50,000 people crowded into a few blocks during the 5 hours of this event on Saturday.
Under the circumstances, then, it was a perfect location in which to stage some protests. The first was a march that looped around the area, starting from in front of the Detroit of Arts on Woodward, heading south a few blocks, then detouring down Cass Ave. That portion of the march was escorted by police vehicles, interestingly enough, while people carried signs and shouted call-and-response. Some of them were traditional--"No Justice--No Peace," but there were some variations. To that one, a third section was added: "No Racist Police." I liked this innovation: "Racist-Ass Police--We Don't Need 'em, Need 'em/Back Up, Back Up--We Want Freedom, Freedom." And then, of course, new chants: "Hands Up--Don't Shoot." "I Can't Breathe." "Black Lives Matter."
Unknown signmaker speaking for many of us at the event
Reports since then have been understandably vague about the numbers, but I'd guess at least 300 people were protesting in the streets at any given time. It's likely that the total number of people taking part was greater than that, assuming that others slipped in and out of the protests, as did my daughter and I.
At 8:00 PM, a different protest commenced in front of the DIA itself. Someone had put an all-too-appropriate sign in the hands of the Rodin statue, The Thinker, in front of the museum; that sculpture is an icon for the DIA itself, and by extension, the city. In this photo you will see a sharp commentary on the problem:
No one should be next.
At first, the die-in was going to happen on the large driveway that crosses in front of the main facade of the museum, but folks quickly and wisely decided that wasn't visible enough.
So we all walked down the marble steps and across the sidewalk to the middle of Woodward Avenue, which was already blocked off for a performance stage and some food vendor booths. On a word, we all got down on the cold, hard pavement. Some were on their backs, hands up. My daughter was on her back, though she kept her arms hugged around her for warmth. Others, like me, were more self-protective; I lay on my side, with my head resting on a bag of cards from the Detroit Historical Museum.
I had tried to dress warmly enough to be relatively comfortable in that position. But it wasn't. The pavement was hard and unforgiving. Around us, for a while, the noise and chatter continued. Whoever was performing on the nearby stage kept it up for a while. And yet, a few minutes into it, the sound of our quiet breathing became more dominant. The MC on the stage tried to retain attention, futilely. The querulous child near me who kept asking why people were doing this was hushed, gently, and eventually spoke less. A young white man near me held up a sign reading "Listen." Perhaps some people did.
[For some good photos of the assembled crowd, as well as coverage of the multiple protests, please visit this article. I'm in one of the shots, astonishingly enough: blue coat, brown pants.]
I have no idea what the other protestors thought. For myself, the time there was a period of enforced meditation. I thought of how different it would have been to be dying on a hot city street, with no help at hand despite the many people nearby. And about the anguish of those who did want to help but were prevented from doing so. About the witnesses who could not alter the course of the assaults at all, or their outcomes. About the survivors, like Mike Brown's mother who was prevented from going to her son lying on the hot cement, and all the other bereaved mothers and fathers and relatives and friends left to grapple with their shock, anger, and grief.
The crowd was racially diverse; my daughter and I were far from the only white people in the group, but white people also were not the majority. Lots of young adults, but some old-timers like me, too, and older. We ran into two friends, a young white married couple, one member of which I've known literally since the day he was born. I recognized a face or two from other recent demonstrations without knowing who they are.
Lining up on the steps of the Detroit Institute of Arts
After the signal to get back up, a group spontaneously coalesced behind the "I CAN'T BREATHE" lights and marched south on Woodward, passing the road blockades and stopping traffic as we crossed a major intersection. The mood of the crowd was serious, determined, spirited--especially when we walked by one of the Detroit Police precinct houses. It was a sort of flash mob experience, I guess, given the fluidity of the crowd and the relatively decentralized organization. But it was effective, considering the reaction of people we passed and the comparatively positive (at least neutral) coverage in the mainstream papers.
