T
wo months into this year’s
Black Lives Matter protests that
call for the defunding of police
departments across the country, Presi-
dent Donald Trump has yet to respond
in a way that isn’t thoroughly racist and
problematic. Outrage swept through the
nation in response to the first reports of
unidentified federal agents arriving in
Portland, Ore., — a hotspot for Black Lives
Matter protests — in unmarked vans,
kidnapping citizens off the streets and
placing them under arrest without prob-
able cause. In one case, Mark Pettibone,
a 29-year-old protestor, fled after real-
izing he was being pursued by men in an
unmarked vehicle wearing military-style
outfits, believing it was a far-right extrem-
ist group. After realizing his efforts to
escape were fruitless, he was detained,
read his Miranda rights and promptly
asked if he would waive those rights in
order to be interrogated. He refused and
was immediately released. They never
directly told him the crimes he was
accused of or who had detained him.
These officers aren’t simply arrest-
ing protestors without probable cause,
either. After a United States Navy vet-
eran approached these federal officials
in Portland to ask why they weren’t hon-
oring their oath to the Constitution, they
beat him and sprayed him with chemical
irritants, going so far as to break one of
his hands. This is indisputable evidence
that Trump is not only criminalizing
protestors, in violation of their First
Amendment rights, but is also encourag-
ing agents at the Department of Home-
land Security to violently attack anyone
— even military veterans — for simply
questioning them. Even some Republi-
cans and former directors of DHS are
speaking out against Trump’s recent
authoritarian actions — an unnerving
sign that our country is falling victim to
its fascist leader.
Trump and many conservatives’
counterarguments to the fury over-
whelming the nation in response to these
reports deny that these demonstrations
should even be referred to as protests.
Instead, they insist they are violence-
ridden riots led by anarchists and Antifa
that cause excessive harm to people,
government buildings and businesses in
the city. However, while some protestors
do identify themselves as Antifa, count-
less eyewitnesses have claimed the pro-
tests are largely peaceful and violence
only erupts when incited by the police
and federal agents invading the city. In
fact, the deputy chief of police in Port-
land claimed his department has taken
a hands-off approach to the protests
because of their general peacefulness
and stated he never requested federal
assistance. Even more, the mayor of
Portland has called for Trump to remove
his troops from the city, after he himself
got tear gassed by federal officers, assert-
ing that their actions have only “ratch-
eted up the tension on (their) streets.” It’s
becoming apparent that Trump is active-
ly ignoring the reality of the protests and
the objections from local government
and police departments in order to focus
his re-election platform on the revitaliza-
tion of the war against crime.
If the Trump administration con-
sidered historical patterns and advice
from expert criminologists, they would
understand this response is only going
to incite violence. In 1965, President
Lyndon B. Johnson passed the Law
Enforcement Assistance Act, sparking
an aggressive war on crime that was not
a response to remarkable crime rates,
but rather to the civil rights protests that
began to escalate just a year before. In
fact, rates of crime were lower in 1965
than in 1933, and they more than tripled
by 1995 after the act was passed. Just
six years after Johnson’s declaration, in
1971, President Richard Nixon declared
the War on Drugs, criminalizing addic-
tion and giving law enforcement another
excuse to target and incriminate Black
people. Both of these “wars” dispro-
portionately targeted Black Americans,
triggered their mass incarceration and
contributed to the rapid growth of the
prison-industrial complex.
“
Okay, who thinks it’s funny
to spray paint The Manny up
there, huh?” user @/ jacob.jarvis
mocked in his viral tik tok with a can
of spray paint in his hand. This was
among the first sightings of “Diary of a
Wimpy Kid” character Manny Heffley
being taken to the streets by Genera-
tion Z. Created by author Jeff Kinney,
the protagonist Greg Heffley’s spoiled
three-year-old brother Manny cries his
way through his toddler-esque trou-
bles. He is portrayed as growing in his
antagonism throughout the series, and
is described by fans as “quite intelligent
but is still socially awkward” — argu-
ably the perfect representation of our
generation. User @/ themannyspotted
took this idea a step further, accompa-
nying drawings of The Manny with
his viral audio, “The Manny will not be
televised. Look at how pissed off The
Manny is — look how mad he is, he’s
tired of police brutality!”
The commentary takes a modern
spin on Gill Scott-Heron’s radical 1971
classic “The Revolution Will Not Be
Televised.” Since then, street art of The
Manny has been complemented with
phrases like “ACAB” and “F*** 12” as a
retaliation against police brutality and
American imperialism. What started
out as a joke quickly evolved into what
many are calling an unlikely and per-
haps trivializing symbol for the Black
Lives Matter movement. In response
to the critics of the symbol, user @/
soupytime suggested The Manny is an
unavoidable and glaring nod to “stop
what you’re doing and sign a petition,”
concluding that the end goal would
be “to get Fox News to declare it [The
Manny] officially a hate symbol used by
the radical-left youth.” Despite the rath-
er calculating intentions of this user,
instagram account @/tmwnbt created
a carrd, a customizable platform for
building easily accessible one-page sites
for pretty much anything. The Manny
site was ultimately used as a landing
page for petitions and organizations.
