What Happens When You Try to Make History Vanish? — ProPublica

On January 10, the US Department of Justice released A Report about 123 pages In the racial massacre of 1921 in Tols, the staff of Oklahoma, which took several hundred lives and left the flowering black neighborhood of Greenwood in the flesh of ruins. The investigation of the department determined that the attack was “so systematic and coordinated that it exceeded the simple violence on the mafia.” While he acknowledged that “there is no persecution avenue for these crimes”, the Department came up with the results as “the first careful accounting of the federal government with this devastating event”, which “officially recognizes, illuminates and preserves horrible tests, victims, victims punishment ”.

“To date By announcing a report. “This report violates this silence through a strict review and the full accounting of one of our country’s darkest episodes. This report reflects our commitment to the pursuit of justice and truth, even in the face of insurmountable obstacles.”

Only two weeks later the Department started strange actions regarding the historical recreation of the brutal: this Removed from your site The search database on the search for all cases, which arises from January 6, 2021, an attack on the Capitol, which was prosecuted by the US Prosecutor in the Columbia.

Of course, these ill -wing actions were divided by the transfer of power: the inauguration of President Donald Trump, which rapidly moved To bring sides, send prison terms and request for layoffs for all 1500 people who are accused of crimes on January 6, including a tap conspiracy and an attack on police officers. This proven order for pardon – “fuck it, release everything,” said Trump, According to the axios – pushed the wave of indignation and criticism even from some Republicans. “I always said that if you are sorry people who attack police officers, you send the wrong public signal as a whole” said Senator South Carolina Lindsey Graham.

A Removing the database It happened more calmly, but it is worth the notice by itself. This signals the intention of Trump’s administration not only to spare the president’s supporters any subsequent consequences for their role, but also to erase the event from the record – to throw it into fog and forget, in which the Greenwood was existed for so long.

According to some, this impetus to the whitewash has the last story carries an unpleasant response of countless autocratic regimes: from the memory of the Communist Party of the Chinese Party in Tiananmen Square to the “disappearance” of Argentine military junta in the 1970s. It comes at the same time when the administration also seeks to run the teaching of American history, overall: Trump issued an executive order on January 29 under the name “Stoping radical ideological treatment at K-12 School” This threatens to abandon federal funds in schools that teach that the country is “fundamentally racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory” and entrusts the government “a priority to federal resources, in accordance with the current law, to promote patriotic education.” One question: Would the tuition of Tulsa be allowed?

But the removal of the database is anxious for another reason: it undermines our ability to view the events of January 6 in all their complexity and features.

I became aware of this difficulty when I spent a few days after the lover plunged essay accompanied by propublica’s Drawing up a video -traveler. What impressed me may be the most on the video is a variety of motivations, profiles and actions they exhibit at the exhibition. So, apparently, from afar, the crowd seemed to assume the unity of the goal of the only, organized mass, bent for destruction.

But apparently, the video appeared, heterogeneity appeared. There were young women with swollen jackets and pump hats, middle -aged women who could come right out of business lunch The garden is removing their black tactical gear Under the cover of the tree to pull on the red I can convey as simple Trump fans. There were people harshly attacked police officers and humiliated them (“You need to be ashamedStunning panties “), others asked not (“Don’t throw shit into the police!“” Don’t harm the police! “) And others, thanks to the police who arrived on stage (“Back blue! We love you!”). There were people Breaking in Windows and others who decipher them for this (“Oh God no. Stop!” Tourists like they Addressedly asked a police officer in the direction either swing the cameras to The capture of the inner part of the dome. (“This is the state capitol– says a man who suffers from her young woman.)

It was a great, necessary enterprise of four -year efforts of the Ministry of Justice: to draw differences for the sake of allocation of individual responsibility. Rearranging countless such videos and other evidence, investigators are one hundred people who could be identified as Attraction and incitement most violence. Was Daniel Rodriguez, who could be seen on the camera that led a gunshot pistol in the neck of the officer Michael Fanone; He was sentenced to over 12 years. There was Thomas Wbster, a former New York police officer and a marine infantry member who swinging a metal flagpole on the officer; He received 10 years. Was Peter Schwartz, a Pennsylvania welder who attacked the police with a chair and a chemical spray; He received 14 years.

Some results inevitably ripen for the second substitute. Kerstin Koleberg, a former American correspondent in Germany newspaper Die Zeit, Reported recently In the case of Stephen Randolfo, a 34-year-old man Kentucky, who received an eight-year term for his role in pressing one of the metal security barriers on the Capitols, injuring a police officer in the process; Others have received a lot of soft offers in the same group. Trump and his allies could choose to comb the cases and pardon only the accused, who, as they could say, were painted too wide.

But this is not what Trump did. Instead, he himself took the maximum wide brush and wiped everything clearly. By doing so, he released the accused from the hook. But in another sense, with a mass pardon and removal of the database, he deprived all participants of the individual agency on January 6, a period. In a sense, he made them exactly that the most ardent Castigation from the other side threw them from the beginning: a thoughtless crowd.

As by accident, at the end of the first week of Trump I was in Tols. I went to the Greenwood Museum, which tells about the rise of the neighborhood and its sudden destruction. This is a powerful presentation, despite the lack of documentation about the violence: take out oral history from survivors, play for videos of firing and arson; Before and after the photos, the almost complete attachment of the scrane commercial core in the neighborhood, first attack and later update Urban, are removed.

One of the main classes of the museum is the attempt of the authorities of the talks and the leading white residents to humiliate the massacre, securing it as a “nigger -upright”; Only a few decades, the museum noted, many in Tals barely knew what it happened at all. This cover occurred with durable consequences for those who survived from Greenwood, who were denied insurance requirements for the destroyed houses, not to mention any form of civilian restitution.

Already, many black residents of Talsa remain interesting why the reckoning, presented by the Ministry of Justice, does not join the main reparation. The last two lives survived from the massacre, Lesia Beningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher, said in a statement Responding to the report, “Doj confirms the role of the government in the slaughter of our neighbors from Greenwood, but refuses to prosecute the institutions in accordance with the federal law.” However, they said, “We are relieved when one of the biggest cover in American history is destroyed.”

And now, in Washington, the federal government has started a brand new cover for another day of huge violence. This time the removal will not be almost so successful. After all, there are all these videos that Live on the PROPBLICA siteAmong other places, while most of the remote database can be found On the car Wayback Archive. (And Propublica – one of the 10 media organizations that jointly sued the federal government, seeking to receive 14,000 hours on January 6.

But at least the government.