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Hannah Allam is a Washington-based national security correspondent for NPR, focusing on homegrown extremism. Before joining NPR, she was a national correspondent at BuzzFeed News, covering U.S. Muslims and other issues of race, religion and culture. Allam previously reported for McClatchy, spending a decade overseas as bureau chief in Baghdad during the Iraq war and in Cairo during the Arab Spring rebellions. She moved to Washington in 2012 to cover foreign policy, then in 2015 began a yearlong series documenting rising hostility toward Islam in America. Her coverage of Islam in the United States won three national religion reporting awards in 2018 and 2019. Allam was part of McClatchy teams that won an Overseas Press Club award for exposing death squads in Iraq and a Polk Award for reporting on the Syrian conflict. She was a 2009 Nieman fellow at Harvard and currently serves on the board of the International Women's Media Foundation.

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Hannah Allam is a Washington-based national security correspondent for NPR, focusing on homegrown extremism. Before joining NPR, she was a national correspondent at BuzzFeed News, covering U.S. Muslims and other issues of race, religion and culture. Allam previously reported for McClatchy, spending a decade overseas as bureau chief in Baghdad during the Iraq war and in Cairo during the Arab Spring rebellions.

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Amitai Etzioni served as a senior advisor to the Carter White House; taught at Columbia University, Harvard and The University of California at Berkeley; and is a university professor and professor of international relations at The George Washington University. His latest book is Hot Spots: American Foreign Policy in a Post-Human-Rights World.

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Amitai Etzioni served as a senior advisor to the Carter White House; taught at Columbia University, Harvard and The University of California at Berkeley; and is a university professor and professor of international relations at The George Washington University. His latest book is Hot Spots: American Foreign Policy in a Post-Human-Rights World.

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time.com - Early last week, as wildfires approached her neighborhood in Rogue Valley, Ore., Virginia Camberos evacuated her home. After a brief stay at her son's residence, about an hour's drive up the mountains, authorities gave the all-clear to return two days later. "I'm fortunate I have a home to come back to," says Camberos, a regional director for Unite Oregon, a non-profit serving the valley's mostly-Latino community.

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time.com - Early last week, as wildfires approached her neighborhood in Rogue Valley, Ore., Virginia Camberos evacuated her home. After a brief stay at her son's residence, about an hour's drive up the mountains, authorities gave the all-clear to return two days later.

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Allam, H. (2020, July 30). Analysts Say Armed Groups At Protests Raise Specter Of A 'Street War'. Retrieved September 26, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/2020/07/30/896770081/analysts-say-armed-groups-at-protests-raise-specter-of-a-street-war

Crary, D., & Press, A. (2020, May 29). AP photo of flag-bearing protester rockets around the world. Retrieved September 26, 2020, from https://www.startribune.com/ap-photo-of-flag-bearing-twin-cities-protester-goes-viral/570871412/?refresh=true

Etzioni, A. (2011, September 27). Amitai Etzioni. Retrieved September 26, 2020, from https://nationalinterest.org/profile/amitai-etzioni

Etzioni, A. (2020, June 29). The Black Lives Matter Movement Must Solve Its Violence Problem. Retrieved September 26, 2020, from https://nationalinterest.org/feature/black-lives-matter-movement-must-solve-its-violence-problem-163732

Hannah Allam. (n.d.). Retrieved September 26, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/people/714420148/hannah-allam

Mansoor, S. (2020, September 05). 93% of Black Lives Matter Protests Have Been Peaceful: Report. Retrieved September 26, 2020, from https://time.com/5886348/report-peaceful-protests/

Sanya Mansoor. (n.d.). Retrieved September 26, 2020, from https://muckrack.com/sanya-mansoor

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People from the protesters' side and the police's side have been using violence and excessive force, causing a "street war" according to NPR.

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At a congressional hearing this month, extremism researcher J.J. MacNab delivered a warning: "There is a potential street war brewing."

MacNab cited the dangerous mix of armed factions squaring off at protests around the United States. Of all the current flashpoints for violence - the pandemic, the election, the economy - she called it the risk that worries her most.

