Midterms
The midterms are just 10 weeks away, but there has been surprisingly little coverage in the national media. That is not to say that there has not been a lot by British standards, because there has, but the abundance of world crises over this summer (including Gaza, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine and ebola) has seemingly – and unusually – kept Americans’ attention focused overseas. This is unlikely to last much longer. There is simply too much at stake in the midterms for them not to dominate American politics between now and November. There are 35 United States Senate seats (out of 100) up for grabs, of which 14 are currently held by Republicans and 21 by Democrats. The Democrats control Senate, but if the Republicans can gain six seats then they will take majority control. All 435 of the House of Representative seats are to be contested; most commentators believe the Republicans will retain a steady majority.
The midterms though are not just about the national picture of course. There are 39 states where the governor position is being contested, and in a majority of states there are elections for state congress positions, including my home state of Maryland. Here there has been plenty of activity for the past year or so which had its first peak during the recent primaries and is building to a new crescendo now.
Local politics in the United Kingdom and the US are quite different. There is a lot more razzmatazz to local politics in the US than there is in the UK, and in many of the recent carnivals and state fairs I have attended a key part of the parades has been the procession of candidates for mayor, county executive, and state congress. Everyone wants to shake their hands and wish them luck, often when they are from the other party than they intend to vote for. The door knocking by and for candidates has been going on here for months, unlike in the UK where it tends to only happen in the short run up to elections, and many candidates even for ‘small’ seats will have a few dozen people volunteering days of their time. And, as in the UK, many people will be influenced by national concerns when electing representatives who can only hope to influence local issues: the Democrat nominee for my district is focused on building better flood defences for Main Street, but LGBT equality and tackling poverty are a key part of his campaign message.
Ferguson
Ferguson is a small town in St Louis County, Missouri, with a population of just over 20,000. On 9 August local police shot and killed an unarmed black teenager called Michael Brown. It is claimed that Michael raised his arms to show police he was unarmed before he was shot. The following day the St Louis police aggressively over-responded to a series of vigils by deploying 150 officers in riot gear and blocking off areas of the city. The vigils then turned to protests, and the protests to riots, and the police began firing tear gas and rubber bullets. The rioters then looted and burned shops and businesses.
Both sides – the protestors and the police – made mistakes, but by taking a paramilitary approach to domestic street policing the St Louis county police department made the largest blunder. Images from Ferguson have been met with horror and dismay across the US: some of this has been from those on the right who see further evidence of out of control black neighbourhoods, but the majority have been struck by the injustice of the initial shooting and by the needless brutality of the response to the initial vigils. The US attorney general, Eric Holder, tasked the Justice Department to monitor the situation, and the FBI are investigating potential civil rights abuses.
The situation in Ferguson is now much calmer, due principally to the intervention of the Democrat governor of Missouri, Jay Nixon, who pulled the pounty police out of the area and brought in the Missouri State highway patrol to police the protests. The latter have had a considerably more even-handed approach, more closely reflect the racial profile of the protesters, and have established a strong rapport with the local community.
In some ways the events in Ferguson have paralleled the London riots of August 2011: protests against the killing by police of an unarmed young black man turning into riots. But there have also been differences in Ferguson: the looting has been on a much smaller scale, the initial police response was much worse, and the protests only turned to riots because of that police response. Themes of firearms, armed police, race, alienated youth, poverty, greed, violence, arson and the media are prevalent in both events.
There will undoubtedly be longer-term impacts for US politics. The benefits of community policing are better understood. Congress is to debate changes to programs that currently provide discarded military weaponry – including machine guns – to local police forces. And stereotypes beloved by both Democrats (militarized police) and Republicans (feckless minorities) have been re-enforced; not for the first time I have thought that those who claim to love America the most seem to really hate what America actually is.
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Photo: Kynan Tait