Race riots erupt
Violent protests erupted in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Charlotte, North Carolina, this summer.
In Milwaukee, rioting began August 13 after a police officer shot a 23-year-old black man who refused to lay down the stolen semi-automatic handgun he was carrying. The police officer followed procedure and turned on his body cam to record the entire incident. Yet rioters still burned down half a dozen businesses, prompting Gov. Scott Walker to put the National Guard on standby.
According to body-cam footage, Sylville Smith fled when pulled over by officers. Smith was carrying a handgun, which police said had been reported stolen months earlier. When Smith did not comply with orders to put down the gun, the officer, who is also black, reportedly shot him in the arm and chest.
Hundreds of people responded that night by protesting against police violence, with some confronting officers and resisting arrest. Several people were injured, dozens of protesters were arrested and several local businesses burned.
In Charlotte, Gov. Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency and deployed the National Guard to assist local police after people began rioting over the fatal shooting of a 43-year-old black man on September 20. While police say Keith Lamont Scott was shot after he refused to lay down his handgun, released video footage of the incident has proved inconclusive. Scott had a restraining order filed against him last year on charges of threatening to kill his wife and her son with his handgun.
Racial tensions escalated during riots that took place over the course of the next two nights as one group of black men attempted to burn a white photographer alive and another group dragged a white man through a parking garage, beating him as he begged for mercy. One person was killed during the rioting, 26-year-old Justin Carr, who was shot by an unknown assailant.
Officials in both cities have attributed the unrest to outside agitators. Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn blamed the riots on the Revolutionary Communist Party, which sent professional agitators to the city and, he contends, turned the initial protests violent. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Fraternal Order of Police spokesman Todd Walther told CNN that 70 percent of those arrested in the Charlotte riots were from out of state.
To learn what biblical prophecy says about where such riots are leading, read Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry’s July 2015 cover story, “Your Cities Are Burned With Fire” at theTrumpet.com/go/12629.
Jobs unfilled for lack of skilled labor
After decades of decline, the number of open manufacturing jobs in the United States has been rising since 2009. The U.S. Labor Department says unfilled manufacturing positions now stand at a 15-year high. The problem is that too few skilled laborers are applying for these positions.
“Factory work has evolved over the past 15 years or so as companies have invested in advanced machinery requiring new sets of skills,” the Wall Street Journal wrote September 1. “Many workers who were laid off in recent decades—as technology, globalization and recession wiped out lower-skilled roles—don’t have the skills to do today’s jobs. The mismatch poses a growing problem for the economy, stymieing the ability of businesses to increase production and weighing on growth, executives say.”
There have been an average of 353,000 open American manufacturing positions per month in 2016—almost triple the number in 2009. It now takes an average of 94 days to recruit highly skilled scientists or engineers, and 70 days to recruit skilled production workers. A 2015 survey by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute found that 80 percent of manufacturing executives said a growing skills gap would adversely affect their industry.
The Bible prophesied that God would take away educated engineers and skilled workers—the “cunning artificer” (Isaiah 3:1-3). The fact that the struggling American economy can’t even fill many of the jobs it does manage to create is a partial fulfillment of this prophecy.
Chicago suffers most violent month in 19 years
Thirteen people were shot dead in Chicago over Labor Day weekend. These deaths brought the city’s gun-homicide total up to 512 since the beginning of the year. At this pace, Chicago is set to have its deadliest year since 1998, when 704 people were shot to death. This August was the city’s deadliest month since June 1996, when 90 people were killed and 382 were wounded in gun violence.
The National Review wrote on September 7, “Chicago is perhaps the most obvious example to date of the ‘Ferguson Effect,’ the previously mocked hypothesis that, in the wake of the hostility toward law enforcement that sprang up following events in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, police in minority neighborhoods have backed off interacting with residents when not absolutely necessary.”
Last year, homicide rates spiked in major cities across the nation, including St. Louis, Baltimore, Milwaukee and Chicago. All these cities have been affected by aggressive anti-police movements, prompting even skeptics such as Richard Rosenfeld of the University of Missouri to admit that the Ferguson Effect is “the only explanation” that coincides with this spike in crime.