Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price (D) gave an interview to Dallas’ Fox 4 Tuesday. The long-time commissioner has courted his share of controversy, including calling the scientific term “black hole” racist several years back. He’s no closet Republican.
Dallas has been the scene of some of Texas’ worst violence and looting since the George Floyd protests devolved over the past week, including the harrowing scene of rioters beating a man who attempted to defend his business with a machete.
In the interview, Commissioner Price emerges as a voice of reason against the violence.
Price says what he has seen in Dallas since Friday night are not protests.
“I can’t sit idly by. This is not protest. Just don’t keep wrapping it as though its protest. It’s not protest. It’s anarchy,” he said. “And it’s not as if you’re talking to somebody who has never protested.”
Price goes on to recount his history of civil rights demonstrations, making the valid point that those demonstrations worked without resorting to violence. The nation looks back on the civil rights movement now as righteous in its cause and outcome.
Regarding the current violence, Price is unequivocal:
“It angers me because it ain’t protest. Call it what it is. I don’t care if its media or whoever, it is not a protest. A protest has a purpose. It has an outcome. This has no outcome. This is just destruction. That’s what anarchy is,” Price said. “I applaud the curfew. It’s management. You can’t do this stuff under color of darkness.”
Video here.
Price makes a point at the end of the piece that’s both true and disturbing. He says some of the rioters may regard his comments as “old-school,” which points to a generational divide on the left. Price’s generation won their cause by appealing to Americans’ basic sense of justice and fairness, and by calling on the Constitution as valid shared authority.
When they marched, they marched peacefully. They were often beaten and jailed for it. They had a moral vision, expressed most clearly in Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Its iconic lines still resonate today.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
King called on and shamed white Americans to live out the promises written into the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He did not reject the American project. He embraced it and called for it to be completed.
Price is of the King generation and that’s the project his generation of activists sought to complete. But what project does today’s antifa activist have in mind? When they riot, loot and even kill — what do they want? When they cause mayhem despite black protesters pleading with them not to, what do they want? Who are they really terrorizing most?
It’s not a project to embrace or enhance the American project. They want to destroy that. When they deface American monuments, this is what they are saying.
So they probably do consider Price “old-school” in his thinking. And that should concern everyone of every background of goodwill who wants to see the American project survive and thrive.
Antifa are its enemies. They are enemies of everyone who wants freedom and peace. They’re terrorists hijacking and destroying a just cause.
Exit question: If Price sees this and confidently rejects violence, but Joe Biden doesn’t, what does this say about Joe Biden?
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