How to respond to "riots never solve anything!"

[StarfishSaver]

1) “Rioting never solves anything!”

This country was founded on rioting (and looting). The colonists didn’t politely ask to be independent — they started a war. Gays threw a brick. Black people rioted all over this country. Please let go of that falsehood and pick up a history book.

2) “Rioting just gives people a reason not to support your cause.”

Only if you equate property damage to human lives, and in that case, were you really supporting our cause anyway? If all it takes is people stealing from Target for you to say “well…now I don’t care about dead Black people” then why are we even speaking?

https://soletstalkabout.com/2020/05/28/how-to-respond-to-riots-never-solve-anything/?fbclid=IwAR1Z1h4F9wlrXRctIdZL074uP_fcZ0qc5_ekdaB9T8WUYA4RS1o0yIQzMdA

[PJMcK]

1. Yep

Let's remember the Boston Tea Party, while we're at it.

As the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, " "In the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard."

[OneBro]

12. There is a difference.

Dr. King would likely distinguish rioting in righteous indignation, like dumping tea in the ocean, vs opportunistic looting for personal gain, i.e. stealing tea while your brothers and sisters are fighting to get knees off their necks.

[JackSabbath]

21. Come on now

They didn't just dump tea in the ocean. They tortured and murdered the entire crew. Stole everything valuable to sell. And then set the ship on fire.

[albacore]

34. Got a source on that? Never read that anywhere...

On edit: That is just false. Don't post bullshit.

[JackSabbath]

42. Depends,

The source is from a report sent back to the King from the colonies. A friend from the UK directed me to it years ago. Unfortunately this was in the pre-internet days so I guess I have to admit its anecdotal, but you should understand that people on different sides of an event can view things very differently.

[albacore]

56. If Zinn doesn't include that.... I tend to not believe it.

The ships and crews were American, anyway.
The whole thing is very muddled. Sam Adams and John Hancock were smugglers of tea. The tea was actually cheaper in the colonies than in London.
The tea was just an excuse.

[StarfishSaver]

40. Dumping tea into the ocean IS stealing it.

The only distinction is the kind of distinction made between "finding" food and "looting."


And if you're going to invoke Dr. King, please first make sure you understand ALL of him, not just the parts that make people feel better about themselves. just the parts that make people feel better about themselves. Among the many things he said that tend to be ignored is "Rioting is the language of the unheard." And he wasn't talking about the Boston Tea Partiers.

One of the problems with this issue is that too many people think they have the right to determine what constitutes "righteous" and "opportunistic" anger and to decide for others how that anger should be manifested. In reality, they tend to define whatever fits within their own comfort zone as "righteous and whatever doesn't as "opportunistic" or similar pejorative..

[OneBro]

52. You forgot to read before typing.

I was responding to an earlier comment that “invoked” Dr. King. Yes, I think King would LIKELY distinguish rioting in righteous indignation from looting for personal gain.
I said nothing about why anyone specifically was doing what they were doing in recent rioting, but you hopped on your indignation and brought up a common picture of how the media describes blacks as LOOTING for groceries while white people FIND the groceries. Groceries. Not Louis Vuitton as I referenced but . . . groceries . . . to survive. A-mazing. Sure, some folks might suggest that taking stuff that isn’t yours during such upheaval is understandable ‘cause what, reparations?, I again suggest that Dr. King would distinguish John Doe rioting in righteous indignation from John Doe showing up to steal Nikes then slinking away to post them on EBay.
Didn’t mean to hurt your feeling by demeaning any righteous thieves.

[RAB910]

2. Trump used his power to stop the take a knee protests

[Bernardo de La Paz]

15. Thank you. What Kennedy said is so very true. Wealth & income inequality means revolution certain

Choose which type of revolution you want.

I think Biden is a Kennedy kind of Democrat and has potential for greatness as a President. I long for the day when I can type President with a capital P again.

[c-rational]

38. +1 - Agreed.

[marble falls]

3. Thanks ...

The remaining points are worth paying attention to, also.

[The Magistrate]

4. Your Two Excerpts, At Least, Ma'am, Carry Little Weight

Last edited Sat May 30, 2020, 12:19 PM - Edit history (1)

The first, the appeal to a successful revolution, omits to note that, for rioting to succeed, it must proceed to insurrection, and that insurrection must succeed, before it can be said to have solved anything. There is no prospect of any riot at present in this country managing that.

