MARC HYDEN: Atlanta riot shows that leaders on both sides need to stop excusing violence

Riots rocked Atlanta in a sad scene on Jan. 21 that left Peachtree Street scarred from the smoldering destruction.

“Masked activists dressed in all black threw rocks and lit fireworks in front of a skyscraper that houses the Atlanta Police Foundation, shattering large glass windows,” wrote NPR. “They then lit a police cruiser on fire, smashed more windows and vandalized walls with anti-police graffiti as stunned tourists scattered.”

Atlanta police have arrested at least six people connected to the events — although only one is from Georgia — and charged them with domestic terrorism.

This event shouldn’t be confused with the peaceful Jan. 28 demonstrations in response to the abhorrent police killing of Tyre Nichols. The initial purpose of the Jan. 21 demonstrations, on the other hand, was to demand justice for Manuel Esteban Paez, who had allegedly been camping in protest near the proposed site of the so-called “Cop City,” a training facility for the Atlanta Police Department.

During a clearing operation, “An individual, without warning, shot a Georgia State Patrol trooper,” the GBI reported. “Other law enforcement personnel returned fire in self-defense. […] The individual who fired upon law enforcement and shot the trooper was killed in the exchange of gunfire.”

The person was later identified as Paez, and the GBI asserts that he fired first and ballistics links the bullet removed from the trooper’s body to the handgun found at the scene. Some activists aren’t so sure and believe that police assassinated Paez, which sparked the Atlanta protests.

Peaceful demonstrations are an important form of public expression. This one in particular ultimately turned destructive, but it was followed by a usual refrain from those who sought to excuse the havoc.

One CNN guest appeared to take offense to those who called the protests violent. “I think that there’s a real blurring of the lines in the use of the word violence,” he said. “Is property destruction violence? To some people it certainly is. […] You keep using these words ‘violent, violent, violent, violent’ … The only acts of violence against people that I saw were actually police tackling protesters.”

Respectfully, Merriam-Webster’s dictionary disagrees with this notion and is clear that destroying property can be a form of violence. If someone burns down your house, isn’t that violence? Of course it is. It’s also laughable to assert that property destruction isn’t violence, while others suggest that trivial actions like innocent, mistaken microaggressions are.

Mayor Andre Dickens agrees with me.

“The crimes range from violence to domestic terrorism to assault, battery and some other things,” the Atlanta mayor said. “But, yes, it is violent when someone turns to burn down a police car or break out windows or have explosives on them.”

Meanwhile, one TV reporter described the activities in Atlanta as “largely peaceful,” quite literally as a police car burned in the background of their camera shot. Sure, and the Titanic’s voyage was also “largely peaceful,” until the end.

The overwhelming majority of protesters may have been peaceful, but such statements minimize the reality of what happened. Sadly, Atlanta has been the setting of other violent protests over the past few years. Perhaps as a result of attempts to downplay destructive demonstrations, growing numbers of conservatives seem to believe some of those on the political left are either condoning or promoting these activities.

Despite what you might hear, this isn’t a liberal malady. While far from a one-to-one comparison, one only has to look back to Jan. 6, 2021 to see an even more egregious example of a protest gone grotesquely wrong when pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building, defiled it and attacked police officers. It was a despicable moment that will leave a stain on America’s history for years to come.

Just as Mayor Dickens laudably condemned the violence in Atlanta, many conservatives denounced the Jan. 6 attacks, but myriad others downplayed the incident. In disgusting form, some called those who stormed the Capitol “patriots;” others seemed eager to move on and sweep the despicable events under the rug, and one compared it in large part to a “normal tourist visit,” save for the “undisciplined mob” and “acts of vandalism.”

I’d venture to say that the Jan. 6 apologists would be some of the first ones to denounce Atlanta’s Jan. 21 rioters and vice versa. Therein lies the problem. Activists blindly loyal to a party, a movement or a leader are quick to point out misbehavior in their opponents’ camps, while straining to justify misconduct within their own ranks.

The ridiculousness of this will continue until people are willing to throw off the shackles of hyper-partisanship and tribalism. Only then can we begin to uniformly hold misguided demonstrators accountable, regardless of the causes that they espouse, and police the activists within our own social circles.