 Okay, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech, more specifically, this is history lens with John David and a history professor at Hawaii Pacific University. And we're going to talk about the most significant piece of news that's happening still, still happening these days, the one that has taken the front page from everything else and Lord knows we have had a lot of things on the front page lately. And this is the, I don't want to say rise, I'll just say protest, but but there's a thin line there. And I want to ask him to help us understand this set of protests is national outbreak of protest, as against, you know, other protests we can study in American history and maybe history history elsewhere to put it in perspective and understand what is going on, and its significance. What an interesting show I can tell you in advance. John, you must be thinking about this 24 by seven. Well yeah I mean I the thing is I am writing a book, which is about protest, the history of protest in the United States. It's called Liberty and Power protest in American history but so. There's all kinds of questions we were talking before the show and you mentioned that, you know, is this is this kind of protest baked into American identity I mean it's company and what is American identity depends upon who you ask what which group has a particular identity at that particular point. So this, it's, it's hard to say for sure but what I think what you can say and this is very interesting because Alexandria Ocasio Cortez actually said this on a 60 minute show. She said you know what they asked her, I think it was Cooper Anderson said you know, what about this radicalism that you know that you're espousing I mean, really isn't it kind of at the edge of American life. She said no actually all change in this country has taken place because of radicals. That's a paraphrase but that's essentially what she was saying and. So I think it's there's a case we made that a lot of change in this country has actually been at the hands of the people themselves getting up and out of their seats and out of their houses and saying I've had enough I'm not going to take anymore and doing various things, some non violent, some violent and you know then just causing a ruckus and sometimes things get changed. I mean, Alexa, the talk, elect Alex to talk well, didn't he say that democracy was tumultuous. He almost predicted this as a thread that you would, you would see played out across American history. Yeah, yeah, I mean, but the thing is, you know, democracy can be tumultuous and we I wish we had a democracy. We do have a democracy but it's a very flawed democracy but interesting that I wouldn't necessarily tie a protest and democracy together too strongly because the thing is when we look at American protest it predates American democracy. So when we look back in time then the first protests were before the nation was founded and there before certainly before we had a democratic system, which doesn't come until the you know the 1830s 1840s so. So yeah so when we look at protest, let's let's go back to the colonial period, for instance, and this is a really interesting case. The British are trying to recoup their costs from the, the French and Indian war, in which by the way the colonists actually fought. So, I don't know why they would double charge the colonists, you know, they fought and they people died in this. You know, colonists died in the conflict so that's that's considered to be a blood tax anyhow they shouldn't be double charging the colonists for the cost of this, but the problem is the British had big debts at war was a worldwide conflict. And so after the war the British begin to apply taxes to the colonies to try to recoup some of these costs and and I mean they do a sugar tax which is an external tax and then they drop that very quickly. And then in 1765 they do what's called a stamp tax, where on all important items that are for sale in the counties you actually have to get this official stamp attached to the document or the newspaper or whatever. And you have to pay for the stamp and that's the tax. And the question was an internal tax or an external tax well I think it was probably an internal tax at this point but. So, so the colonists felt this, especially where business people were doing a lot of business any transaction had to have this stamp on it, which meant there was like, you know, it was like a transaction tax and so the colonists became unhappy with this, and they organized especially in Boston, Massachusetts. And this is the beginning of the of the Sam Adams of the Minutemen, you know this group of mechanics and some of them are out of work Tufts who are, are organized by Sam Adams and so Adams organizes a protest in the Boston common. Next to this tree, which of course becomes called the Liberty tree. And so the protest begins. And the first thing they do is this is it's important to get what they actually do because we'll ask questions about this in a minute. They hang an effigy of the tax collector. Andrew Oliver from the from the this tree and they hang a couple of I think the lieutenant governor is he's got an effigy there and you know so they hang them from the tree first of all, and then they march down to the wharf. Where this building is being constructed. It's the stamp tax building. It's going to be the building where you have to go to get the stamps. It's partially constructed. They tear apart the building. And they take the wood from the building they march up to the house of the guy who took the job as the stamp collector Andrew Oliver, who is a very wealthy Bostonian anyhow. They pile