Killing qualified immunity would be a better legacy for the protests sparked by George Floyd's death than fruitless riots and a handful of acquittals.

Whatever your thoughts on how the protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd have accomplished this, the despair, fatigue and frustration that so many have felt for generations now have people's attention. That's important to any movement that has noble goals — and this one, insofar as it's about justice in the Floyd case, does.

So what now? At some point, if this movement doesn't focus itself on a goal more narrow than calling for people to be less racist, dismantling some imprecise set of narratives, or even acknowledgement of people's pain, even the most committed among the protesters will fatigue, they will drop off, and we will be right back where we started.

There's lots of talk about how peacefully kneeling didn't work, supposedly necessitating the more violent events we're seeing now.

If that's true, then neither did the L.A. riots. Neither did the McDuffie riots. Neither did the Ferguson riots.

The fact is that nonviolence does work. It worked for King, it worked for Gandhi, it worked in Serbia, and it continues to work for movements the world over. If you want to dive deep here, consider familiarizing yourself with the work of Gene Sharp. My point is that nonviolence is the answer. It's most effective when it has a clearly defined goal, and it's most impactful when that goal capitalizes on broad consensus on an issue that touches lives everywhere.

So I'll make one specific suggestion: focus on qualified immunity.

For the moment, forget weed, forget guns, forget training, forget narratives, forget crack cocaine and forget mandatory minimums. Don't worry about where to start tackling that reading list someone suggested to enlighten yourself or convincing your abuela that she'd be less racist if she stopped watching Univisión and Telemundo.

Forget all that — even if only for a couple of weeks. Focus on qualified immunity.

Qualified immunity is an invention of the Supreme Court (there's your "living document" in action) and it's the reason that cops have gotten away with some pretty shocking bullshit.

In a USA Today op-ed, Institute for Justice attorneys Patrick Jaicomo and Anya Bidwell wrote:

The Supreme Court created qualified immunity in 1982. With that novel invention, the court granted all government officials immunity for violating constitutional and civil rights unless the victims of those violations can show that the rights were “clearly established.”

…

Although innocuous sounding, the clearly established test is a legal obstacle nearly impossible to overcome. 
…

For instance, last November the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that Tennessee cops who allowed their police dog to bite a surrendered suspect did not violate clearly established law. There, the victim cited a case where the same court earlier held that it was unconstitutional for officers to sic their dog on a suspect who had surrendered by lying on the ground with his hands to the side. That was not sufficient, the court reasoned, because the victim had not surrendered by lying down: He had surrendered by sitting on the ground and raising his hands.

Read the rest of that piece here.

Today, June 1, the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear cases in which it might rid us of qualified immunity. I hope it does, and I hope this becomes a distant memory.

In the meantime, consider channeling your energy not only into demanding that your representatives in Congress also erase qualified immunity legislatively (better safe than sorry), but further into demanding that police join you in that call. Force them and the institutions above, below and around them to take a side on the question of whether they should be shielded by such an absurd legal doctrine.

Finally, know that qualified immunity might end up being why the men responsible for George Floyd's death get off the hook. But if his death sparks a movement to undo qualified immunity, it doesn't have to be that way the next time — not for the next black victim, or white victim, or any victim, not just of police violence, but of all kinds of abuse all over the country. And wouldn't that be a better legacy to attach to his memory than some controversial fires and a handful of acquittals?

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