In April 2015, I attended a protest in Baltimore, Maryland, for Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man who died of a severe spinal cord injury mysteriously incurred in the back of a police van, where he had been placed for the apparent crime of running away from the cops.
Given US law enforcement’s homicidal track record vis-à-vis the country’s Black community, running seems like a rather logical reaction.
As I made my way from the subway station to the starting point of the march, I passed an alleyway containing four police cars, lights flashing, and a group of Black residents filming the scene with their mobile phone cameras.
When a fifth car arrived, a few members of the group raised their hands in sarcastic surrender - a testament to the effective criminalisation of Blackness in America, which is itself what enables the cops to kill with such regularity.
The march was entirely peaceful, although at a later point in time some protesters opted to smash up police vehicles and store windows and throw hot dog buns and rocks at the forces of law and order.
The mainstream media naturally jumped at the chance to run riot, as well, exclaiming in horror over the unspeakable “violence” - by which they of course meant the destruction of private property and not, you know, the severing of Black spinal cords.
Now, five years later, the 25 May police killing in Minneapolis of unarmed 46-year-old Black man George Floyd has triggered mass demonstrations across America and given the media another opportunity to decry looting and shore up a brutal status quo.
Granted, some aspects of the narrative have evolved in a more truthful direction - which is apparently what happens when journalists covering protests are themselves assaulted by the police.
Fox News predictably capitalised on events to sound the alarm that "parts of the nation have seen a surge in certain crimes amid protests and riots," including an “uptick in burglaries, shootings and even, in some cases, murders”. Never mind the murder that spawned the protests.
American media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) compiled a list of the "top 16 euphemisms US headline writers used for police beating the shit out of people".
These ranged from NBC’s “Minneapolis Officers Use More Aggressive Tactics Against Protesters as Rallies Flare Around US” to the New York Times’ “After Curfew, Protesters Are Again Met With Strong Police Response In New York City” to NPR’s "Despite Curfews and Heavy Police Presence, Protests Persist Across the Country".
Then there were all the headlines about "clashes" between protesters and police, as though militarised police and lowly humans are somehow on equal footing in battle. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.