The second, while a stirring appeal to those already in wholehearted agreement, is in fact just a deliberately chosen blindness to actual political consequences. It does not matter if people shouldn't react to something in a particular way when it is well known that they will react to something in that way. It is simply a fact that rioting will produce recoil among a great many people, many of whom would otherwise have been supportive in some degree to the cause the rioters purport to advance.

It is also worth addressing the idea that destruction of property does little or no harm to anyone. What is going on at present is a pale ghost of the riots of the sixties, and areas burnt out in major cities in those episodes never recovered, but sank into even worse conditions of unemployment and desperation and poverty. The looting and firing of businesses does lasting harm to neighborhoods, and in fact, if traced in actuarial terms, will certainly result in deaths down the line through destruction of opportunities for employment and the resultant despair, and increase in crime and drug use.

Rioting of this sort is a wild lashing out in anger. The anger is certainly justified. But simply lashing out at whatever is nearest is as poor a course of action in public and political life as it is in personal life. In neither sphere are the consequences often good for the person or persons who give such vent to their rage, however justified that rage may be.

[pazzyanne]

6. A Native American activist that I once knew said...

"You can stand in your canoe and beat the water with your paddle, or you can sit down, pick up your paddle, and chart a course."

I have never forgotten his telling of this saying from his grandmother.

[groundloop]

28. Damn, that's powerful.

I'll say that yes, I totally get why people are angry, especially with a white supremacist in the White House who has stoked so much hatred over the years. But I see no good coming out of any of these riots, just like no good comes out of beating on the water with a paddle.

[pazzyanne]

44. Yes!

You got the meaning perfectly.

[oldsoftie]

7. This should be published in every medium available. Very well said. THIS:

"It is simply a fact that rioting will produce recoil among a great many people, many of whom would otherwise have been supportive in some degree to the cause the rioters purport to advance."

I have said that SO many times in the past & get slammed for it. But its the reality of the situation.

Atlanta last night was a total embarrassment. Attacking fire trucks. Burning the Tabernacle Theater. Attacking CNN. Rushing to loot dozens of stores. ALL of that only proves one point.

[Tipperary]

8. Well said.

Thank you.

[SharonClark]

14. K&R

[OneBro]

18. Well said! Thank you!!

[Owl]

20. K&R

[StarfishSaver]

45. You're making a valid point about whether these actions are effective

Last edited Sat May 30, 2020, 12:28 PM - Edit history (1)

But that's not the point of the piece or the excerpts from it..

The author is pushing back on the tendency on people - usually comfortable white people - to criticize people who lash out without taking into account WHY their lashing out. Desperate, marginalized, frightened people tend not to strategize. But thatvdoesn't make their desperation, fear and frustration any less real.

And whether we like to admit it or not, rioting HAS sometimes resulted in change. The riots in the 1960s pushed this country so far to the brink and forced it to look into the abyss, leaving its leaders with little choice but to try to make change. Malcolm X said leaders were much more willing to work with Dr. King once they realized he was the alternative.

And I fully agree with his point about people insisting the rioters are hurting their cause with their allies. If the fact that some people (not all of whom are even black) broken into a Target and stole merchandise is enough to shake their commitment to equal justice, that wasn't much of a commitment in the first place. That's like saying the fact that Melania Trump and Sebastian Gorka, both immigrants, engage in despicable behavior and support cruel policies will make me less likely to fight for the rights of immigrants - when their behavior has nothing to do with my commitment and, thus, can do nothing to undermine it.

And, BTW, I'm a "Ma'am."

[The Magistrate]

50. The Riots Of the Sixties, Ma'am

Put Nixon in office, on a 'law and order' platform, and the strategic calculation after a series of 'long hot summers' that 'when it comes to negroes, the whole country's southern'. The riots did not help, they actively hindered. And they created a devastation that can still be traced in the large cities where they occurred.

I agree the rage is real and more than justified. Rioting remains a destructive choice. The most you are likely to be able to press, if attempting to defend such occurrences, is an acknowledgement the anger is justified, but most people will continue to see the action as wrong-headed at best. Very few people who do not already agree wholeheartedly that police need to be curbed and structural racism undone will be willing to countenance rioting as a response to police outrages, no matter how eloquently the point is argued.