this stuff on to a bonfire in front of his house, and they throw his effigy on to the bonfire. Now there's really nothing that's not clear about that. It's like, you better think of a different occupation, or otherwise we'll build a bonfire throw you on. So, so this thing was this get these kinds of things were quite common in this time curve that the crowd that kind of crowd mentality or what's been referred to as a crowd psychology is very, very prominent in the colonial period and so so the question is Jay. Is this violence associated with this protest is it legitimate. Should we should should the should the colonial governor have spent out the constable to arrest these people. I mean, so this is interesting because throughout history you have this question of whether or not it's, you know, whether or not particular kind of protest or, you know, a particular approach is legitimate. You know, it's interesting so after that, not too many years after that, we have a constitution, we have a country, we have a democracy where people can vote and, and that should be their way of expressing themselves. And we have had certainly a lot of voting and some of it has been successful. And other times it hasn't been the perfect democracy but we do have a system that lasts until today. Yeah, so my question to you is what why do we have to have protests and riots and burnings and whatnot when we have a system where you can express your dissatisfaction on a given issue. You know, it's a good question actually but and I think the answer is that for many Americans, the right to vote and voting itself has been held at a discount. And this is an unpleasant reality but historically it's absolutely true and even in today's world you can find any number of examples of conservative governors who are trying to in one way or another suppress voting rights for particular groups, you know, ex cons, you know, people who don't have access to transportation, a variety of other people. So, so this is an unfortunate part of our legacy that voting has been suppressed in the past and it continues to be suppressed not at the same level as in the past, but voting continues to be suppressed. So, so the question becomes then if you don't actually, you know, theoretically, according to the Constitution have the right to vote but in reality, you don't get to vote for, you know, because your vote is being suppressed, then voting really doesn't help much then for you if you're that person so this is a problem. This is a problem in our democracy how important is the vote how, you know, how significant, how seriously is that taken by politicians and you know, right now we have politicians who, you know, leaders who are saying well, you know, we would never be in power if we let everybody vote. Shocking stuff like this which is, you know, totally undemocratic but it's true that we still live in a world that's where this kind of thing where these kind of thoughts and these even these kinds of words are being voiced so in that regard then what do you do? Well, you know, you can, can you wait? Can you wait for justice that doesn't come and then it never comes and then of course you take action and on the way so I think that's probably the most important answer to that question. Yeah, I mean, well in part that that protest would be a protest against the system, which didn't allow people to express themselves on that issue. Right. And the regular procedure, regular voting. But you know, I think we're talking now, and I really like your thoughts on this, about a special genre of protest, a special genre of rioting. It's racial, it's race riots and, and the United States has had more than a share of race riots because, you know, way back to the Constitution, race has been an issue. Slavery has been an issue. And you can track it all the way through the violence on one side and the other. And I do recall and I'm sure you do too, that in July of 1863, the New York race riots. And it started over some issue about conscription into the military into the Union side of the Civil War and it wound up with people hanging from street lamps in New York City. It was a major race riot lasted for several days. And somehow that that was a sort of an example of something that turned into that genre. Yeah, so, you know, the, the, the Stamp Act riots, there's no overt kind of racial element to that. They're probably, we don't know actually there's a lot we don't know about those riots but when you, when you, when you move into the 19th century and you move into the era where slavery comes into question. The North is abolished slavery and the South is now defending the institution and then of course you have a war in which the institution is the question of whether or not the institution of slavery is going to survive as one of the, maybe the most important question of the war. Then race is going to play a central role in, in American life and, and certainly in the right so you do you mean you have the, the 1863 draft riots are nasty, very nasty because the initial issue is resentment by Irish, you have Irish immigrants against the United States for, for forcing them to serve when their colleagues, their wealthier colleagues can actually buy a substitute. I mean, your typical Irish laborer in New York City cannot afford the $300 for a substitute but you know the wealthier parts of New York City it's easy to get a substitute you just you know it's a part with a little cash and, and somebody else gets that money and there you go so, so there was tremendous resentment against this law this substitution law that was put in place in the spring of 1863. And that's the