This is not the first time members
of Gen Z have worked to disrupt what
President Donald Trump declared as a
“culture war” against the progressive
left. After all, trolling to demand social
justice is what we do best — from false-
ly overestimating the anticipated audi-
ence of President Trump’s re-election
campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla., by reg-
istering thousands of tickets to Tik Tok
teens who had no intention of attend-
ing, to campaigning for The Manny
flag and Wiz Khalifa’s “Black and Yel-
low” to take place of the current Amer-
ican flag and national anthem. The
absurdity of these political pranks puts
our generation under the same naive
and cartoon-like lens as Manny Hef-
fley, but this perception is nothing new
to Boomers like Michael Levin. The
wrath of Generation Z further rein-
forces the so-called left-wing cultural
revolution Trump accuses of seeking
to wage a “merciless campaign to wipe
out our history, defame our heroes,
erase our values, and indoctrinate our
children.” In terms, we are The Manny
all grown up: pissed off enough to peel
away from our self-absorption and
youthful arrogance.
While the comedic origins of the
meme are certainly questionable, and
meme activism itself steps danger-
ously into an amalgamation of humor
and serious politics, The Manny does
act as a social commentary on genera-
tional conflict. Boomers and Zoomers
ruthlessly deride the other for their
way of life and their view on politics,
overlooking the obvious generational
disconnection in experiences. The
trolling nature of The Manny and the
sarcastic support to replace the Ameri-
can flag with The Manny flag subtly
resembles every older conservative’s
greatest dread: cancel culture. When
this brutally unforgiving phenomenon
rears its head in politics, it’s often care-
lessly dismissed as the left-wing’s lack
of tolerance.
In line with the stereotypically
sardonic and nihilist nature of Gen-
eration Z, we are notoriously known
for our dramatics in political correct-
ness and the online shaming of those
who defy proper etiquette. While it’s
true that this practice can be toxic at
times and that well-intended memos
are usually overwhelmed by frivo-
lous Twitter fights, the sentiments
of this act are quite simple: Cancel
culture expects accountability. It
demands that tolerance not be the
solution to differences of opinion
— especially when the problematic
voice is far more influential than the
other. In a country where patriotism
and loyalty are praised and expect-
ed, cancel culture seems like the
anti-American hellion.
A
s a University of Michigan
staff member, reading the
WilmerHale report on Uni-
versity Provost Martin Philbert’s
sexual misconduct is both sicken-
ing and validating. Staff who have
experienced or witnessed sexual
harassment at the University know
how it goes. The Office for Institu-
tional Equity is brought in — or they
aren’t — they botch an investigation
or don’t conduct one at all and then
you’ll face retaliation for daring to
speak up. In some cases, you didn’t
actually dare report, but unwittingly
stumbled into someone’s reporting
obligation and found your reputa-
tion destroyed anyway. Oh, there is a
policy in the Standard Practice Guide
against retaliation? Please tell that to
the managers who retaliate readily,
easily and with impunity.
Time and again, the report alludes
to staff who experienced or got
wind of harm but feared speaking
out, feared professional retribution.
I want to affirm that based on my
many years working at the University,
all those fears are completely valid.
This place is incredibly hierarchical,
and power is concentrated within
leadership. Survivors and their sup-
porters get kicked off important proj-
ects, denied promotions or socially
iced-out under the guise of not being
“trusted” — that is, no longer seen
as willing to trade their ethics for
advancement. Some staff try with
limited success to fight back against
this dynamic; some try to bury the
pain of their disenfranchisement
and moral injury, often resulting in
mental and physical health problems;
some are chased out of their field. The
Michigan brand and image takes pre-
cedence over safety and fairness, and
in turn, over retaining diverse talent.
You’d think the University would
view all those things as important to
its reputation, but stupidly, it doesn’t.
The report offers several recom-
mendations to improve campus cli-
mate. I hope the University takes
them seriously. But none of the guid-
ance engages the point: Unchecked
power and hierarchy in higher educa-
tion preserves sexism, racism and vio-
lence toward students and workers.
To that end, though I love my
work, I’m job searching to get out of
this place. I’ve been gaslit by super-
visors whose “feedback” amounts to
backlash. I’m tired of watching my
friends and colleagues get violated
by male coworkers, then trauma-
tized by OIE and their leaders. This
place doesn’t deserve us. I’m sorry
to the brilliant students I won’t be
able to serve, I’m sorry to my dedi-
cated colleagues who are still trying
to make it work — there is indeed
something to the idea of making
change from within, if you can stand
it — and I’m most sorry to survivors
whom this University has failed. You
always deserved a safe and fair work-
place. You still do. May we find it,
and may brave people continue to tell
the truth knowing that it just might
set their future on fire.
5
Thursday, August 6, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
5
OP
OPINION
ON
A staff member’s rage
ANONYMOUS | CONTRIBUTOR
EASHETA SHAH | COLUMNIST
OK Boomer, hear The Manny out
Easheta Shah can be reached at
shaheash@umich.edu.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Editor’s Note: The author of this op-ed
has been kept anonymous due to
their fear of retaliation.
Elayna Swift can be reached at
elaynads@umich.edu.
Trump’s authoritarian attempt to secure the election
ELAYNA SWIFT | COLUMNIST
Read more at MichiganDaily.com