Closing arguments in Derek Chauvin’s trial for the murder of George Floyd ended Monday, and after the jury was excused to begin deliberations, Judge Peter Cahill had some harsh words – for Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA).
While attending a protest in Minneapolis on Saturday, the longtime congressman and chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services said she thought Chauvin should be convicted of murder and urged protesters to “become more confrontational.”
These comments received huge attention in conservative media – with critics twisting Waters’ comments by claiming she encouraged protesters to protest if they didn’t like the verdict. (Waters’ actual comments fell far short of that, and she insisted in a subsequent interview that she was “nonviolent.”)
“I just don’t know how this jury can really say they’re free from the taint of this, and now that we have US representatives threatening violence in connection with this particular case, it’s – it’s baffling to me, Judge,” said attorney Eric Nelson in the petition for a null and void trial.
“I am aware that Congressman Waters was specifically talking about this trial, and the unacceptability of anything less than a murder conviction, and that I was talking about being ‘confrontational,'” Judge Cahill said. “I wish elected officials would stop talking about this case, especially in a way that does not respect the rule of law and the judiciary.”
Cahill declined the mistrial, saying the jury had been told to avoid media attention and did not think jurors would be biased about Waters’s comments. He also believed that “a congressman’s opinion really doesn’t matter”. But he mused to Chauvin’s attorneys, “I’ll tell you that on appeal, Congressman Waters may have given you something that could result in this entire trial being quashed.”
Those on the right have exaggerated, distorted, and opportunistically exposed Waters’ comments. She didn’t tell anyone to revolt. The bigger context here, however, is that Waters has long believed, like many on the left, that comfortable, privileged Americans are only too happy to turn a blind eye to violence against black people and other marginalized communities – and riots are, if not justified. , in any case an understandable response.
Moderates and conservatives, meanwhile, have long argued that some on the left were reluctant to fully condemn or work to avoid unrest that could lead to death, injury or financial ruin. This decades-old discourse was revived amid the turmoil that followed Floyd’s May 2020 murder, and with the Chauvin verdict looming and cities fearing new violent protests, it’s now back on the agenda.
What Waters actually said
While attending a Black Lives Matter protest in Minneapolis Saturday night, Waters responded to questions about the trial that was unfolding. She repeatedly said protesters should “stay on the street” and “fight for justice.” She said she was looking for a guilty verdict for Chauvin – and for murder, not just the lesser charge of manslaughter. And when she again asked what protesters should do, she said the following:
‘Well, we have to stay on the street. And we need to become more active. We need to become more confrontational. We need to make sure they know we mean business. “
The video of her comments went viral, especially among conservatives, who claimed that Waters urged protesters to protest if Chauvin was not convicted of murder. Maxine Waters incites violence in Minneapolis, says Kevin McCarthy, leader of House Minority (R-CA) tweeted
The charge of “incitement” is greatly exaggerated. Waters didn’t speak or direct a crowd in a speech, she got out of control with the questioners, and her comments only went viral because conservatives made them viral.
And while Waters made it clear that she wanted a guilty verdict, it’s not clear that her advice to protesters depended on a “ not guilty ” verdict. One questioner used that frame, but Waters said she couldn’t hear it, and her final answer was to the broader question, “What should protesters do?”
As for the charge that Waters was pushing for violence or riots, it depends on her use of the phrase “get more confrontational.” In a subsequent interview with theGrio, Waters said she absolutely did not endorse violence, saying, “I am nonviolent.” When she used the word “confrontational,” she said, she was talking “about the confrontation with the justice system, the confrontation with the police going on, I’m talking about speaking out.” And, asked by Manu Raju from CNN if she stood after the word “confrontational,” Waters replied, “The entire civil rights movement is confrontational.”
All of this will sound familiar because of President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, when Democrats accused Trump of inciting insurrection, in part because he delivered a speech in confrontational language and urged his supporters to “fight” just before they were stormed the Capitol.
Trump’s lawyers pointed out that many Democrats, including Waters, made similar comments claiming that such language was common in politics. But the Democrats had argued that Trump’s speech was just the culmination of a month-long, multi-faceted attempt by Trump to unfairly reverse the election results. They fully admitted that politicians often use the word ‘fight’ in a rhetorical or metaphorical way.
The bigger context
The bigger context here is that cities are bracing for major protests and possible violence if Chauvin is acquitted, along the lines of the turmoil that took place in several cities after George Floyd’s murder last summer. About a dozen people died during the turmoil, in a mix of situations many more were injured and more than $ 1 billion in property damage was estimated.
Most politicians tend to speak out against such violence, with many Democrats viewing it as clearly politically counterproductive to the aims of protesters (or perhaps to their own political fortunes). Protesting against such atrocities is justified and necessary. It’s a completely American response, ”Joe Biden tweeted days after Floyd’s murder last May“But burning communities and unnecessary destruction is not. Violence that endangers lives is not. “
However, many with more leftist views were at odds over how to respond. There is a tension from the left’s view that riots motivated by racial injustice are “the language of the unheard,” Martin Luther King Jr. to quote – and that understanding and sympathy, rather than condemnation, are required. And Waters has long held this belief.
In the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles riots – riots that took place after police officers who badly beat a black man, Rodney King, were acquitted and killed more than 60 people – then-freshman Rep. Waters specifically that she was. I’m not going to tell people to “cool” it, adding, “The fact is, whether we like it or not, uproar is the voice of the unheard of.” (Later that year she called the turmoil “unacceptable” but “understandable.”)
Waters’ core view that many in the US are too readily willing to apologize injustice against marginalized people, and that as a result, more aggressive protest tactics are often needed, emerged again in 2018. endorsed public (nonviolent) confrontation of Trump cabinet officials, and a very similar cycle of controversy to the current one ensued.
“If you see someone from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, or at a gas station, you get out and create a crowd and push them back,” Waters said at a rally that year. ‘And you tell them that they are no longer welcome anywhere. We need to put the children in touch with their parents. “
The stakes in 2018 – on whether Trump officials could eat in DC restaurants without being shouted – were pretty low. But people can and will be killed and seriously injured in riots, and property damage that can shake off large businesses can ruin small business owners. (For example, in 1992, Koreatown was hit hard in Los Angeles.)
Conservatives argue that there is a broad tendency on the left to downplay or excuse this behavior without regard to its victims. Last summer, Trump’s team attempted to associate urban violence with Democrats as part of a strategy to blame the party more generally for disorder (including attacks on activists’ support for “defund the police”). Biden won, but some moderate Democrats concluded that these attacks caused the party to underperform in Congress. And Republicans will no doubt hope to use a similar playbook in 2022, as the small majority of Democrats in both houses of Congress are at stake.
Aside from the unrest point, others have objected to Waters’ insistence that only one outcome in the trial – a guilty verdict of murder for Chauvin – is acceptable, saying that government officials should hold Chauvin innocent until proven otherwise. The video of Floyd’s death has been publicly available since last year and the arguments of the trial have been well aired, so Waters can say she expressed her opinion based on that.
But the criticism is that such statements by government officials in particular jeopardize the right to a fair trial and run the risk of disrupting that trial – the latter being a criticism that Democrats often took on Trump for his views on the trials of his associates during his presidency.
And as for Judge Cahill’s hopes that politicians would “stop talking” about what the verdict should be? President Joe Biden then said Tuesday that he “prayed” for “the right judgment” and that he thought the evidence was “overwhelming.”