initial character of the protest, but it's so quickly turns into a ride against African Americans it's it's kind of astonishing me what they have to do with this they didn't, they didn't pass the law. They're actually, they don't have any political power in, in New York State and, or in, or in Washington DC and so, and so you have this situation where, where Irish Americans are resentful against African Americans because when you look at the labor regime and all the major port cities in the United States including New York City then the bottom of the labor totem pole is Irish Americans, and then beneath them as African Americans, and many African Americans work in the shipbuilding industry Irish Americans do as well and so Irish Americans are constantly worried about African Americans taking their jobs in this industry. And so this is how some of this resentment begins and you couple it with, with widespread assumptions about the inferiority of African Americans, and the nasty way that Irish Americans are being treated in the United States in this time period, with you know the rise of an, of an anti-immigrant, anti-immigrant political party, the no nothing party. And there, and it becomes this volatile mix that Irish Americans feel like they're being put upon and they blame African Americans and then they rampage through the city for days. I mean African Americans are being, they're being lynched in a school for African American orphans is burned to the ground. Unfortunately, they were able to get the children out of the school but it's only after 4,000 troops from the Union Army are, you know, they're New York State but they're, they're in the battle of Gettysburg they're brought back to the city and they're able to stop the riot and so on. And it's, I think, you know, several dozen people are killed and I think over 100 people are killed actually. And, and the majority of them are Irish Americans because they're fighting, they're fighting the military and the military are using live ammunition. But there's a significant number of African Americans who are lynched and killed and beat to death in this. So, yeah. You know, you know, the, the protests here that is still going on wasn't seven days already. You know, ostensibly, it's about George Floyd and the criminal justice system. It's about the fact that he was killed by, you know, a cop who was pretty, pretty mean and nasty. But, but, you know, completely unfair, completely outrageous murderous, if you will. But you know, it seems to me that that is only the ignition. Yeah. And after that, it has a life of its own. And the life of its own here what's going on is not just George Floyd. It's a whole history of George Floyd's It's a whole history of oppression. Am I right? Doesn't it all feed into this? Yeah. So, so after the Civil War, then African American males are given the right to vote. Slavery is abolished. First of all, African American males are given the right to vote. You have an era called reconstruction in which African Americans get all kinds of political power in the South. They even serve in the Senate in the House of Representatives. One becomes a governor, governor of Louisiana. And so they have political power. And this really rankles at the established white, the former, the former slaveholders, the plantation holders. And, and so they're, they're looking for ways to limit African American power. There are some enlightened elites who want to use African American votes to gain power. And so you have a Republican Party, which is somewhat successful between about 1870 and 1890. But by the 1890s, then what you have is, you have one of the things that's happening in this time period and you have what you have is the development of a new political alliance called the Farmer's Alliance, which organizes African American and white tenant farmers. And these African American white tenant farmers, I mean, they comprise the bulk of voters in the South. So with that, you can actually, you know, there is a time I think I talked about last time or another conversation where, where the majority of Southern slaveholders actually are taken over by the Farmer's Alliance. And this represents a concrete threat to the power of the planter class, and they take action. And what they do, they organize what are called white supremacy clubs. They actually, so, so let me take a specific case in 1898. There's a riot that takes place in Wilmington in which black power is simply stuffed out. And it's one of the ugliest riots in the history of the country. It's ugly because the white supremacy is so out in the open these white supremacy clubs. The town leaders force people, force white people to come and sign into membership in these clubs. They don't even have a choice. So white progressives, they have this terrible choice, you know, move out of the city or sign on to these white supremacy clubs. And then the election is held in early November. And, and actually the white supremacists win a slight majority in the North Carolina legislature, but there's there still is representation among blacks and this still bothers them they want to snuff this out and so the leadership calls for a riot. And they, and that's what happens there 500, maybe even 2000 at the height of the violence but there's this big crowd of, of white kind of working class types who they don't really they haven't thought this through or anything they're just working off of raw emotion and hatred. And they march into the African American section of Wilmington, North Carolina, and they just begin to destroy things and kill people. And it is the end of African American political power in