100 Days After the Insurrection: A Call for Truth & Reconciliation
Each of our institutions needs to be willing to say there were errors made, intentional and unintentional acts of greater or lesser harms. Two wrongs don’t make a right, they just create more harm.
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Eric K. Ward, Executive Director of Western States Center, Senior Fellow of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Senior Advisor to Race Forward. @BulldogShadow
As we mark the 100th day since the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, it’s a good time to ask whether those responsible for undermining democratic practice are being held accountable.
Accountability can take many forms. I’ll share some examples in a minute of situations where accountability is happening and cases where it’s missing or slow to arrive. But I’ll show my hand right up front about the form I think we need most, the form that could best help us find and strengthen an Oregon Way.
There is actually a day dedicated to this form of accountability in the calendar. It happened earlier this month and I’ll bet it flew by you without notice. April 2nd is designated National Reconciliation Day.
Its origin credited to the columnist Ann Landers, National Reconciliation Day urges us to repair relationships we have damaged through words or actions. Here in the U.S. it’s just a good idea on the Internet. In South Africa, it’s a national holiday. December 16, historically important both to Afrikaners and Black South Africans, was chosen as an annual Day of Reconciliation to promote racial reconciliation and national unity. Sounds like something we could use, doesn’t it?
What’s critical, when we consider building unity on the national, state, or community level, is not just an appetite for reconciliation. Before reconciliation can fully happen, there needs to be a commitment to truth.
It takes courage to tell the truth about the harms one has caused. It takes courage to admit one’s mistakes, or to seek to repair the mistakes of the past that continue to cause some harm while benefiting others. True accountability is an act of courage.
Federal Rights & Wrongs
How courageous are we, right now, at the local, state, and national levels? How willing are we to look in a mirror that might reflect back our own responsibility for the advance or decline of inclusive democracy?
Let’s start with the federal level. Oregon is deeply tied to the events of January 6th. Three men with Oregon ties have been arrested for their role in the insurrection. One of them was present for the storming of the Oregon Capitol last December that served as a dress rehearsal for the national event.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is starting the prosecutorial process of the nearly 400 arrests related to the insurrection made to date. But that same DOJ has yet to be accountable for the role of federal law enforcement in the lead-up to that date.
Portland is still reeling from the consequences of last summer’s invasion of federal troops that poured gasoline on protests that had been largely peaceful. Western States Center and our partners filed suit, winning an injunction from a conservative federal judge and modeling an approach to protecting constitutional rights locally that has since been duplicated by several other jurisdictions. The DOJ, however, has yet to take appropriate steps to settle the suit. The executive order authorizing the authoritarian imposition of federal troops still stands.
Political Bias in Law Enforcement
Unidentified federal agents in unmarked vans taking Portlanders off the streets was not the only instance of law enforcement contributing to the rise of anti-democratic activity that reached its high point on January 6th. Sheriff’s deputies in Multnomah and Clackamas counties provided support to paramilitary groups acting as vigilantes spreading unfounded rumors of antifa involvement in the catastrophic wildfires last summer. One Clackamas deputy was placed on leave and Multnomah County leaders called for an investigation – but we hear very little about these agencies taking further steps to address ideological bias in their ranks.
In Portland, the issue of ideological bias in policing is finally on the table. Old fashioned racial bias, both implicit and explicit, has long been documented in the bureau. It’s been a dozen years since Portland Police Bureau (PPB) adopted its Plan to Address Racial Profiling. And yet in 2019, 18 percent of those pulled over for traffic violations were Black – three times our proportion of the city population. This is not simply a hassle; these are the kinds of traffic stops that resulted in the on-the-spot judge-jury-executioner deaths of Daunte Wright and countless others who were simply Driving While Black.
The culture of the PPB reflects more than racism; it is addicted to excessive force. Following up on a 2014 federal intervention into PPB’s excessive use of force involving people with mental health needs, the DOJ found more than 6,000 documented instances of force against protesters in 2020 and cited violations of the earlier agreement in the areas of use of force, training, and officer accountability.
