On May 30th, 2020, the people of Grand Rapids and the United States as a whole took to the streets to voice their opposition to rampant police brutality, and demand systemic change. As we’ve highlighted before, police misconduct is something marginalized communities in West Michigan are all too familiar with. As such, the demonstration had quite a large crowd of 5000-8000 protesters. The initially peaceful demonstration slowly became more unstable as the day turned to night and the police began to ramp up their tactics. The night closed with a “riot” at the hands of law enforcement.
Let’s clear up any misconceptions right off the bat. What happened on May 30th was not the result of violent or opportunistic protesters seeking to create destruction for destructions sake. What transpired that night was a calculated plan of instigation and escalation by the Grand Rapids Police Department in conjunction with neighboring departments. The police saw a large public gathering demanding change and they used the opportunity of to roll out their shiny military gear and bait the demonstrators so they could make their force and irreconcilable power known. The protesters did not start anything even remotely resembling a riot, GRPD did.
Maybe we should back up to the start of the protest, which kicked off around 6:00 Saturday night. The evening was extremely peaceful, demonstrators marched throughout the downtown area with relatively low interference from the police initially. It was a standard peaceful protest not unlike ones we’ve seen before. For the beginning of the evening the police hung back and allowed the demonstration to go on. Officers making a visual presence was scarce until around 8:00. Around this time is when the tone changed entirely when a large amount of GRPD officers began to line up against protesters. The officers were sporting full riot gear, armed with tear gas cannons, batons, riot shields, and “less than lethal” firearms. While the presence of the armed agitators in blue certainly put the crowd on edge, the night continued without incident, until around 8:45.
It was at this time when the first tear gas canister was fired into the crowd. It is without question that the first dispensing of tear gas was not in response to any perceived violence or threat, rather it was seemingly being used as a method of disbursing the crowd. Anyone who has been tear gassed knows why this is a flawed method of breaking up a crowd, but for those who haven’t had the pleasure, allow me to explain. Being tear gassed at close range without protection is immobilizing, especially when in a congested crowd where visibility is low. You cannot see, so dispersing becomes incredibly difficult if not downright impossible. As previously stated, the demonstrators did not anticipate a riot, so the vast majority of the crowd had no protection from the chemicals whatsoever. The police without a doubt were aware of this and knew what the outcome would be. Upon unleashing confusion and a real sense of urgency and danger due to the police aggression, GRPD promptly declared “an unlawful assembly”. This effectively makes anyone who is unable to escape legally accountable for whatever force GRPD uses on them. After the declaration, the aggression from the police increased heavily.
Here’s a fun story problem: What do you get when you take a crowd of peaceful yet passionate protesters, spray them with tear gas (a literal war crime), trap them within a condensed crowd, then declare their presence a crime? The answer is fear, desperation, a sense of immediate, severe danger, and fear for what may happen next.
The first window was broken at the Secretary of State (attached to the police station) around 9:30pm. WOODTV8 reported on this live and in their coverage you can clearly see the tear gas flowing through the air as the window is shattered, proving without any doubt that the police were the ones who initially disrupted the peaceful demonstration and turned things violent. Once the first window was broken, the police took the opportunity to assert their force in whatever way possible. Downtown became flooded with tear gas in nearly every area that crowds were gathered. The problem increased when the escape routes were blockaded by riot squads ready and excited to beat the living shit out of the protesters. At this point we can see the formulation of what the police considers to be a “riot”. People were trapped by police who seemed to be attempting to cause harm to demonstrators however they could. Desperate, scared, and without a way out, protesters began taking out their aggression on their surroundings.
GRPD spent their night terrorizing those who were still in the downtown area after 11:00. At one point around 12 or so officers came across an unarmed and non-aggressive man in the street. It’s unclear if this man was in any way connected to the protest or if he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Regardless, his presence alone was enough of a threat to 12 fully armored SWAT officers. One officer approached him and emptied a can of pepper spray into his eyes from approximately 5 inches away, immediately following that another officer shot him in the head with a tear gas canister. It’s important to note that tear gas canisters can be, and have been lethal in the past when they are shot at a person. This shouldn’t be surprising when considering that it is literally a metal canister that has been ignited from the inside. Picking up a lit canister is known to cause severe burns, so getting one sent directly into your face from a baton gun is sure to fuck you up. The condition of the man is currently unknown and Chief Payne of the GRPD is actively refusing to give the public any information on the state of the victim or the officers. The “riot” continued for around 2 hours as GRPD continued their brutality. Windows were broken, stores had their goods expropriated, and some camping enthusiasts made bonfires out of 7 police cruisers.
All media coverage on the events of the 30th were solely focused on the “riots”. Despite video of officers shooting the man in the head with a canister being publicly released by a bystander, no local news outlets reported on it. Instead they focused on the property damage and expropriation of goods. This type of coverage continued for weeks after the incident, releasing new articles daily regarding the arrests of alleged “rioters” while ignoring the endless flow of videos showing GRPD using excessive force on protesters.
There’s been a lot of discussion around rationalizing riots. The media is desperate to pin some underlying ideology or movement to riots, and when they can’t they’ll simply blame “outside agitators”. Both of these approaches are reductive and take away from the real issue at hand.
There’s no one ideology or unifying thought behind a riot, it is simply a reaction. When you take a few thousand people who are living in a city undergoing intense gentrification, during a time where most peoples financial situations are uncertain at best, with a police force that runs rampant and unopposed with cases of racialized misconduct, and you back those people into a corner and begin using chemical warfare on them, some windows might get broken. Any attempt to further rationalize what happened would be a disservice to those who participated.
A community gathered to peacefully voice their concerns regarding police brutality, and in response they had the shit beaten out of them, so they began to attack the one thing that the state holds sacred: property. That’s it, there’s no conspiracy, there wasn’t a plan for this to happen, it was a reaction.
OUR STANCE
Contrary to popular belief, we as anarchists, don’t really like riots or advocate for them in general. That being said, we will never demonize or attempt to rationalize what happened on May 30th. There is no ideology, no unified goal, and no thought process or planning behind a riot. What we saw was an expression of collective dissatisfaction with the way things are going and no other way to stand against it. People attempted a peaceful demonstration and were met with tear gas and rubber bullets, the police made it clear that peace was not an option. Backed into a corner, blinded and shot, people had a natural reaction and began to turn against their environment.
While we don’t advocate for rioting, we also don’t demonize it. When it is made clear that peaceful negotiation is not going to be listened to, the state should not act shocked when people respond with aggression.
Furthermore, and I cannot believe this has to be said, but property damage is not, and never has been or will be violence. A broken window is not comparable to state sanctioned murder of innocent black people. The amount of news coverage on the rioting that took place shows how fucked the priorities of the local media is. No amount of property damage will ever be as bad as what the GRPD does on a daily basis. All the tears in remembrance of broken windows are rooted in the capitalist notion that property has more of an inherent value and right to exist than human life. Retail space in downtown Grand Rapids starts at around $20,000 a month, to pretend that these businesses do not have extensive insurance plans is incredibly dishonest. This was a minor inconvenience for the downtown business market, who by the way, exist by exploiting the working people of Grand Rapids.
