THE CASE FOR NONVIOLENCE.

• Author: Lueders, Bill
• Position: COMMENT

On the night of June 23 in Madison, Wisconsin, the city where this magazine is published, anger turned to violence.

Hundreds of protesters took part in tearing down two statues. One was a symbol of Wisconsin progressivism, the other a tribute to a Wisconsin abolitionist who was killed fighting Confederate troops during the Civil War. Much smaller groups also set a small fire in an inhabited building and beat up a progressive state senator.

This ugliness was not typical of the protests in Madison, and all over the world, in response to the police murder of George Floyd on May 25. Most have been peaceful, with the protesters being markedly more peaceful than the police. But the few acts of violence that have occurred, in Madison and throughout the nation, are worthy of our consideration.

In fact, they demand that we pay attention. That's the whole point. Every broken window, every toppled statue, and every thrown punch is meant to send an outsized message. That's why we should take a hard look at what is gained and what is lost when the ideal of nonviolence is abandoned. There will be more of this to come.

Making the case for nonviolence in a violent world is not easy. Rage is exactly the proper reaction to what happened to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, Ahmaud Arbery, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Laquan McDonald, Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile, Atatiana Jefferson, and Elijah McClain, among many others, all part of a 400-year-old legacy of repression. The whole world should be outraged, and real change must come. The question is how to bring about this change.

What happened in Madison is a small sliver of a much larger story, but one that illustrates the tension between projecting outrage and provoking it. The events of June 23 were preceded by several nights in late May in which a handful of people shattered windows and looted stores.

In the aftermath, dozens of Madisonians turned out to help with the cleanup. The city's mayor, Satya Rhodes-Conway, put things in perspective: "If you are angry because you want those who broke windows and trashed sidewalk cafes... to face consequences, be more angry that the people who kill Black people all too often walk free."

Those engaged in violence were not acting in concert with the crowd. At least one Madison protester was seriously injured in an altercation with looters. The police used tear gas and pepper spray to drive protesters away. The destruction could...