Kenosha Reveals Ongoing Police Violence, Growing Menace of White Militia Forces

By ROGER BYBEE

“Some of us would like to get beyond the business of scaring people and dividing them from blacks, but it’s hard to argue against a formula that’s seen as successful”—GOP campaign official quoted in Time magazine Nov. 25, 1991

Kenosha, Wisconsin, a city of 100,000 squeezed between Chicago and Milwaukee on Lake Michigan, has become the epicenter of several intersecting lightning bolts striking American society at this moment.

Kenosha draws together some of the most incendiary elements of our time. Yet another instance of police shooting an unarmed Black person, a corresponding outburst of fury by Blacks and allies stunned by police violence in a community deeply afflicted by poverty, and a setting for Donald Trump to promote his fear-based appeal, in a state whose 10 electoral votes are exceptionally crucial on Nov.3.

Kenosha became a national flashpoint when a local police officer shot an unarmed Black man, 29-year-old Jacob Blake, seven times in the back from inches away. Blake, who was shot in front of his three children less than three minutes after Kenosha police arrived at the scene, now lies in the hospital paralyzed from the waist down

The shooting set off a new wave of Black outrage nationally over police violence after a succession of police killings of unarmed Blacks like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Some of the outrage was channeled into an unprecedented level of activism by pro athletes. Led by the Milwaukee Bucks and Brewers, who play just 38 miles away from the site of the Blake shooting, pro athletes in the NBA, WNBA, Major League Baseball, hockey and soccer took a day off in opposition to the continued wave of police violence.

In Kenosha itself, which is 12% Black, the seemingly senseless police shooting provoked several days of street protests and night-time episodes of window-breaking, youths throwing projectiles at law enforcement officers, looting and extensive acts of arson. At one point, the Kenosha fire chief Charles Leipzig reported that 34 “active” fires were raging across the city. Gov. Evers called in the National Guard, eventually reaching 1,000 troops, to tamp down the unrest.

The fires were particularly devastating to the Uptown business district along 22nd Avenue, heavily patronized by low-income people, Blacks, and Latinos.

Meanwhile, midscale and upscale shopping areas west of the city were left almost entirely untouched by looters.

The nationally-broadcast scenes of searing destruction in a working-class town triggered a Trumpian barrage of authoritarian law-and-order rhetoric directed at Kenosha’s protesters, in line with his electoral strategy. “The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order,” as Trump advisor KellyAnne Conway told FOX TV.

Trump’s remarks on Kenosha were heavily sprinkled with maximum-strength racial “dog whistles” long central to Republican strategy, as suggested in the opening quote. Kenosha presented a golden opportunity for Trump to capitalize on white fears in the all-important state of Wisconsin and Middle America generally, conflating peaceful protests with a reign of uncontrolled violence under which “no one would be safe.” He denounced non-violent protesters as part of a rampaging “radical-left” element in “Democrat-run” cities, and to lay siege to overwhelmingly white suburbs.

Trump’s rhetoric served to make Kenosha a national magnet for “alt-right” militia groups, and to inspire local wanna-bes. In Kenosha, the formation of a “Kenosha Guard” to protect property, widely disseminated via Facebook, attracted a 17-year-old Trump fan named Kyle Rittenhouse who brought his military-grade AR-15 rifle to Kenosha. In the middle of a main thoroughfare, Rittenhouse used the AR-15 to gun down protesters Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, The gunfire nearly severed the arm of a third man.

Stunningly, President Trump rushed ahead not to comfort the victims’ families, but to leap to the defense of the shooter, suggesting that the shooter was acting in self-defense. He stated, “But I guess he was in very big trouble — he probably would have been killed.”

To more fully exploit the moment of shock over death and destruction, Trump chose to visit Kenosha Sept. 1 despite the objections of Kenosha’s mayor and Gov. Evers.

During his brief visit, Trump did not meet with Jacob Blake’s family. Instead, he spewed more of his amped-up law and order rhetoric: “Reckless far-left politicians continue to push the destructive message that our nation and law enforcement are oppressive or racist.” 

Following the early outbreak of violence, peaceful actions ignited by the Blake shooting have only accelerated, with a massive march and rally held on Aug. 29, a balmy late-summer Saturday. The march and rally, led by Jacob Blake, Sr., a long-time civil rights activist, drew about 3,000 people, packing a park across from the Kenosha County Courthouse. Blake called for non-violence in response to his son’s shooting, saying “If we tear up our city, we leave people homeless, store-less, no place to get the milk and food they need.”

The rally drew Blacks, Latinos, and whites, who appeared to make up the majority. The throng even included 40 Mennonites dressed in Amish-style clothing who had traveled more than five hours from Ohio.

The rally will surely be followed by anti-racism activists strategizing about the community’s most pressing needs.

Activists are certain to be challenging the cozy relationship between some Kenosha Police Dept. officers and the quickly assembled Kenosha Guard vigilantes. A video clip shows overt cooperation between police and vigilantes, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. The video shows a self-styled militia member saying, “You know what the cops told us today? They were like, ‘We’re gonna push ’em down down by you, ’cause you can deal with them and then we’re gonna leave.” This kind of collaboration coincides with a pattern visible in several other communities, such as Portland and Salem, Ore., and Philadelphia.

If not closely aligned, at a minimum Kenosha law enforcement failed to contain the militia groups which both cropped up suddenly in Kenosha and came in from the outside.

“Some white men who moved around in military-style formations were carrying assault rifles and wore tactical gear,” the Washington Post reported. Others wore the insignia of the “boogaloo boys” — sometimes rendered “boogaloo bois” — a fringe anti-government movement.” Most recently, the notoriously violent Proud Boys militia have come to Kenosha.

“What I saw last night [Aug. 25] was a number of individuals riding around in pickup trucks that clearly were white supremacists,” State Rep. David Bowen (D-Milwaukee) told Newsweek. “They were armed. They were destroying property. They were vandalizing vehicles, including mine, including other protesters’ [vehicles]. They were there to agitate and hurt protesters.”

Forcefully breaking all police-militia links are a critical first step toward justice. Rebuilding a new, more equal Kenosha will require fundamentally re-thinking public-safety to reduce long-standing tensions between the police and Black and Latino communities. Creating real accountability, equal justice, and a commitment to community involvement in shaping law enforcement will be central.

Kenosha’s renaissance will also require an economic strategy of structural reform that will lift people out of poverty, particularly for Blacks and Latinos. While Kenosha’s unemployment rate is low, a high percentage are low-wage, non-union service jobs. The poverty rate among blacks is 39%, more than double the city-wide figure of 19%. Once a high-wage mecca, Kenosha’s median household income has fallen considerably, now at 12.2% below the state average since the 1988 shutdown of auto assembly and the shift of 5,500 jobs to Mexico by Chrysler.

Particularly meaningful would be a $15 an hour minimum wage, provision of quality healthcare as a right, and the restoring workers’ right to unionize in the face of employers’ illegal but nearly-universal strategies to prevent unionization at all costs.

Most importantly, the present scene in Kenosha underscores the seemingly never-ending willingness of law enforcement in the US to deny the humanity of people of color through the use of lethal force.

At the same time, Kenosha reveals the increasingly menacing presence of white-supremacist alt-right militia forces. This forbodes the prospect of a potent fascist, heavily-armed force which could loom large over the Nov. 3 election and its aftermath.

Take heed: Donald Trump has already shown clearly in Kenosha that he has absolutely no intention of reining in the militias.

Roger Bybee is a Milwaukee-based labor studies instructor and and writer and former editor of the Racine Labor weekly. Email winterbybee@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2020

Populist.com