Summer 2021: There is no Vaccine for Violence

Prediction: Summer 2021 is going to be abnormally violent. And summer 2022 as well. It is the new normal.

“When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

As I write this on the last day of January, a strong winter storm is beginning to blanket violence scarred cities from Chicago to DC and to Boston. The storm will provide a short respite for traumatized communities—routine activities will be disrupted and people will shelter. Violence, for an all too brief moment, will be smothered in a blanket of calm.  As the snow melts, people will return to their routines, whether those are centered on work or school or family, or anxieties and trauma, or nursing grievances and resentments and a thirst for revenge.    

Last year, I wrote a little bit of an explainer on the extremely high rates of violence in most US cities in 2020. The general sense of the media is that last summer was unusually dangerous because of protests—either because the protests themselves caused a wave of lawlessness, or becau…