Don’t awaken me suddenly. I will yell in alarm and swing my arms around me and if you’re too near me you’ll hit me before I’m even aware who you are.
All of the tigers in my world–my fears–are developed from the unknown, which is, as should be, why we are capable of being fearful.
But of course I am told, that is instinctual behavior. That I must act rationally. To act rationally in the face of fear is what we are expected to do. Rationally it may be reasonable for a doctor to fear the law and let a woman die without helping her. Rationally it may be reasonable to let George Floyd die and protest his death afterwards.
But that is rather impotent in the face of fear, isn’t it? If one doesn’t act to prevent a perceived injustice, or evil, in front of you, then the evil continues as the good. It is good to not let women have abortions in the face of trauma because it is the law. It is good to allow police brutality because we need to maintain order. But then it is evil when the woman dies in the hospital and the suspect criminal is beaten to death in the street.
The combined good/evil complex creates a dichotomous inference into our minds and we stand by protesting…
I suppose I am wrong to think highly of protesting as an instrument of potent actions. It has happened. But not often.
The explosion in the inner cities upon King’s death (or other’s who are killed within communities) really accomplished very little. The Nam protests lasted for years and did not end the war. But eventually the protests led to twelve people being shot in Jackson, Ms. In itself that probably would not have changed the protests too much, but following eleven days after thirteen were shot at Kent State (who were white); the protests were severely curtailed.
And we would all soon be distracted by a thing called Watergate and the war itself slid to the inside pages.
We could go back to the protest in 1932. Forty-three thousand veterans (including their wives and children they brought with them) marched on Washington demanding to be paid the promissory veteran bonuses for fighting in world war I. Attorney General William Mitchell ordered them removed from Washington and the police moved in. The protestors fought back even though two were wounded, the resistance (without guns) was sufficient to push the metropolitan police to withdraw.
This became a seeming embarrassment and the United States Army was looked to in order to remove the hungry veterans and their families, many, apparently, had been out of work for over years. Hoover instructed his Secretary of War to activate the army under General MacArthur. The Marines were to be left out of the action because it was feared there would be sentiment amongst the marines to join, rather than disperse, the Bonus Marchers.
MacArthur ordered Major George Patton to lead the third calvary across the Memorial Bridge; and the 12th Infantry to follow immediately by steamer, led by MacArthur himself.
According to archivists Paul Dickson and Thomas Allen, a cheer rose in the encamped veterans homesites who thought the Army was coming to their rescue from the metropolitan police, until Patton turned the five tanks he was commanding directly towards the encamped families. MacArthur then, ordering bayonets to be affixed to rifles, led the infantry charge that also sprayed world war arsenic gas into the crowd. Fifty-five were wounded. A twelve-week old infant died from the gas.
The veterans retreated across the Anacostia Bridge, but Hoover ordered MacArthur to stand down—not to follow immediately. But MacArthur ordered General Perry Miles across the bridge with orders to clear out the encampment. Their tents were set ablaze, their belongings lost, (these were homeless veteran families, remember) and the bonus army dispersed.
Of course when controversy arose, MacArthur’s adjutant took the blame for his boss. But General Miles said that the orders had come directly from Miles, and the assistant secretary of war, Trubee Davison also claimed he heard MacArthur directly defy the president’s order and/or the adjutant not delivering the message to MacArthur (depending of the official or archival record finally declassified in 2000.)
According to Wukovits biography of Eisenhower he had severe words with MacArthur and told him, more or less, he was a son-of-bitch who was not dignifying his role as chief-of-staff. But the declassified archives records indicate Hoover wanted MascArthur’s participation to deny personal responsibility should things go wrong.
Well they did and they didn’t. The military leaders were exonerated by the official reports and Hoover has taken almost all of the blame (historically). Probably he deserves most of it. But I don’t think that affected the outcome of the election in ‘32.
Hoover tried to blame the Bonus Army on communist agitation, but the leaders of the march report that whenever anyone joined them who began trying to pass out the Daily Worker, they were cast out. Who Knows? But military veterans were not always the best recruiting grounds for the communists. But hungry workers are, so probably a bit of both?
The proffered bonuses had historical roots that go all the way back to the first veteran march in 1783 after the revolution (before the Treaty of Paris). The Philadelphia Mutiny of 1783. In that instance the veterans joined forces who were guarding the government's munitions about seventy miles from Philadelphia.
Alexander Hamilton was the only congressman with the guts to actually venture out of Liberty Hall and he arranged for the veterans to allow the congress to leave the hall. But Hamilton couldn’t convince the congress to pay the soldiers and the congress couldn’t convince the Pennsylvania government to protect them from the soldiers.