I have no doubt that the protestors on Saturday were motivated by solidarity, speaking out in on behalf of the dead like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, John Crawford, Darrien Hunt, Kajieme Powell--so many young men killed in the past few months, whose killers have not (yet) been brought to justice. But it is also true that Detroit has a sad history of police violence as well, and likely that was not far from many people's minds either. Please join me after the jump for some local historical context.
Detroit is no stranger to police brutality and violence. Decades ago, in the early 1970s, the notorious STRESS program--Stop The Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets--utilized an undercover decoy unit to try to identify and arrest people suspected of criminal activity. During a period of serious racial polarization in the city, STRESS only exacerbated tensions, since in a few short years nearly two dozen black men were murdered in the streets, and hundreds others arrested and harassed, by STRESS members. One particularly egregious STRESS raid on a private party hosted and attended by several LEOs from the county became known as the Rochester Street Massacreafter it resulted in the death of one sheriff's deputy and the shooting of several others. This issue of appropriate policing--how to protect the citizenry without jeopardizing public safety--was one that Coleman Young campaigned and won on, in his first Detroit mayoral contest in 1973.
Jump ahead to 1992, the next-to-last year of Young's mayoralty, when a black man named Malice Green was pulled over in a traffic stop. The police making the stop started striking Green's hand with a flashlight when he didn't respond quickly enough to their orders to produce ID, and then escalated to beating him on and around the head. EMT workers arrived to find Green unresisting; they would later testify that one officer continued to beat Green on the head after he was incapacitated. He died shortly thereafter in the hospital. The initial autopsy found that head injuries (blunt force trauma) were the cause of death.
At the time, Mayor Young denounced the behavior of the officers, and several of those involved were criminally charged. Two police officers were convicted of second-degree murder, through an aggressive prosecution brought by then-assistant DA Kym Worthy, though on appeal the charges were reduced.
Unfortunately, there have been many other abuses during the years since. From 2003 until this past August, the force had been under a federal consent decree,
after an investigation revealed numerous complaints of improper use of force by officers and improper treatment of witnesses.
In 2000, then-Mayor Dennis Archer requested the probe after police were involved in 47 fatal shootings between 1995 and 2000, including six of unarmed suspects. Between 1994 and 2000, 19 witnesses died while being detained by the Detroit Police Department. MLive
Most recently, a Detroit police officer escaped serious consequences for his role in the shooting death of seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones. Aiyana was killed with a point-blank shot to the head during a raid on her grandmother's house in May of 2010; the cop claimed that the grandmother had grabbed for his gun and in the struggle it went off.
The incident gained special attention at the time, in large part because the raid occurred as part of A&E's cop-reality show,
The First 48. Aiyana's father was a suspect in a recent murder, and the cops showed up in the middle of the night to stage a raid (for the cameras?) in order to arrest him.
In October of this year, Joseph Weekley, the officer who killed Aiyana, was facing one sole charge in the death, a misdemeanor "causing death through the reckless use of a gun." The jury deadlocked and the judge hearing the case declared a mistrial. Shortly before that development, the judge herself had dismissed the charge of involuntary manslaughter that the officer had been facing the second time, after his first trial on that charge ended in a hung jury. Unless the Wayne County Prosecutor's office chooses to try him again, this officer will be a free man.
As many commentators and analysts have been writing, in far more eloquent and learned pieces than mine, the problem of police brutality and violence directed toward African-Americans (especially but not exclusively African-American men) is a deep-seated one, with long and tenacious historical roots. Like so many compelling issues we face today as a society, if you pull on one tendril, others come along. There are no easy or quick answers.
But like some of our most respected commentators here, I see some cause for encouragement. Nowadays, the protests are not attended only by the usual suspects. They're not diminishing. Neither are the calls for change, for the service of true justice at long last.
It will take action on the part of millions, in hundreds of locations, in multiple arenas and through many strategies and tactics. Let's keep going now, so we can look back someday at this period and say, "This is was a watershed moment, along the way."