Editorial: Violence is a different kind of virus

A virus is something that starts small and commonplace, unseen, but is picked up and takes root and can make you sick to your soul before spreading to the next person and the next and the next.

We are fighting an epidemic now. We have been fighting it for a while.

The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis — crushed to the ground with a policeman’s knee in his neck — was not the Typhoid Mary of this epidemic. It is just the most recent in a line of indignities too long to number. But this one has caused a fever that is burning major cities across the country. It started in Minnesota. It has spread to Atlanta, to Denver, to the White House.

On Saturday, the fever struck Pittsburgh. What began as a Downtown gathering with songs that spoke of sadness and signs that spoke of anger built to a flood of rage and indignation that destroyed businesses, closed Interstate 579 and engulfed police vehicles in flames.

In the chaos, it is hard to tell who is committing the acts. As with many protests around the nation, the peace-minded organizers might find themselves joined by opportunists looking for an excuse to attack police or spread mayhem. Others might just get swept up in the emotion of the moment. City of Pittsburgh officials believe the protest was “hijacked” and pledged to find and prosecute the bad actors.

But this virus of violence is overwhelming. Like covid-19, it is attacking a body with a preexisting condition. The nation and the state are already weakened by months of quarantine, millions out of work, financial instability and political warfare.

We have to extract the violence from the equation before it is too late. Broad public sympathy for the protesters’ causes vanishes when the property of innocent citizens is destroyed, and police and bystanders are injured in the melee.

It is easy to say violence solves nothing. But we use violence in war. We cheer wildly for violence on silver screens and football fields.

The difference in all of these instances is direction and control. Uncontrolled violence is chaos and it might disrupt, but it doesn’t promote change. Uncontrolled violence is lightning and hurricanes and sepsis burning through an immune system unchecked.

Change cannot be found through fire and breaking glass, by shattering businesses that were holding onto thin margins by their fingernails. Change doesn’t come from the smoking wreckage of a police car.

Change comes from voices raised in unison and finding common ground. Change comes because of a desire for peace, not fighting. Change comes despite violence, not because of it.

We need a solution that can act as a vaccine — something that gives us the antibodies without the disease. We need to be able to identify the injustice and strive to eliminate it without the fever of violence.