About 13 months ago, my Dad passed away. I bring this up because my father, despite his many faults, was a steadfast believer that the less they taught about something in history, the more important it was that I knew about it.
A lot of my formative memories come out of that, from memories of hearing about race riots and the Vietnam protests to learning about things my history classes glossed over in the course of five minutes like the Bay of Pigs, to the half-day at school that led to my arriving home just in time to be plumped down in front of the TV to watch the tanks roll into Waco.
But what's been running through my head, over and over again, for more than the last week, was some of the music. More beneath the fold.
My father was born in 1948, just a few short years after the end of World War II, just in time that he'd be able to say he'd never lived in a world without the Cold War when the Iron Curtain fell. Growing up, he was coming of age during the heyday of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam protests, so it's not surprising that he taught me about them.
He never fought in Vietnam; he too young at the start, and towards the end he headed off to UW Platteville for a degree in chemical engineering that he never did manage to finish. So he grew up listening to a lot of early rock and roll, and a whole lot of music that was about what was going on just outside of what they showed on the evening news. Dylan, Hendrix, Lightfoot, and others, were all a part of his childhood, and mine by extension, since I ended up growing up on his collection of vinyl and tapes. To this day, I can easily quote more lyrics from Paul Simon than I can from Pearl Jam or Nirvana, and so I've been having a few particular pieces caught in my head since the news from Ferguson started to spread.
In particular, this little ditty by Gordon Lightfoot.
For those who aren't familiar with it, Black Day in July is one of the more prominent tunes about the 12th Street Riots in Detroit, 1967. The riots in Detroit started following a raid on an unlicensed drinking club that the police were ill prepared to deal with though, unlike the Stonewall riots just 2 years later, it wasn't the raid itself that sparked the riot proper.
Over the course of the next five days, 43 people died, hundreds were injured, and tens of millions of dollars in damage were inflicted on businesses and homes. The riot was only quelled when Army troops and National Guardsmen were deployed. But that wasn't the end of it; the 12th Street Riots were only the start of what Dad called 'the Long, Hot Summer,' during which troops ended up being deployed to five other cities in the area, with "disturbances" cited in dozens more.
All of this was stuff that I learned at home; never came up during American History, beyond a brief mention that riots did happen.
The situation in Ferguson has seemed to be primed to spark into something worse for days, and the police seem to want it to happen that way too. The heavy handed response, at times, seems calculated more to cause violence than to stop it. This is especially true of the reports of the police responding to isolated reports of violence with overwhelming force, which remind me of something else Dad told me about.
He had this story from his own experiences during the Vietnam era. When he was at UW Platteville, he went up to Madison to get pictures of the protests going on for the paper. He claimed that he caught on film the individuals who were trying to spark the transformation from peaceful, if tense, protests into full-scale riots, but that his camera was taken from him by one of the Guardsmen and the film ripped out.
Dad was known to spin a yarn or two, granted, but things I've learned since then actually lend a little credence to this one. Particularly the connections between the riots at numerous locations and this little project called COINTELPRO, during which the FBI would have undercover agents infiltrate groups and inspire them to violence.
Ohoh, wait, I'm sorry. Did I accidentally link to a modern day story about our government doing the exact same thing?
No, no, I'm pretty sure it was on purpose.
What does this have to do with Ferguson, you may be wondering?
Apparently, a lot of the agitators are coming from all around the country. Now, granted, the vast majority of arrests are probably complete bull. I do not believe that the FBI is trying to provoke protesters into riots.
However, history has shown that local operators are willing to consider this sort of thing too. And there are reports that the police haven't been arresting agitators except as part of the mass sweeps, even when the protesters are just about begging them to. All of which indicates that, at the very least, they don't mind somebody giving them excuses.
Do I believe that state or federal agencies are trying to insert agents provocateurs into the protests to spark a riot, justifying brutal police tactics and painting the entire city as the source of such violence that of course Darren Wilson's shooting of Mike Brown was justified?
No. Categorically I do not.
What would my answer be if the local PD's, who've selectively leaked misleading and utterly unrelated information to the public in an effort to cover their own rear flanks, told me they hadn't asked anybody to get into the crowd and get a little rowdy?
I'll answer that one with a more modern tune that I think my Dad would have enjoyed quite a bit.