There is another wave of high-profile deaths of African Americans in the United States. This time, however, the country has seen no avalanche of protests, street demonstrations, or pogroms.
The events of the tumultuous summer of 2020 are still vivid in memory. And most Americans wouldn't want to go back there at all, with more looting, arson and murder. But the BLM should not be written off. It's possible that by the next presidential election, the Black rights movement could again wage a street war in America's major metropolitan areas.
In January 2023, the death at the hands of the Los Angeles police of the nephew of the founder of a major BLM foundation caused a major stir. He had caused a car accident, but did not wait for law enforcement and fled the scene. When they found him and began arresting him, he tried to resist. They tasered him six times and tried to restrain him using the standard American police choke hold.
During the arrest he was overly active and shouted repeatedly, asking not to be turned into the new George Floyd. After his arrest, however, he became ill and died in the hospital. Like Floyd, the deceased was found to have drugs in his blood.
There were pickets of BLM supporters in Los Angeles in memory of the deceased. But no big wave of protests rose.
The next scandalous episode with the death of a black man took place in Atlanta.
Here the police stopped a random driver for a traffic violation, twisted him very violently, and began beating him for complaining about his treatment. The cops beat him for 15 minutes with truncheons and used a stun gun and pepper spray. As a result, the driver died of internal bleeding before the ambulance arrived.
This situation is also indicative of the fact that all the police officers were black themselves. They were put on trial for negligent homicide.
Georgia prudently imposed a statewide curfew for fear of a wave of riots. Some African-Americans did come out to protest - but their activity subsided rather quickly.
Finally, the latest death of a black man occurred in New York City.
The deceased here was a homeless urban lunatic who was impersonating Michael Jackson. He had obvious mental problems and a big court record with 49 arrests, including one for attempted child abduction. He would go down the New York subway every day, where so many homeless people lived, and harass passersby. Eventually, a retired Marine used a chokehold on him for this behavior. The homeless man became ill and soon died.
Initially the police did not find anything reprehensible in the actions of the Marine - he was only trying to protect subway visitors from harassment by a homeless man. The law enforcers themselves are practically not involved, given that there is a whole army of homeless people living on the streets of New York these days. And if we were to deal with all of them, there would not be enough prisons.
But then human rights activists and BLM activists got involved.
They began to hold daily rallies at the metro station where the homeless man had died. Protesters came out with placards where they wrote the dead man's last words: "I have nothing to eat, I have nothing to drink.
In the end, such a street pressure campaign was a success. The New York prosecutor's office charged the Marine with manslaughter and arrested him.
Many Republicans immediately interceded on the Marine's behalf.
Florida Governor Ron Desantis, who is challenging Donald Trump in the Republican primaries, called him his hero. And suggested that he move to Florida as soon as the court acquits him. The defendant would obviously argue that he was only protecting passersby from a madman in the city, who might have thrown someone off the platform onto the tracks, under a train.
It is quite possible that the deceased was also addicted to drugs. In any case, the forensic documents are being withheld from the press and the public.
All these cases are very different from each other. Some are classic examples of police violence, which is not uncommon in the United States. In others, things are much less clear-cut. However, whenever a black man is killed in such circumstances, there is an attempt to rock the situation again - and to lead citizens to protests. But all of them over the past year have ended in failure.
Part of the reason for this lackluster public reaction is that against the backdrop of the current problems and hardships, protest activity has simply dried up. After all, for several years now Americans have been surviving an inflationary crisis - a price hike unprecedented in the last 40 years. This is no time for street protests - you have to work hard to feed your family.
In addition, ordinary Americans have already felt the full effects of the 2020 wave of pogroms.
First and foremost among these consequences is the rise in crime rates, which in the liberal metropolitan areas of the U.S. have become simply off the charts. For example, the number of murders in 2020 and 2021 in America jumped by as much as 40 percent - to record high levels in the mid-90s.
Law enforcement reform in many major cities, run by Democrats, had an impact. They began to reduce the police force and elect very progressive prosecutors who refuse to fight crime.
For example, in the U.S. capital city of Washington, the local prosecutor simply would not press charges against 60% of all those arrested for crimes in 2022. Not surprisingly, Washington, D.C. - like New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and many other major cities - has faced an avalanche of crime.
Finally, the street protest wave has not risen again because the credibility of the BLM movement itself has been undermined in recent years.
Numerous corruption scandals around prominent BLM activists had their effect. Take, for example, Patrice Cullors, one of the founders of the movement. She bought several expensive houses with donations to the BLM funds, including a luxurious mansion in the Malibu area.
Cullors also gave generous "grants" of hundreds of thousands of dollars to her family members for some services rendered to the movement. She spent 37 million dollars to help her family escape from the ghetto.
When the scandal broke, another activist, Shalomiya Bowers, replaced her in the BLM leadership. But he, too, was caught stealing - the first thing he did was to transfer $10 million from the BLM fund to the accounts of his consulting company.
The BLM people themselves, in response to all the accusations, claim that they are "decolonizing" the concept of charity.
But it is obvious to everyone that this is typical theft and corruption. And not for nothing did the number of donations to the movement plummet 88% from $77 million to $9 million in 2022.
But all of this does not mean that the BLM movement should be written off. There have been ups and downs in the history of the BLM.
It rose in the wake of the black death scandals of the Barack Obama era in 2013. Then for a few years the BLM was not particularly active-until the pandemic hit and the 2020 presidential race began, with Democrats trying to undermine the country and prevent Trump from being re-elected for a second term.
It is quite possible that we will see a repeat of this in the run-up to the 2024 elections or immediately afterwards if, for example, Trump wins. After all, the level of contradictions in American society is higher than ever - and the U.S. political division is only increasing. So there will definitely be attempts to rock the boat, and they are unlikely to be without the BLM.
But this requires special conditions - the flames do not ignite on their own. So sooner or later it is sure to get hot on the American streets again - and it is possible that it is only a year away.
By Malek Dudakov