"I am concerned that there will be a shootout at one or more of the Black Lives Matter protests," MacNab told House members. "There are too many guns at these events, held by too many groups with conflicting goals."

Nine days later, MacNab's grim prediction came true. Last weekend, at least five protesters were shot at protests in different cities. In Austin, Texas, police say a protester with a rifle was shot and killed by a man driving through the crowd. A similar scene unfolded in Aurora, Colorado. Local news reports say a protester fired a gun, apparently aiming for a car plowing through the crowd but instead hitting two other protesters.

In Eugene, Ore., a protester and a man driving through the crowd both pulled guns. A viral video shows the men inches apart, each with a gun pointed directly at the other in a tense standoff. It ended without a shot fired, and the crowd cheered as the man in the truck drove away. But next time, extremism researchers fear, they might not be so lucky.

In recent weeks, street clashes have involved combinations of protesters, police, federal forces, extremists and provocateurs. The disparate armed factions, plus the stressors of the pandemic and a looming election, lead terrorism analysts to predict that worse is still to come.

"I think we are coming into very dangerous waters over the next couple of months," said Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "This has the potential for larger numbers and amounts of street violence between groups and networks on opposing sides. This is serious. I haven't seen this kind of domestic terrorism threat, really, in my lifetime."

Analysts say far-right and anti-government agitators are either attacking protesters or trying to glom onto their cause to push their own agendas. Other extremists see a chance to trigger a violent revolution; still others, a race war. Meanwhile, guns are increasingly visible on the protesters' side too. Some armed anti-fascist groups and Black gun clubs have joined the fray as self-proclaimed community defense forces.

In heated exchanges at a hearing this week, House Democrats accused Attorney General William Barr of ignoring the far-right threat. Like President Trump, Barr blames the violence at protests on armed anarchists and other leftist radicals. Barr told lawmakers that peaceful protests over racial inequality have been "hijacked."

"The rioters have come equipped for fight," Barr said, referring to protesters in Portland, Ore. "Armed with powerful slingshots, Tasers, sledgehammers, saws, knives, rifles and explosive devices."

Barr also defended the deployment of federal forces, a move that has been widely criticized as an unnecessary addition to an already combustible mix. Just as negotiations were underway to remove the federal forces from the streets of Portland, a new video surfaced of New York police bundling a protester into an unmarked van - a tactic used by the federal officers.

"This becomes very dangerous in who is being read as an enemy, who is read as engaged in criminal activity, and when the federal government can use its considerable power to shut down public dissent," said Ashley Howard, an assistant professor of history and African American studies at the University of Iowa.

Howard has written extensively about political violence and civil rights rebellions. She said protests in the 1960s also drew an extreme backlash. But now, with the organizing power of social media and guns in so many hands, this era is different. Howard said it has changed the way she thinks about protesting.

"I, for so long, have taken for granted what protesting in this country meant. That you could go out and come home that night," she said. "And I think now this is changed. You could get hit by a car. You could get a rubber bullet to the face. You could be shot by someone who's trying to protect you."

Howard said that's what makes the sustained demonstrations remarkable. Protesters have seen the beatings and car rammings. And yet, she said, they keep coming out.

"That makes the stakes so much higher to protest, but I think that also demonstrates how the stakes have already been high," Howard said. "That people are willing to put their lives on the line to finally get a freer kind of freedom in this country."

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Analysts Say Armed Groups At Protests Raise Specter Of A 'Street War'

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At a congressional hearing this month, extremism researcher J.J. MacNab delivered a warning: "There is a potential street war brewing." MacNab cited the dangerous mix of armed factions squaring off at protests around the United States. Of all the current flashpoints for violence - the pandemic, the election, the economy - she called it the risk that worries her most.

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Violence is an issue within the BLM movement according to The National Interest.

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The issue is an old one; however, current events require that we revisit the question of whether it is justified to resort to violence to gain social change in democratic societies (however flawed they are). The Black Lives Matter movement deserves great credit for mainly peaceful demonstrations, and for working hard to limit looting and violence. However, the use of force by some demonstrators has received support from a significant segment of the public. A recent CNN poll found that one out of four (27 percent) Americans believe that violent protests are justified. This is a considerable increase from the 14 percent who felt this way in 2016. Almost half of the Democrats hold that violent protests are justified; the same is true of 23 percent of White respondents.