After members of the PPB targeted Portland Commissioner JoAnn Hardesty for her leadership on police accountability, Western States Center joined other community voices in demanding a broader level of inquiry than past reviews. The questions now being investigated create a pathway for accountability around the deep influence of white nationalist beliefs that helped get us to January 6th:
Racial bias: Are the Police Bureau’s policies, culture or actions influenced by racial bias? If so, what is the extent of that bias, what are its root causes and what are the best practices to address them?
Political bias: Are the Police Bureau’s policies, culture or actions influenced by political bias? If so, what is the extent of that bias, what are its root causes and what should be done about them?
Resistance to change: Are the Police Bureau’s policies, culture or actions resistant to change sought by the community? If so, what is the extent of that resistance, what are its root causes and what are the best practices to address that resistance?
Political bias in the Portland police force should be understood as a contributing factor to the January 6th insurrection given the sympathies shown for Proud Boys and other far-right protesters discounted as “street brawlers.” With Proud Boys constituting a significant portion of those arrested for the attack on the Capitol, their multiple incursions into Portland – and the near-impunity with which they acted – served as practice runs for the attempted overthrow of the government earlier this year.
We have yet to see the Portland Police Bureau take a stand like Fresno’s, which recently fired an officer who is a former Proud Boy."Such ideology, behavior, and affiliations have no place in law enforcement and will not be tolerated within the ranks of the Fresno Police Department," the Fresno Chief of Police said in a statement. "Public trust and accountability are paramount in our ability to fairly police this community."
Taking a Stand (or Not)
While it took too long, city and state elected officials and community leaders have begun to recognize their role in responding to the rise of white nationalism on Portland’s streets and in the ranks of our law enforcement agencies. Portland’s city council and all bureau chiefs engaged Western States Center for a two-part training on white nationalism, and dozens of elected officials and civil society leaders have spoken in a unified voice against political violence.
Their counterparts in the Oregon Legislature are struggling to do the same. Despite video footage showing him opening the door to a closed State Capitol to far-right vandals, Representative Nearman’s colleagues have yet to take action, despite calls for his removal or resignation.
Each institution needs to take a good look in the mirror to ask whether it is aiding and abetting democracy’s deterioration into political violence.
One model is in a somewhat unexpected place: the U.S. Military. With so many service members and veterans among the insurrectionists, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a "stand down" to discuss extremism among the armed forces in February. Last week he initiated a set of immediate changes to put that talk into action.
We saw a similar kind of fact-facing and truth-telling last week when Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo and other officers crossed the thin blue line to condemn the actions of Derek Chauvin. As Van Jones put it on CNN, Arradondo’s transparent approach is “what we want from modern policing … This is the professionalism people have been begging for for 20 to 30 years.”
Facing Facts & Telling Truths
There are many ways we can pursue accountability for those who seek to overthrow democracy and foment political violence. Lawsuits and legislation leading to changes in policies and practice; investigations leading to employment consequences or peer censure; trainings to increase understanding of the problem and pathways forward; unified statements from elected and community leaders; public pressure including voting white nationalists out of office – all of these tools are important.
But at the end of the day, if we want an Oregon that works for everyone and a democracy that includes all and excludes none, then we need to be willing to explore hard truths about our own conduct, as we hold others accountable for theirs.
We’ve gotten caught up in a debate about greater versus lesser harm – police killings of unarmed Black men versus property damage caused by protesters, for example. It’s time for us to focus on how we can do no harm. It’s time for us to envision a real alternative to white nationalism. That can’t happen without us being honest, at a societal level, about the harms we have caused, from the taking of Native lands, to the disproportionate killing of Black people, to persistent misogyny and the deep alienation caused by massive wealth inequality.
Each of our institutions needs to be willing to say there were errors made, intentional and unintentional acts of greater or lesser harms. Two wrongs don’t make a right, they just create more harm.
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Connect with Eric:
@BulldogShadow