The Civic Space vs. The Battle Space

Since May 25, we have witnessed – and many of us have participated in – a contest between divergent views of civil society and its relationship to government. The protests over the death of George Floyd and the ongoing, systemic injustices suffered by African Americans embody one view. The responses by the Trump Administration and too many police departments across the country reflect the other view.

The protesters are operating under the principle that in our democracy, government is obliged to respect and protect the rights of all citizens equally. If government fails to do so, as it once again egregiously did with the police killing of George Floyd, then citizens must act to insist that it does.

Citizens leading such actions know there is power in numbers. Hence the need to associate, organize, and assemble in creative ways. Leaders recognize that the bigger and more diverse the coalition they enlist, the more power their cause can wield. Solidarity is key to success in what we might call the civic space, where citizens endeavor to reclaim their say and reset how government treats them.

African Americans’ long struggle for equality has generated and been advanced by a succession of innovative associations and movements pursuing this imperative. The American Anti-Slavery Society spearheaded the abolition movement. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People led the fight against Jim Crow. The Congress of Racial Equality, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee formed the vanguard of the civil rights movement. Expanding on this generative legacy, Black Lives Matter is now achieving an unprecedented breakthrough with the cross-racial coalition of people and organizations it is rallying to the movement across the country and indeed around the world.

The alternative view of government’s relationship to civil society presumes that the power and authority of the state must be established and defended for society to remain civil. Any social unrest, especially in response to government action, that leads to or even threatens disorder should be quickly shut down by those in power. While paying homage to freedoms of expression and assembly, those holding this view reserve to themselves the authority to determine what are (and are not) legitimate exercises of these freedoms.

President Trump and his cabinet exemplified this view on a June 1 conference call with the nation’s governors. The President began by lecturing the governors, “If you don't dominate, you're wasting your time. They're going to run all over you.” Attorney General Bill Barr added, “the reason we have to control the streets is not just to bring peace to that town, but to give us the opportunity to get the bad actors.” Defense Secretary Mark Esper reiterated the President’s offer to deploy the National Guard, proposing that, “the sooner that you mass and dominate the battle space, the quicker this dissipates, and we get back to the right normal.”

Later that day, the two views collided across from the White House on Lafayette Square. Attorney General Barr ordered federal law officers from various agencies and National Guardsmen clad in riot gear to clear out the peaceful protesters who had assembled there. The police and troops attacked the protesters with tear gas, truncheons, and rubber bullets. Their coast now cleared, President Trump and his entourage walked over from the White House for a photo op of him holding a Bible before St. John’s Church.

The Administration may have won the battle of Lafayette Square, but it is losing public support. Rather than fading after this show of force, the protests continue to spread across the country. A new  Washington Post-Schar School poll finds that 74% of Americans support the protests ignited by the killing of George Floyd. 69% believe that Floyd’s death was “not an isolated incident” but rather a sign of “broader problems in treatment of black Americans by police.” And 61% disapprove of the way the President has responded to the protests.

Later in the week, democracy advocates exhaled when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reaffirmed the oath of all service members “to support and defend the Constitution and the values embedded within it.” Secretary Esper acknowledged he had erred with his battle space bluster and said there was no need to invoke the Insurrection Act. We won’t be seeing our uniformed military dominating our cities and towns anytime soon.

Yet Floyd’s death underscores the fact that African Americans continue to experience the country as an unequal, arbitrary, and all too often violent battle space. They endure domination not from soldiers, but from police officers ostensibly sworn to protect and serve their communities–and to uphold the Constitution as they do so. So long as the ordeal of our fellow citizens continues, we all have more work to do in the civic space.