A troublingly large line-up of public intellectuals are again providing justifications for violent protest. Wellesley College assistant professor of African studies Kellie Carter Jackson recently wrote, "Violence disrupts the status quo and the possibility of returning to business as usual. . . . The American Revolution was won with violence. The French Revolution was won with violence. The Haitian Revolution was won with violence. The Civil War was won with violence. A revolution in today's terms would mean that these nationwide rebellions lead to black people being able to access and exercise the fullness of their freedom and humanity." Northeastern University associate professor of sociology Gordana Rabrenovic argues that the violence that African American people experience in their interactions with state-sponsored individuals and systems leads them to ask, "If they use violence, why shouldn't we use violence?" American University provost Daniel J. Myers offers another justification: "Violent protest . . . advertise[s] the cause in a uniquely powerful way." University of Pennsylvania professor, historian, and author of The Loud Minority Daniel Q. Gillion reports, "Nonviolent protest brings awareness to an issue; violent protest brings urgency to an issue. It forces individuals to pay attention to these important discussions of race relations." Finally, New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote: "Some of the people now breaking things and burning things and looting things are ironically participating in a storied American tradition. There has long been a penchant for destruction in this country, an insatiable bloodlust, that the country conveniently likes to forget. American violence is learned violence. It is the American way. . . . White riots have often, historically, targeted black people, while black people have rioted to protest injustice. On either side, racism is the root. And we have refused to sufficiently address it. Now, that chicken is coming home to roost."

As I see it, revolutions are very rare, very hard to bring about, involve large bloodshed, and often are followed by new tyrannies. Moreover, there are prudent reasons to urge protestors not to resort to violence. According to Georgetown Professor Michael Kazin, "[N]on-leftists often see [the left] as  a disruptive, lawless force. Violence tends to confirm that view." Research shows that violent campaigns are less likely to succeed than nonviolent ones, and, conversely, those nonviolent movements have a higher success rate than violent ones.

Three studies support this observation. University of Denver Professor Erica Chenoweth collected data on all major nonviolent and violent campaigns seeking the overthrow of a government or a territorial liberation since 1900. Her data shows that from the 1960s to 2006 the success rate of nonviolent movements was consistently higher than that of violent movements, and, within recent decades, the success rate of violent movements decreased steeply while the success rate of nonviolent movements greatly increased.

Another study asked eight hundred people to react to a situation inspired by events in which violence erupted in a clash between White nationalists and antiracist groups. When antiracists resorted to violent tactics, study participants were less likely to support them and more likely to support the White nationalists. The study shows that "violence [by the antiracists] led to perceptions of unreasonableness, which reduced identification with and support for the protest group."

These findings are further supported by Princeton University professor Omar Wasow's study of presidential politics in the 1960s. He discovered that "proximity to black-led nonviolent protests increased white Democratic vote-share  whereas proximity to black-led violent protests caused substantively important declines and likely tipped the 1968 election from Hubert Humphrey to Richard Nixon." More recently, instead of scaring the elites into yielding, violence has contributed to the growth of increasingly large and heavily-armed police forces.

Some claim now, as they did then, that the violence of those who supported Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and the Weathermen helped the overall cause because it made Martin Luther King, Jr.'s movement seem moderate in comparison. But this perspective ignores the fact that the elites used violent acts to smear the moderates. Violence even by a small minority within a movement, as sociologist Todd Gitlin  observed, "is food for the adversary." The 1968 riots led to few reforms, but to great increases in the firepowers of the police.

Moral deliberations point in the same direction. Violence is not merely a poor strategy, but it also raises major ethical concerns. The key moral value that the Black Lives Matter movement taps into is the sanctity of life. It is the recognition-reflected in the legal and moral codes of ancient and contemporary societies, above all in those of liberal democracies-that taking a life is a much more serious offense than most any other action. This is the reason courts typically mete out a much more severe punishment for murder than for other crimes. Moreover, one can readily recognize that all individual rights logically presuppose respect for the right to live. Dead people have very few rights; live ones, no matter how injured, may recover, exercise their rights, and confront those who oppressed them. This certainly holds for Black lives and is the reason major, encompassing reforms in the ways public safety is provided must be introduced and implemented. However, it is also the reason to oppose violence-every life precious. Indeed, I believe a strong case can be made for the Black Lives Matter movement to add to its brief the demand that all death penalties be outlawed.