The complaint about lukewarm support is the usual 'no bread is better than half a loaf' line so beloved by the more radical. Lukewarm supporters may grow into vehement supporters if the focus is kept on the original outrage. Distract them with something else, particularly something which seems of a larger scale, such as burning buildings and violent crowds, and they will lapse back into apathy. Complaining of this is like complaining that water runs downhill --- it is going to happen, and that it does is in the nature of things.

[StarfishSaver]

53. MANY factors put Nixon into office. It's not fair or accurate to blame the riots.

And the riots had many more complex origins and results than you give them credit for. I don't like riots - in fact, I abhor them. But I also recognize that, in some instances, that was the ONLY way to get people's attention after all other efforts were ignored.

Are you familiar with the Kerner Commission Report that was triggered by the riots? If not, I urge you to read it - at least the Executive Summary. http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/docs/kerner.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiS2OP679vpAhUOoHIEHVLuAD0QFjAbegQIDxAB&usg=AOvVaw152ata16SgTWOG2fkEtun_ If you are familiar with it, I'd like to know your thoughts on its findings.

Also, here's a very interesting speech by a black retired federal judge who served on the Commission looking back at the Kerner Commission and the impacts it had. https://thecalltojusticefoundation.squarespace.com/config/pages

[The Magistrate]

55. I Read It When It Came Out, Ma'am

I agreed with it, and still do.

I have said nothing about what kicked off the riots, only about their consequences. There were certainly other factors contributing to Nixon's victory, but the civil unrest was a leading one, and the greatest element of that was the 'race riots'. Nixon ran more against blacks than 'hippies'.

Gaining people's attention is not in itself an unalloyed good. It is quite possible to gain people's attention in ways which do not engage their support. Rather like the difference between fame and notoriety.

[StarfishSaver]

62. I understand your point

But I place a larger part of the blame on the conditions that led to the riots rather than on people's desperate response to those conditions. The riots didn't force people to draw their attention away. The riots were a response to people not paying attention.

I just don't believe that, had the riots not taken place, things would have been roses, Hubert Humphrey or Robert Kennedy would have been elected president and we would have gone an entirely different direction as a country. The country was an absolute mess and would have still been a mess had not even a single riot occurred. In my view, the primary culprit was the society's refusal to address and remedy the conditions the riots were reacting to, not the reaction itself. As Langston Hughes wrote, eventually a dream deferred just explodes.

I'm glad you're familiar with the Kerner Report. I figured, given what I've read from you here, that you would be. The Kerner Report was the result of the riots, an indication that the riots had indeed gotten the attention of the government and the government in place at the time earnestly tried to address the problems that provoked the uprisings. Unfortunately, their findings and recommendations were largely ignored. But I don't think they were ignored because of a negative reaction to the riots. They were ignored because people had no interest in addressing those problems and they would have felt that way even if there had been no riots, especially considering they'd ignored and fought any effort to address them long before the riots occurred.

When angry white people express their anger violently - whether that violence manifests in physical or property damage or cruel policies that damage their fellow human beings - politicians the media, and larger society focus an extraordinary amount of time and energy trying to understand and address their concerns, as evidenced by the number of "forgotten white working class" stories and political agendas we've had shoved down our throats. But no matter how calmly and peacefully black people try to explain OUR pain, we're either ignored or blamed. And when we do lash out, we're still ignored except to the extent needed to accuse of being responsible for wrongs that subsequently occur.

So, while I agree that the riots may have played a part in the subsequent problems this country is dealing with, I think a much larger culpability must be laid at the feet of the people and systems who have consistently ignored the cries of people, whether they were/are marching peacefully, sitting in, kneeling or breaking windows. If they didn't have "race riots" to blame, they'd have still found some other way to continue ignoring black voices while blaming us for the country's failure to correct its treatment of us.

[The Magistrate]

65. We Agree In Large Part, Ma'am

Particularly on your closing point, that the greatest responsibility lies on a social and cultural disinclination, even outright refusal, to solve racial problems and correct racial injustice. The fact is that we have a caste system in this country, that people are born into a particular status by the color of their skin. There is an overlay of class, and of prosperity, but in some particular pinch, neither upper class status nor great prosperity can be relied on to protect a black person from the meanest of white men, particularly if they are in uniform with a badge. This caste system serves the interests of a great many white people, who find in it solace against the realities of their class status and their financial insecurities. This has long been recognized, yet people refuse to look it square in the face. There is not much distance between Mr. du Bois early in the twentieth century expounding on the 'psychological wage' of white working people compared to black working people, and Calhoun in the antebellum south waxing lyrical on the identity of interest between white laborers and white property owners in contrast to the black bondsman beneath them both.