The continental congress ended up fleeing to Newark. But Congress would eventually initiate the bonus pay to veterans of land and money and extend it to veteran’s widows until 1836. Much of the land grants were in Tennessee (Andrew Jackson, anyone?) until they were running out so veterans of wars on the eve of civil war were to thereafter receive only cash. But then after the war with Spain, that tradition ended, and veterans received nothing. Following the first world war, Wilson only offered $60. The American Legion began as a united front of the government to press for a more reasonable bonus. But it wasn’t until 1924 that Congress passed (and overrode Coolidge’s veto). But these new bonuses, though reasonably handsome, were certificates that wouldn’t mature for twenty years.
Of course when the depression hit, the many homeless veterans wanted the money then. Again Congress was in favor of doing so, but not enough Republicans agreed to override a Hoover veto this time.
But the Bonus Movement, despite being chased from Washington, didn't die. And with Roosevelt’s inauguration in March of ‘33, they were back. Roosevelt didn’t go meet them, but Eleanor did. This created the possibly apocryphal line, “Hoover sent the army, Roosevelt sent his wife.”
But Roosevelt really didn’t have anything to offer. But Eleanor told the veterans that if Roosevelt could get congress to pass the CCC, they would be offered priority jobs in any of the public works authorized. This of course brought about a veteran’s preference policy for government jobs.
Protests, to succeed, have to be non-tiring and not turn back in the face of resistance. I’m not speaking of vigilante justice, but of resisting and preventing whatever should be resisted and prevented while it is occurring.
Could, or would, they arrest all the doctors in Texas? Some, yes, make an example, but if the doctors continued to ignore the law as an injustice upon women would even Texas have the guts to arrest all of its gynecologists and emergency room doctors?
If the bystanders had pulled the police from George Floyd, would some of those bystanders themselves have been hurt or arrested. Most assuredly. But if every instance of police “brutality” was prevented would the police have to adjust their art of law enforcement.
We must fight our tigers in the moment of their occurrence by simply not allowing them to occur. But if we are unsure if others will stand with us, we become impotent of action and abuses against our compatriots occur.
It is not about shooting the policeman beating George Floyd, but it is about confronting him with the possibility that you will not tamely let him be beaten.
This is not meaningless drivel. King marched unarmed with the principle to not become violent if violence was perpetrated upon them. Violence was often perpetrated.
X appeared unarmed in the front of a group who refused to be threatened into submission and I can’t think of an instant compromise was reached to diffuse violence.
But it’s not a perfect formula. There is always a potential to challenge the potent action by using violence against it, and eventually violence against King’s marches became more rear-guard actions against his supporters after he had marched through.
Well those days are long ago. The real tigers have been unleashed and the question is do we impotently let them attack our neighbor, or do we all step out from our doors and blockade the attack of the tigers upon us.
But the most difficult component to achieving this will be evaluating who is really a tiger and who is not. Is the tiger the “woke” professor, or the anti-woke activist? Who are the tigers that endanger us?, the immigrant criminal or the agent coming for the immigrant who might not be a criminal?
If any immigrants can be taken off before determining whether or not they are criminal then we are all gathering at the ox-box and participating in a lynching.
If you are depending on the “legal system”, the judges, to be the superheroes while you let others become targeted first, then that legal system cannot but fail and become targets themselves.
And so instinct must kick in first, before we can be rational. If you don’t extend your walls to protect your neighbors from the hurricane because you are afraid of being harmed by the hurricane—then your tigers are not of the hurricane itself that let the hurricane ravage itself across the landscape and harm your neighbors. The real tiger that has consumed us is when we feel we must rely on someone else to intervene.
Congressman please save me. Judge please save me.
You will only save yourself when you save your neighbors . Remember Donald Trump is the hero and his aim is to have no other heroes in his way. He is a jealous and vengeful hero.
But we have learned to depend on the hero.
When we learn to no longer see the hero coming out of the heavens seeking our revenge for us, then we begin to learn that the heroes are the collective and that no one is our enemy except the hero come to destroy us.
Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen on The Bonus Army: An American Epic, a lecture at Pritzker Museum, stored in Library of Congress Archives
Wukovits, John F. (2006). Eisenhower. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 43.
Records of United States Army Continental Commands, 1920-1942, https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/394.html
Excellently written and definingly something I grapple with. "We must fight our tigers in the moment of their occurrence by simply not allowing them to occur. But if we are unsure if others will stand with us, we become impotent of action and abuses against our compatriots occur." There in is the crux of how we must proceed, we must jump into the fray and do what is within our power to resist like this danger is real and imminent. We are all being threatened and we must all act to protect each other and ourselves as best we can. We can no longer wait for our compatriots to get on the same page. If we don't this will just get bigger and bigger and worse and worse. These people have no bottom and we will ultimately just be run over and crushed, One other issue with this is the speed and the chaotic nature of their actions, we have no idea what or where they will explode next, so it is difficult to be proactive, the ones who are in the midst of witnessing the injustice must react with the clarity that my survival is your survival. For sure waiting for a hero will not save us.