One may argue that-so far-loss of life has been inflicted almost completely by the police and not by the demonstrators, which is, indeed, to the demonstrators' credit. However, once violence is justified, protests lose on both prudent and moral grounds.

Amitai Etzioni is a university professor and professor of international affairs at The George Washington University. In 1968, he wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine called "Confessions of a Professor Caught in a Revolution." For more about the Columbia University protests, see his memoir, My Brother's Keeper. Etzioni is the author of Demonstration Democracy, among other books.

Image: Reuters

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The Black Lives Matter Movement Must Solve Its Violence Problem

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The issue is an old one; however, current events require that we revisit the question of whether it is justified to resort to violence to gain social change in democratic societies (however flawed they are). The Black Lives Matter movement deserves great credit for mainly peaceful demonstrations, and for working hard to limit looting and violence.

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Majority of the BLM protests have been peaceful according to Time.

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93% of Black Lives Matter Protests Have Been Peaceful, New Report Finds

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The vast majority of Black Lives Matter protests-more than 93%-have been peaceful, according to a report published Thursday by a nonprofit.

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BLM protester holds up an upside-down American flag as a distress symbol.

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NEW YORK - It had been a tense, challenging Thursday evening in the riot-torn Twin Cities for Associated Press photographer Julio Cortez. Midnight was fast approaching, and so was a lone protester carrying an upside-down U.S. flag.

- the protester silhouetted against the flames of a burning liquor store, the light of the fire glowing through the fabric of the flag.

Taken at 11:59 p.m. and transmitted a few moments later, it swiftly produced powerful reactions - perhaps the most indelible image yet of the racial divisions and violent protests flaring after the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who pleaded for air as a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck.

TV networks featured it on their newscasts. Twitter at one point used it to lead its "What's Happening" page. Multiple commentators on social media depicted it as "Picture of the Year."

- photojournalists know that flags have distinctive symbolic power, as evidenced by the famous photograph of flag-raising Marines at Iwo Jima.

"I didn't think of it as a contest winner," Cortez said of his photo. "I thought it told a story."

Cortez, based in Baltimore for the AP, had arrived in the Twin Cities on Thursday afternoon, along with New York-based AP photographer John Minchillo.

They spent about three hours covering unrest in St. Paul, then shifted to Minneapolis after hearing there was a new outbreak of trouble at a police precinct house there.

"We'd been working that scene for about two hours when this particular moment happened," Cortez said. "The police abandoned the precinct - there was just chaos and fires and people throwing stuff."

Minchillo then relocated, having been asked to provide some video footage. Cortez stayed near the precinct house, though growing uneasy as word spread that a gas line had been severed and might explode.

"When I saw the man walking up with the flag, I started getting closer," he said. "I could tell this was going to be very visual, so I just followed along. I wanted to silhouette him, so I waited for him to walk where it was burning."

David Ake, AP's director of photography, said Cortez' photo was powerful on many levels.

"The upside-down flag is the universal signal of distress and is framed perfectly and backlit by the flames in the background adding to the urgency of the distress," he said "One foot in either direction and the image would lose that backlight and lose the impact."

Ake also noted that the person holding the flag is unrecognizable.

"It could be any person of any age, race, or gender," he said. "It could be you or me."

Cortez has been with the AP nearly 10 years, including a previous posting in New Jersey.

Among his many assignments, he remembers a similar feeling of uncertainty and risk covering the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 when the city was locked down due to a manhunt for the suspects.

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AP photo of flag-bearing protester rockets around the world

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NEW YORK - It had been a tense, challenging Thursday evening in the riot-torn Twin Cities for Associated Press photographer Julio Cortez. Midnight was fast approaching, and so was a lone protester carrying an upside-down U.S. flag. - the protester silhouetted against the flames of a burning liquor store, the light of the fire glowing through the fabric of the flag.