Before this week, Kenosha, Wisconsin, rather benign headlines when a Los Angeles-based writer for Harper's Magazine wrote a story on the postindustrial Midwest and its impact on elections. The author, James Pogue, spent weeks in Kenosha cruising around in a rented Audi trying to grasp the political landscape of this city by the lake.
It was winter when he visited, and Kenosha's downtown "was grim and icy, and the deepwater harbor was frozen solid, but it was easy to imagine how delightful it all would be in the summer, with sailboats on the water and windows of the downtown's many bars and restaurants thrown open to the lake air."
But late summer in Kenosha is not what Pogue imagined. Days into protests and outrage over the Sunday police shooting of Jacob Blake, there are no patrons relaxing in taverns or windows flung open to lake breezes. Election talk is not top of mind. At least 30 Kenosha businesses have been burned, two people involved in the protests shot to death and other victims injured. Downtown Kenosha was a scene of mayhem overnight Tuesday as protesters confronted armed vigilantes in a state that allows the open carrying of weapons.
Police in Illinois on Wednesday arrested a 17-year-old from Lake County in connection with the two Kenosha deaths. He is considered a fugitive wanted in Kenosha on first-degree intentional homicide charges. Authorities identified him as Kyle Rittenhouse of Antioch, Illinois, and said he has been charged as an adult. Video footage and eyewitness accounts put Rittenhouse, who was armed, at the scene of the rioting and shooting.
Attention thus tilted away from Blake, who is Black and who was the focal point of the uprising. According to his attorney, Blake is lying in a hospital bed with a damaged spinal cord and only parts of his colon and small intestine. Surgeons removed tracts of his digestive system to try to save his life after Kenosha police allegedly shot him seven times. He has kidney and liver damage. He is likely paralyzed, his attorney said.
But Blake would not want this destruction in his city, his mother told reporters Tuesday.
WE'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE
Watching the footage of the Kenosha protests intermingled with vigilante justice was surreal: This can't be real life. Is it the Wild West? A Netflix movie? A nightmare? Chaos swept through the streets as protesters, police and armed citizens clashed repeatedly. Also on Wednesday the NBA canceled the day's playoff schedule after the Milwaukee Bucks protested the Blake shooting by refusing to take the court for their game against the Orlando Magic.
In Chicago, we've been here before, deep in the national spotlight of a disturbing police-involved shooting. And one of the frustrating effects is the knowing: While each shooting incident involving law enforcement faces its own scrutiny, the inability of police officers in certain circumstances to de-escalate tense situations, to stay calm rather than agitate, to treat everyone fairly regardless of skin color, is a recurring failure.
What happened in the seconds and minutes before Blake was shot? We don't know. Did Blake resist arrest? Did he threaten police? Why seven shots? Those are questions for law enforcement investigators to answer.
It took years for Chicago to resolve the case of Laquan McDonald, a Black teen shot 16 times by white Officer Jason Van Dyke as McDonald walked away from police on a stretch of Pulaski Road. Even after 90 minutes of testimony in his own defense while on trial, Van Dyke never satisfactorily explained why he emptied 16 shots into the teen's body. Why so many? Why any?
Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 81 months in prison.
But why does this keep happening?
THE WORDS OF A WISE MOTHER
With her son in a hospital bed and chaos swirling around her, with radical politics and divisive political party conventions unfolding on television, Blake's mother, Julia Jackson, still provided wisdom and comfort:
"Let's begin to pray for healing for our nation. We are the United States. Have we been united? Do you understand what's gonna happen when we fall because a house that is against each other cannot stand.
"To all of the police officers, I'm praying for you and your families. To all of the citizens, my Black and brown sisters and brothers, I'm praying for you. I believe that you are an intelligent being just like the rest of us. Everybody. Let's use our hearts, our love and our intelligence to work together to show the rest of the world how humans are supposed to treat each other."
Turns out, when there seems very little worth hanging onto in a year of upheaval and illness and looting and instability, the words of a mother in mourning are worth grasping and holding tight.
