Just as it was heartbreaking to see George Floyd die in the custody of police in Minneapolis, it also was heartbreaking to see protests around the country over the weekend turn violent.
As a nation, we are better than this. We are better than killing black people by suffocating them from behind a badge, and we are better than burning buildings and police cars. We are better than firing rubber bullets at peaceful protesters and news crews.
And yes, we are better than a president who incites this kind of hate and fear with an unthinking and inane taunting tweet because he doesn’t know how to defuse violence and call for peaceful protests and police reforms. Instead, he throws gasoline on the already burning fires.
It’s a sad day when Twitter is smarter than our president and flags his tweet as “glorifying violence.” Twitter put a gray box over it to hide the tweet from public view unless a user determinedly clicks through to see it. But the box does prevent other users from liking the president’s tweet or sharing it without appending comment. Twitter also flagged a later tweet posted by the official White House Twitter account which simply copied the words from Trump’s earlier post. And that was all just Friday. Yikes.
But in Chattanooga, for the most part, we have been better – at least last week and over the weekend.