CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- The protests and violent behavior throughout Chicago may seem unprecedented, but one political science expert said it's part of the fabric of American History.
State and community leaders are calling for protests surrounding George Floyd's death to remain peaceful. But Alvin Tillery, a professor of political science from Northwestern University said peaceful isn't the only way to make a point.
"We have a long tradition of peaceful protests in America, but let's not pretend that in America, a nation born of riots, that that's the only way we've ever done thing," he said.
Tillery said, historically, protests for racial justice and democracy aren't always pretty. That includes the Boston Tea Party, and parts of the Civil Rights movement.
"When people are angry and frustrated, there are a range of possibilities that are gonna happen in their protest and we've gotta be in tune to that," he said.
Tillery said three things have become apparent "as we watch the uprisings play out in Minneapolis in the wake of George Floyd’s tragic death at the hands of police officers.
“First, the young people of our country are deeply disaffected with racist policing and law enforcement bureaucracies in the United States. Second, the uprising shows once again that we have a president who is unwilling to use the bully pulpit to draw us together. President Trump’s refusal to take to television to calm the nation and demand justice for George Floyd, as President George H.W. Bush did during the Los Angeles uprisings in 1992, is really striking. Moreover, President Trump has displayed with his tweet calling on the Minneapolis police to shoot protesters for property crimes that he is more interested in exploiting the racial dynamics of the Floyd case to advance his own political agenda. This is reminiscent of his insistence that many of the neo-Nazi and white supremacist protesters were ‘good people’ during the Charlottesville crisis. It is also very sad that Mr. Trump’s comments are in such stark contrast to the thoughtful and direct commentary on the matter provided by Mayor Frey in Minneapolis, who pushed for the firing of the officers and has called for swift justice. “Third, we see that the national media — with their continuing focus on property crimes and elevation of respectability frames — continues to misunderstand the dynamics of protest. Protests like the Minneapolis uprising are complex phenomena that spark due to a variety of stimuli — including the initial posture that police take when they respond to them. Fifty years after the Kerner Commission report, and the in middle of a COVID pandemic that has highlighted that we have not fixed the inequalities that the Kerner Commission charged us to resolve, no one should be on television asking why this is happening.”