Wilmington, North Carolina, a place where there had been a significant African American presence in the business community. And in the in politics, and it's just incredibly tragic moment for American democracy where you see reconstruction just rolled back not just rolled back but these visceral physical attacks on on upstanding African American citizens. And what in that situation then it's, you know, it's, it's pure oppression. Yeah, it's awful. Yeah. So, but looking back through the history, the lens, so to speak, right. What can we learn from these various tragedies that take in place, really threw out right to to to give us a better understanding of what's happening right now in the streets of at least half a dozen cities right now today. Right. Well, I do think that, you know, it's, it's, you don't want to understate at all the oppression that took place in that Wilmington right and, and so it takes 100 years from the time of reconstruction to the 1960s civil rights protests to recover voting rights for African Americans. And one might argue today that they're not yet recovered. And that you might be right about that and then, of course, you have in the civil rights movement you have raised expectations. And those expectations are not borne out by, you know, material improvements and in their lives for African Americans and so you have riots that take place in the late 1960s 1967 is a summer of riots 159 cities. And that's why it's just a, it's a month of riots and many of the same cities that we're seeing riots in today. There were riots in in, in 1967, in fact, very severe riots in Newark, New Jersey, 23 people dead and those riots and lots of property damage. And yet today, no property damage, no deaths. And there are peaceful riots taking place in Newark. And you have to ask the question, well, what's the, what's the difference there? Well, one thing, one difference is that the mayor has organized community leaders to organize African Americans in that in neighborhoods and such. And so they're very well organized, they're much more disciplined. The other thing that happened is they asked the police to come out without their riot gear on. And this made a huge difference. It just brought the tension level down completely so unlike the 1967 riots where, you know, police are heavy handed and they're ready with full force and you know it's all about law and order. But then, you know, the, the, the arena that's working right now is the arena where the police presence is really muted. And that might be part of the answer is to, I mean, police police forces know this, everybody knows this in the business that when you put on a bigger police presence, you're going to have bigger riots more destructive riots. This was the concern in Minneapolis last week about bringing out more forces or ordering the National Garden is that you would have riots that would turn, protests that would turn destructive. But there are so, so I think that the answer is that there's a sense of hopelessness, a sense of grievance that's not being addressed adequately just like there was in the 1960s. And at some point what do you turn to, I mean, the political system for these folks doesn't change, right. It seems to be that you know you have white power on top and black, blacks are under, are the underclass and nothing seems to change and so in that situation, you know, a riot of a peaceful protest can break into a riot now there are other things going on in these protests, and this is unprecedented very strange that you have these kind of fifth columnists you have, you have infiltrators you have extremist groups, accelerationists, you know, who are in and others who are, who are actually very interested in fomenting these, making these riots more violent because the accelerationists very shadowy group we don't know much about their goal is civil war. They want to, they want to perpetrate civil war in this country so there's a, there's another element to this which is really scary and unprecedented I don't, I've never seen that before in a riot where you have peaceful rioters and then they're peaceful, peaceful protesters and then their protest is actually co-opted by these violent extremists. I don't know, you know, that's not good. One other thing that strikes me is that you always have to account for the changes in technology. You know, back when they might have been telephones and there might have been a certain amount of television, say 67. But we have a lot more, a lot more telephones now because they're smartphones and we have a lot more programs on them like social media and of course we have lots and lots of television. And one of the things that I read about I think was just this morning was the remarkable change in the way that a number of and I don't know whether they were the, you know, the, the, the peaceful demonstrators or the accelerators. Or were the police. In many cases, I think it was the police, but they've been taking aggressive steps against the media. They've been attacking the media and if you found it one time you'd say, well, this, that's just one person. But it's been a number of occasions and that, that has to be a historical shift, don't you think? You know, I think actually reporters have always been targets in riots, in violent riots. You know, they've always risked their lives by going out and reporting on these riots, but it's a little different in that you have a president, you have the person in the White House who actually openly attacks the media all the time. You know, this constant slander against the mainstream media gets into people's heads. And they might have these people might have