[StarfishSaver]

68. Indeed

[struggle4progress]

58. +

[MichMan]

59. Detroit never recovered from the effects of the 1967 riot

It has one of the highest poverty rates in the entire country

[StarfishSaver]

60. I'm not sure Detroit's problems can be blamed solely on the riots

It's not as if things were moving along beautifully and then the riots came along and messed everything up.

Of course, the riots undoubtedly caused serious problems, but t's impossible to know how much of Detroit's current problems can be attributed to the riots and how much to the myriad other issues the city had and continues to have. However, one big factor is the government's abandonment of desegregation efforts, including the Supreme Court's decision in Milliken v. Bradley, which essentially shut down any effort to remedy the decades of purposeful school segregation, not just in Detroit, but throughout Michigan and the rest of the country.

[MichMan]

63. Of course not solely, but played a major part.

Of the 1967 riots, politician Coleman Young, Detroit's first black mayor, wrote in 1994:

"The heaviest casualty, however, was the city. Detroit's losses went a hell of a lot deeper than the immediate toll of lives and buildings. The riot put Detroit on the fast track to economic desolation, mugging the city and making off with incalculable value in jobs, earnings taxes, corporate taxes, retail dollars, sales taxes, mortgages, interest, property taxes, development dollars, investment dollars, tourism dollars, and plain damn money. The money was carried out in the pockets of the businesses and the people who fled as fast as they could.

The white exodus from Detroit had been prodigiously steady prior to the riot, totally twenty-two thousand in 1966, but afterward, it was frantic. In 1967, with less than half the year remaining after the summer explosion, the outward population migration reached sixty-seven thousand. In 1968 the figure hit eighty-thousand, followed by forty-six thousand in 1969."

[StarfishSaver]

71. I don't even think it can be said they played a major part

I don't agree with Mayor Young. And I think if he were alive today, he would necessarily still hold the view he held in 1994.

The retrenchment and ugliness and coordinated efforts to subjugate minorities that we've seen in recent decades has caused a lot of people to change their minds about this. It is increasingly obvious to me that the opposition and fervent resistance to civil rights and equal opportunity is much more deep-seated than we previously realized. In light of this, I truly believe many of the issues and problems cited would have occurred with or without the riots. And white people began fleeing cities long before the riots - desegregation drove them out, not the riots. But blaming the riots is convenient for them because they justify their behavior without owning their own bigotry and culpability for subsequent.

[AntiFascist]

61. Positive change in Los Angeles came about after the LA Riots in 1992...

too bad the positive change didn't spread to the rest of the country.

[JI7]

67. That had more to do with change in demographics

less white people and more minorities .

[AntiFascist]

69. Not according to this article, although it took a decade to make substantial changes...

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2015/05/lapds-police-reforms-and-the-legacy-of-rodney-king/392000/

But is worth pointing out that some things have changed, at least in Los Angeles. The riots forced the city to take a long, hard look at the infamously brutal LAPD (some argue this police force invented modern police militarization), and some reforms did come.

The Christopher Commission, ordered by then-mayor Tom Bradley, was a full examination of the department's structure and operations following the riots. Its findings put the spotlight on officers' widespread use of excessive force, and the failure of upper management to appropriately intervene. Though most of its recommendations went unheeded, the commission's findings did result in the end of the LAPD's lifetime-term policy for chiefs. That allowed the department to force its notoriously aggressive, divisive leader, Daryl Gates, to resign, and to begin hiring chiefs on five-year terms instead.

[ProfessorGAC]

81. +1

Complete concurrence.

[Hortensis]

5. Riots focus attention and trigger delayed action.

I was no admirer of some of the racist and misogynistic black militants in the 1960s, preferring peaceful leaders, but I approved the overall role these scary black boogeymen played in encouraging others to sit down at the table. So far I haven't heard of any deaths from these riots, thank goodness, and the property damages will be repaired.

Btw, cute to say our nation was founded on rioting and looting, but... Revolution was precipitated and our nation then founded by wealthy landowners and businessmen, and our independence was fought for over 9 years by men who were told they would have equal rights under their new government, including the vote and the right to serve in office. Big shock to many among the wealthy when they discovered the lower classes had actually taken that "equality" nonsense in Jefferson's declaration seriously!

