PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — The riots here bore the essence of organized incitement soon after vandals began ravaging Minneapolis during the middle of last week. By Sunday, the looting reached the Roosevelt Mall, slightly more than 10 miles north of center city Philadelphia – and less than two miles south of my apartment building.
The Roosevelt Mall, which I often patronized when I lived nearby, is part of a once-heavily Jewish neighborhood; the looting at that site was reported by a local television station. A childhood friend told me that her son-in-law, a police officer, was slightly hurt during widespread rioting on Monday.
Several synagogues in Los Angeles were vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti on Saturday, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Notably, graffiti reading “F**k Israel” and “Free Palestine” was spray-painted on the walls of Congregation Beth Israel in the Fairfax section, a largely Jewish neighborhood, in the wake of a protest march along Fairfax Avenue. Rioters and looters also damaged Jewish businesses along Melrose, Fairfax and LaBrea avenues, JTA reported.
Back in Philly, I often shopped at a WaWa store where a fire was set at 12 th and Market streets, and I was a frequent diner at the Marathon Grill on 16 th Street, which was gutted by vandals and looters Sunday.
From 1,100 miles away, it is difficult to assess Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s performance in quelling the chaos in his adopted hometown sparked by the death of George Floyd while in the custody of a Minneapolis police officer. Frey, who is Jewish, was literally and figuratively attempting to extinguish an inferno. He was struggling against an invisible foe that seemed to be everywhere at once.
This was guerrilla warfare and Frey needs all the help he could get. It is painfully obvious that Frey, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and other leaders struggled to avoid a greater conflagration. A poorly coordinated confrontation between police and protesters carries the potential for an even more devastating incident. Such as Monday’s tear-gassing of peaceful protesters – led by our president – in Washington’s Lafayette Square.
“We have to bring down tensions in America,” Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker told a TV interviewer the same day.
Of course, our president sided with the enemy, so to speak. For the past week, he poured as much gasoline as he could find onto the ongoing bonfire.
“You have to dominate,” said Donald Trump, sounding like a karate instructor. “You have to do retribution.” These comments come on top of his other outrageous remarks.
No, says Pritzker, who is also Jewish. “We have to call for calm. The rhetoric that’s coming out of the White House is making it worse.”
Surprising that Trump did not proclaim, John Wayne-like: “A president’s got to do what a president’s got to do.” The closest I could find to that line is from the western Hondo, when he says, “A man ought to do what he thinks is best.”
It occurred to me that George Floyd was not even born when The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 52 years ago. When Dr. King died, the civil rights movement collapsed, yet racial tensions remain. The Black community is among the hardest hit by poverty, and African-Americans have protested police brutality long before police officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, fatally pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes.
Certainly, the riots that accompanied peaceful demonstrations were disgraceful. I also have concerns about the timing of the general protest movement. Will it surprise anyone if coronavirus cases spiral out of control again, endangering not only demonstrators but also police officers and health-care employees?
It is still not clear if the troublemakers are from the right, the left or even both. Attorney General William Barr charged that they are leftists. Others speculate that white supremacists are inciting the trouble to reflect on liberals and Democrats.
Trump clearly recognizes that he can benefit politically. By Tuesday, he brought the military to Washington, parted the sea of protest crowds with tear gas and dubbed himself “your president of law and order.” Maybe the current atmosphere will scare suburban Whites back into the Republican fold on Nov. 3.
Yet it is most likely that Black voters who need no convincing that Trump is a racist will be compelled to turn out in massive numbers and vote against “your president of law and order.”
Trump took Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin with the help of three kinds of voters – opponents of Hillary Clinton; citizens who gave Trump the benefit of the doubt; and African-Americans who stayed home in Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee. Those three states, as many readers will recall, provided Trump with enough electoral votes – by narrow margins – to win the electoral college.
Maybe some suburbanites will reverse their plans and vote for “your president of law and order,” and they might constitute a minimal amount of voters. The ballots of minority voters in Philly neighborhoods like Cobbs Creek and Strawberry Mansion could outmatch the ballots of those cast by Whites in suburbs like Radnor and Willow Grove.
One of Trump’s key weaknesses is that he underestimates the intelligence of Americans. Apparently, he never heard John Wayne’s advice to real-life son Patrick playing his movie son in Big Jake: “You’re short on ears and long on mouth.”
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Bruce S. Ticker is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. He may be contacted via bruce.ticker@sdjewishworld.com
Bruce S. Ticker is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. He may be contacted via bruce.ticker@sdjewishworld.com
Both Bruce Ticker and I were in high school together in 1968, when Martin L King was killed. The Black Panthers practically took over the school the next day with their racist, virulently anti-white hatred. I remember our bus being pelted with rocks on the way home as it passed by the Junior High School. MLK was a man of peace. His death was just an excuse for lawless looting and rioting. Recent events were an exact replay of the looting and destruction that took place in 1968.
If the slogan were All Lives Matter or Black Lives Matter, Too, I would understand. But, it definitely appears that the unfortunate death of one black man was an excuse to loot businesses. By the way, who will be hurt by these criminal acts other than the black communities in which many of these businesses existed?
With all of the Jewish understanding and support of equal rights for all, where are the black voices condemning the vicious attacks on Jews and synagogues in the recent past? All I hear is silence. The main voice I hear in our ultra-leftist media is that of people like Al Sharpton, who said that he thought it was a shame that black businesses were also destroyed in the mayhem. In other words, only black lives matter and no-one else’s.
If there is so much white racism, how is it that recent homicide data show the following:
Blacks killed by blacks = 53.94%
Whites killed by whites = 10.22%
Blacks killed by whites = .77%
Whites killed by blacks = 9.83%
Tell me, who are the real racists here?
One you are innacurate. There was no tear gas or beatings to remove people from Lafayette Park. They facts are out that they were warned by loud speaker on 3 occations to leave that area. A number if them chose to stay and throw bricks and bottles of frozen water at the police. Shock grenades were used at specific areas where the bottles were coming from. Why is it that you chose to descibe what the liberal media claims happened and totally disregard what eyewitnesses say actually happened?
Philadelphia will always go democrat, it has for 60 + years and always will. There is a reason Philadelphia has the highest percentage of poor of any major city in the country. A failed public school system, almost more convicted politicians of crimes then any other cities, year in and out huge budget deficits. They are all signs of a democrat run cities and won’t change as long as we continue to vote democrat in all elections.