Mayor Levar Stoney apologized for the tear gasing of protesters Monday night during a meeting with hundreds who gathered outside of City Hall Tuesday afternoon.
Mayor Levar Stoney spoke to protesters Tuesday at the Robert E. Lee monument. tthe group gathered at the Lee Monument Tuesday.
Hours after Richmond exploded into rioting last weekend, One James River Plaza was imploded to make way for something new and improved.
I’ve always appreciated the precision it takes to demolish a skyscraper. As I examined the pile of rubble that was the former Dominion Energy headquarters, a worker at the site caught me admiring the handiwork.
“Come back in two months and it will all be gone,” he said. “We don’t play, brother.”
The people protesting the death of George Floyd beneath the knees of Minneapolis police officers aren’t playing either. Mayor Levar Stoney learned as much after Richmond police deployed tear gas on peaceful demonstrators at the Robert E. Lee monument before Monday evening’s curfew. The impulse among demonstrators here and elsewhere is to dismantle a chronically racist law enforcement system and start over.
Tuesday afternoon, in front of an angry sea of folks outside City Hall, a shaken Stoney never found his footing amid cries for his resignation.
One individual held a sign that read: AN APOLOGY WITHOUT CHANGE IS MANIPULATION. The mayor came with an apology, but little else.
The crowd wanted police badges, or at least badge numbers, on a platter. Stoney could neither satisfy their demands nor convince them that he felt their pain. Where were you when we were being gassed? they asked.
“I’ve been a black man for 39 years of my life!” the mayor said.
“We can’t tell!” shouted someone.
“You’re not saying anything and that’s why we’re not listening,” said Princess Blanding, whose brother, Marcus-David Peters, was shot to death by a Richmond police officer two years ago while experiencing a mental health crisis.
Local activists have pushed reforms such as a “Marcus Alert System” mandating mental health professionals as first responders in a suspected or confirmed mental health crisis. They’ve also advocated for a civilian review board. On Monday, Stoney backed the alert system and said he supports the consideration of a review panel.
In fairness, no one saw Richmond reacting this fiercely to Floyd’s death, which has sparked global anger. But the City Hall response has been cautious.
Stoney marched with protesters Tuesday night from the Virginia State Capitol to the Robert E. Lee monument, but left the protest before the curfew, to boos. If a mayor can’t break curfew, who can?
Stoney seemed oblivious to the idea that his presence throughout the protest could mend fences and bolster his credibility while inoculating demonstrators from another potential gassing.
Police unleashed tear gas on Monument Avenue on the same evening that tear gas and rubber bullets were used on peaceful protesters outside the White House to clear the way for a bizarre photo op by a Bible-clutching president.
Chaos, from the Oval Office to the streets, has become the natural order. Looters and arsonists have undermined these protests.
The quiet riot that elected an unstable man to the presidency has been far more destructive than any protest. Floyd’s killing on Memorial Day, coupled with COVID-19, unmasked America’s lethal racial inequities.
Stoney “needed to be shaken,” said Ernest McGowen III, an associate professor of political science at the University of Richmond. “But when the dust settles, I’m not sure if the anger was specifically against Stoney or if the anger was against life. Life is tiring for black people right now. Life is tiring for everyone.”
In the midst of our collective anguish, we must find a way past the indifference and platitudes that have kept social justice at bay.
As usual, the words of Martin Luther King Jr. are as relevant today as they were during his lifetime, when he wrote “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”
The average white person, he wrote, “has to resist the impulse to seize upon the rioter as the exclusive villain. He has to rise up with indignation against his own municipal, state and national governments to demand that the necessary reforms be instituted which alone will protect him.
“Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention,” King adds. “There is no other answer.”
Richmond, beyond the protests, needs a space to deconstruct the painful past that informs our racist present. There can be no reconciliation without truth, no peace without justice, and no apology without a concrete plan to make things right. We must implode our structurally damaged institutions and rebuild from that rubble a more perfect place for all. People who’ve been protective of their privilege must learn to sit in the discomfort required for us to get there.
In the meantime, sincere and committed demonstrators for social justice need political leadership that will walk with them, through bullets and through tears.
