In the days leading up to the national holiday to honor the great champion of nonviolence, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., peace was disrupted by phony bomb threats.
State business came to a halt in Springfield on Jan. 3 as the hazardous device unit of the Illinois secretary of state police conducted sweeps of the Capitol and adjacent public areas. Other state capitols in Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Connecticut and Michigan also were evacuated or locked down that morning.
Elsewhere, bomb threats against government workers and officials rose in what Attorney General Merrick Garland described as a “deeply disturbing spike.” For example, police and emergency personnel were sent the night of Jan. 7 to the Washington home of Judge Tanya Chutkan, the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s federal election case. She received a voicemail message with a racial slur and death threat.
Although the FBI said it had no evidence or information that the threats were credible, the cowardly and potentially dangerous pranks cast a shadow over the 2024 campaign as Americans prepare to vote in a primary season that kicks off this month.
Who’s behind the harassment? Considering the possibilities, which probably range from the Proud Boys to Antifa, it is noteworthy that the harassment tended to be targeted at people Trump has vilified. Violent threats and acts of intimidation have shaken the lives of various government officials since the 2020 election.
On Jan. 6, 2021, the same day a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, another group gathered at the home of former Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman, as she testified later. They were searching for Freeman after Trump allies falsely accused her of helping to steal the 2020 election — and slandered her by name as a “professional vote scammer.”
It seems more than coincidental that prominent targets such as Freeman and Chutkan happened to be Black. But, as if to dispel the notion that the phony emergency calls were coming solely from the far right, a swatting attempt was made against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a famously outspoken Trump-allied Republican from Georgia, on Christmas Day. Also targeted was Rep. Brandon Williams, a Republican from New York, according to news reports.
Federal authorities also arrested a Florida man on Jan. 3 and charged him with threatening to kill Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., and his children. To pose a question that King often raised in his speeches, where do we go from here?
A central theme for those on the right who espouse violence is that white Christian men are somehow culturally and demographically surrounded. Think of the far right extremists who chanted, “Jews will not replace us,” at the Charlottesville, Virginia, riot.
In other words, these guys may be driven to bitter desperation by the sense that their prominence and power is waning. King understood that.
His movement challenged customs, traditions and political power deeply entrenched since well before the Civil War. One of the most powerful messages he left for us pertained directly to these racial anxieties.
“Let us be dissatisfied,” he said in August 1967, less than eight months before his assassination, “until that day when nobody will shout, ‘White Power!,’ when nobody will shout, ‘Black Power!’ but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power.”
That’s still true. The future is up to us. All of us.
cpage@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @cptime
Clarence Page: Threats of violence mar MLK holiday. Still, his words guide us.
5
0
02.02.2024
In the days leading up to the national holiday to honor the great champion of nonviolence, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., peace was disrupted by phony bomb threats.
State business came to a halt in Springfield on Jan. 3 as the hazardous device unit of the Illinois secretary of state police conducted sweeps of the Capitol and adjacent public areas. Other state capitols in Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Connecticut and Michigan also were evacuated or locked down that morning.
Elsewhere, bomb threats against government workers and officials rose in what Attorney General Merrick Garland described as a “deeply disturbing spike.” For example, police and emergency personnel were sent the night of Jan. 7 to the Washington home of Judge Tanya Chutkan, the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s federal election case. She received a voicemail message with a racial........
© Chicago Tribune
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
