The spread of political unrest in countries across the globe has prompted fears around the growth of political violence in democratic societies.
There is usually a theory that political violence could be the sort of thing a democracy should prevent in case it occurs it’s going to be remedied from the exercise of voting, the safety of individual rights from the courts or by civil disobedience.
The degrees of Jamaica along with the US dispel this proposition.
JAMAICA
Since the 1980’s we have seen a long-standing feud between right-wing and left-wing elements often escalating into violence. The violence has now morphed into economic crimes fueled because of the drug trade in south Florida.
Successive governments manipulate states of emergency to combat surges in crime because, based on National Security Minister Dr. Horace Chang, unless Jamaica gets to be a police state, states of emergency are needed. A police state is certainly one in which excess power is exercised over the power in the police force.
Democracy remains intact though the costs happen to be high. Jamaica was indexed in a recent report as obtaining the highest rate of homicides (including killings from the police) from the Americas along with the Caribbean
UNITED STATES
The summer of 2020 saw protests and sporadic violence in many American cities pursuing the killings by police of African Americans George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
Some people including a few who are now protesting inside the streets believe that American policing is incompatible with democratic ideals.
The new president Joe Biden was placed in a celebration flanked by a sea of barbed wire and 26,000 heavily armed soldiers. Military soldiers parade the streets as police, SWAT teams execute nightly no-knock warrants (specially in communities of color) while people on the market communities are disproportionately absorbed from the world’s largest prison system.
To stop the exacerbation of Trumpism we view internet censorship and regulations for the media and some within the left even recommend new dramatic terror laws and also policies to deprogram the minds of Trump supporters.
It remains to appear if the 2020 demonstrations will resolve the long-standing issues of racial injustice or escalate in to a civil war. Two factors indicate how the trend favors the first kind:-
First, today’s protesters will be more interracial than those on the past comprising African Americans, Latins and Whites because police target all races with rubber bullets and tear gas.