[The Magistrate]

9. That Is a Sound Point, Ma'am

Most commentary on Gandhi, the prototype of non-violent action, quite omits to note the presence of violent bodies opposed to English rule which made dealing with Gandhi a preferable option. There is little reason to suppose without these bodies, and without violent outbreaks near the start of the Second World War, success would have crowned his efforts.

Thank you for bringing a bit of actual history into discussion of the American Revolution. I would add two items only. Many of the 'businessmen' were smugglers whose business was evading the excise on various items, and the 'Boston Tea Party' was directed against the prospect of teas being brought in at a rate lower than the smugglers charged, as the Crown had changed regulations to allow the East India Company to charge less for teas it had not been able to sell previously either in England or the Colonies.

[Hortensis]

16. +100 on that first point especially. I was wrong, someone has died,

a federal officer shot in Oakland. Sigh.

[wnylib]

23. Also a protester in Detroit.

[ProfessorGAC]

82. A Bar Owner In Louisville Too

Shot by cops. Body cameras not functioning.
Police chief fired, cops on admin leave pending investigation.

[MichMan]

10. Detroit never recovered from the 1967 riots

[lastlib]

11. My response:

"...whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new forms, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

From our national birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence. Not the exact language, but they get the idea, and 99% couldn't dispute that it's the exact language.

[Hortensis]

19. That's why they built elections every 2 and 4 years into our democracy,

opportunities for peaceful, responsible revolutions. If only more people voted and voted responsibly, but that was always going to be the weakness. They knew that.

[AllyCat]

24. Many of these folks are getting their vote taken away

Not sure many have a voice in that regard.

[Hortensis]

39. Of course they do. It insults all voters, including minority,

to imagine it's normal for VOTERS to be helpless to stop their votes from being taken away. Yes, some don't know and can't stop it, but most can and are very aware these days that they have to. As liberals in GA, my husband and I check our registrations more than once before every election.

Excepting electronic voting machine theft, which has not been established to happen on large scales yet, the vast majority of election theft depends on victims doing nothing, on being good victims.

Not checking to make sure they're still registered in states where it's a problem. Not voting in person when their mail-in ballot doesn't arrive. Not having the guts to stand up to hateful stares by creeps stationing themselves at the polls. Not intending to stand in line for hours if that's what it takes. Most who possibly can do, creating those amazing lines of people who refuse to be victims. Typically record turnouts also.

Nonvoters and those who waste their votes, are of course an entirely different matter. They're all effectively self-disenfranchised.

[Iterate]

13. Rather, never solving anything casues riots.

And one party has blocked, hamstrung, and evaded solutions for the past three generations, at least.

[LAS14]

33. Well stated. Original with you?? nt

[Iterate]

46. Yes.

I was briefly in slogan mode.

Also I've been thinking for some time that none of us will be free until all are free, and those most bound are the bigots.

And that, campaign-wise, it might be well past time for a national call for that other party to purge its racist rank (which it doesn't even see).

Those last ideas aren't as easily distilled.

[IronLionZion]

17. People opposed to destroying property always support the Boston Tea Party

and the people who lost their minds over Kaepernick kneeling quietly (first he was just sitting quietly) and BLM blocking traffic are the same people outraged by looting.

Real looters form a private equity firm before seizing troubled assets from small businesses and get trillions in stimulus bailouts from the taxpayers.

There were some agent provocateurs caught on video smashing windows and setting fires. They were deliberately trying to incite a riot by committing actual crimes to discredit the protests.

[wnylib]

25. The same thing happened in

the 60s. A federal program, called COINTELPRO, sent agents to infiltrate civil rights and anti war groups. They incited rioting among protesters to discredit them.

Today's agent provocateurs in these riots are probably members of racial supremacy groups. In 2016, PBS did a program about an FBI warning that supremacists are infiltrating law enforcement in the US. In 2019, The Guardian published an article on the same topic.

Prosecutors in Minneapolis perhaps should look into Chauvin's background for possible connections to such groups. Ditto the 3 officers with him.

Some killings by cops are a result of unconscious bias absorbed from society at large. But some are a result of a culture created by supremacists on the force.

Black people are not "imagining" bias. They are not overreacting to AA's being killed. They are responding to the nightmare of racial supremacy in law enforcement. Training programs will not solve that problem. Each law enforcement agency needs outside investigations to weed out the supremacists among them.

