Tragic Deaths of George Floyd

After an extraordinary run, the protests surrounding the tragic deaths of George Floyd and others appear to be losing their grip on the nightly news. It is inevitable; the bristling energy and shared urgency of any spontaneous movement cannot be maintained forever this straight…, and in 2020 the media has an overwhelming and ever-emerging assortment of shiny new objects to focus its lens on.

This lessening of intensity — while understandable — can easily become problematic, allowing ordinarily reticent participants in government and society to quietly retreat from the difficult challenges of social and systemic change. The protests aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement were so important because they were transformative, altering the American landscape and stunningly changing the all-important polling numbers. The nation, for the first time, professed a real interest in, and nascent commitment to, substantial and meaningful change in areas that were previously considered “black” issues only. Marches were broadly diversified, giving them a broader (and sadly, more marketable) constituency; corporate America hitched up and went along.

Unfortunately, it is waning too soon. Legislation regarding the reformation of the police systems fell just short of enactment, other than a window dressing proclamation from the White House. State and municipal changes to the allocation of funding and operations of law enforcement are visibly losing steam. Critical conversations on broader issues, such as the Coronavirus’ exposure of the imbalance in health care along racial lines, are entirely absent from the popular discussion.

What is remaining are the few voices that seek to define the movement after the fact. President Trump has perpetuated a mischaracterization of the protests as a violent uprising bent on destruction; some other conservative voices have exploited the vague terminology of the Defund the Police name to denigrate that effort through extremist interpretations. The absence of constructive public pressure on the execution of change could allow the hard-fought moment to silently fade away, while the important story of the movement is eventually co-opted for political purposes.

What is needed now is the promoted distillation of objective, a refined ask that can be directly converted into action. The BLM movement needs to seize back their identity, reignite the newly formed constituency with a renewed purpose, and provide the definitions and applications that the millions who supported it so strongly in the streets can coalesce behind and promote in the halls of Congress and the boardrooms of corporate America.

Every movement finds a point in time when the energy of passion must convert itself into thoughtful and meaningful actions, or find itself co-opted by other forces. The Me Too movement successfully made that transformation; the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements somewhat less so. For the current protests that captured the nation’s imagination, that successfully aligned a majority of America behind it, that time is unquestionably now.