completely different views than Donald Trump, but they don't like, for instance, CNN. I think that's something that Trump created this attack on CNN in Atlantic can be laid directly at his feet because he's attacked CNN for, for well before the president, you know, so yeah, that's very disturbing and we just, it's the exact opposite of what we need from a leader I think, you know, you know, we have Joe Biden, presidential candidate who's who spoke today in Philadelphia and he laid it out. I mean, it's, we are just so bereft of, of decent leadership in the White House that it's, it's, that's part of the reason why these riots have happened quite well. It strikes me from what you've said. I think this could be a lesson is that with with the media, with the ability to communicate to a number of people at the same time, however you do that. You can have a calming effect. You may not be able to stop the protests, but at least you can comment to some extent if you do the right things and it doesn't take a whole lot of, you know, a lot to be a calming effect and could be a calming effect. If you have somebody who throws kerosene on the fire, then you get this. So it's a big leverage point. I think we have learned that from this experience, don't you think? Yes, I think in some, you know, this is bizarre to even consider but I think there's this is true in some ways that Donald Trump is kind of an anarchist himself. He has this destructive streak that, you know, it's dangerous. It's been dangerous and you can, you can identify numerous ways in which he has damaged our country in his four years of being in the White House. But so yeah, you mean you have somebody in the White House who in some ways, I don't know where this comes from quite honestly, but there's a part of him that would like to be there throwing rocks in the, you know, throwing rocks into these stores. You know, first there's this other part of him who wants to somehow lead a country, but he really has no idea how to do it. And he hasn't learned a thing from these four years. It's, it's, if anything, it's even worse this kind of divisiveness that he has spread in this country. Speaking of divisiveness, you know, and making things worse. I mean, we started out with COVID. We started out with the reopening that's questionable. They're an economically opening that's questionable. We started out with a dysfunctional government in general. Right. And a sole proprietorship, a dictatorial president. Now the riots call it demonstrations. Right. You know, when they go on for seven days and burn down the city blocks, that's a pretty serious. They're very serious riots. Yeah. And so Mike, my question to you and to put it in perspective is, you know, this is going to actually make all those other threads worse. It's not, it's not going to lend help to restoring good government necessarily. It's not, it's probably is going to make COVID worse. A lot of people who didn't would not necessarily have caught the disease will catch the disease because of proximity and all that. It will certainly, certainly, certainly not help the reopening and the economy and the willingness of people to go out and participate in economy is a huge loss on top of it, huge loss. So my question is, what, what, what do we do now to recover and, you know, unless we solve the underlying problems, isn't this going to happen again. And another way to ask the question is, are riots useful in any way. Ah, that's an interesting question. And we have to go back to the Stamp Act riot which was incredibly useful. The British actually backed off of the Stamp Act after these riots, and they stopped. So I think we can't assume that these riots will not be useful in any way. I mean, they're very destructive and you hate to see that. But we don't know. I mean, we don't know. It took 10 years right after the Stamp Act riots for for a revolution to break out for the kind of the ultimate consequence so we're still in this we don't really know what the results of these protests will be. I tell you one thing though, I've never seen as large a group of peaceful protesters protesting against violence against African American men by the police. The protests eclipse the 2014 protests by a lot. I've never seen this before, which is indicates to me that there's actually a good thing going on that people are becoming more and more aware of this issue of racism. And, and, you know, it's unfortunately you know we kind of in the Obama period. We sort of soon well come on we elected him president we definitely made racial progress right, and we just, it was very I think it was more difficult for us to confront that racism is is okay I'll use a term you were talking using into American identity it has become. You know, the one of the most important narrative pieces of our history it's it's a terrible tragedy in our history but so if we can confront I mean this gets to your point that you know let's let's try to get at what's underneath this if we can get at the underlying racism in police departments in you know in law enforcement and in other arenas of American life we you know then the right then I would say you know that these riots are terrible things but actually they might have served as a wake up call to this country. Yeah, that's as well taken john, but in any event you'll have to agree with me that these riots as so many other things during the Trump administration are historic. They are historic they will never be forgotten by any historian. Indeed, yes, yes. Good and Professor of History at HPU thank you so much for coming on on on history lens we so enjoy discussing these things with you. Good to be up.