[IronLionZion]

26. Peaceful Protest Interrupted By Swarm Of Aggressive Black-Clad Militants

https://www.theonion.com/peaceful-protest-interrupted-by-swarm-of-aggressive-bla-1819580274

[LymphocyteLover]

22. IMO, riots are a regrettable but entirely understandable consequence

of our fucked up reality.

It doesn't matter if they solve anything. They happen. They can be stupid or have some justification. But they are expressions of popular sentiment.

[ancianita]

27. Exactly. Thank you for posting this.

Preserving property above humans is the old school bankster capitalist view of human worth.

Those who benefit from a system that kills humans off on whatever pretext tend to support the property-over-humans structure. They only reveal that when justice swings against their interests.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

72. Yes this is true☝️

[58Sunliner]

29. Can't be bothered with this false equivalency.

"If all it takes is people stealing from Target for you to say “well…now I don’t care about dead Black people” then why are we even speaking?" BS.

Gays threw a brick, not burned people out their jobs, livelihoods, threatened and harassed innocent people, risked others lives and damaged homes. I must have missed the part where the colonists drove to Target to loot.

[Tipperary]

49. It is confusing, is it not?

On one hand we are being lectured that these riots and violence are understandable, even necessary. Then, these same lecturers tell us it is provocateurs that are responsible for all the violence.

Seems a tad contradictory to me.

[Skittles]

57. thank you

anyone who thinks trashing your own neighborhood is justifiable is wrong

[Tipperary]

66. Bingo.

And Mayor Bottoms emphatically agrees.

[Crunchy Frog]

70. They're engaging in a strawman argument.

No one on this board has been arguing that property is more important than human lives.

To reduce critics of violence to that position is to engage in extreme intellectual dishonesty.

[58Sunliner]

80. LOL.

[beachbumbob]

31. The colonist had NO say in how they were governed, a huge difference

as we can vote, we can run for office and we can change the culture.

Rioting solves nothing.

[LAS14]

32. Unfortunately, history shows that rioting is often the ONLY thing that finally precipitates change.

[paleotn]

35. Complete and total BS....

This isn't about changing things. Two nights ago was about changing things. Last night was about destruction, by malcontents from probably BOTH sides of the political spectrum. Attacking firefighters and EMS is thuggery and needs to fucking stop NOW!!!!!

[StarfishSaver]

47. You need to study history before throwing out such a shallow dismissal of a very complex phenomenon

You might want to start with the 1968 Kerner Report. http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/docs/kerner.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiS2OP679vpAhUOoHIEHVLuAD0QFjAbegQIDxAB&usg=AOvVaw152ata16SgTWOG2fkEtun_

[paleotn]

51. You are aware that....

much of the violence and destruction being reported as done by those who's aim is to discredit what these protests are about?

Glorifying violence and destruction as...just being in our American DNA....is what's quite shallow. Don't you think?

[Bettie]

36. Just read that

great article. Have it bookmarked.

[paleotn]

37. Many of the businesses destroyed are OWNED BY PEOPLE OF COLOR....

Let that fucking sink in for a minute. In many cases, they're NOT destroying the property of "the man" or corporate America. They're destroying the property and possibly the lives of people JUST LIKE THEM! Small business owners who scraped and struggled to build their businesses. And it fucking needs to stop NOW!!! Easy to say when it isn't YOUR SHIT being burned and looted.

Oh, and those colonists you mentioned who didn't politely ask to be independent, many of them owned slaves.

[StarfishSaver]

48. "Easy to say when it isn't YOUR SHIT being burned and looted"

And THAT's easy to say when YOUR neck isn't under the boot.

I'm really over watching people sitting at home in the comfort of their privilege and safety - most of whom haven't done jackn squat for the cause but give it lip service - yelling and cursing at and imposing their moral judgment on angry, frightened, desperate people. I don't know what your situation is or what you have or haven't done as an ally, so I'm not saying you fit that description. But far too many people here do, and that is maddening.

[Mosby]

41. Killer Mike's view

Link to tweet

[Jillgirl]

43. Why presume that it's the protestors that are rioting?

I can't prove that it's anyone else, but still -- Is there any evidence that the protestors have been anything but peaceful?

If the only evidence is that buildings are burning, I'd say let's not assume that the protestors started the fires. It could have been anyone whose interests are served by the protestors looking bad.

[StarfishSaver]

54. I think that's been the assumption, but it's becoming clearer that a very small percentage of the

rioters are protesters and vice versa.

But the point of the article still stands.

[Skittles]

78. there are posts here justifying arson

so they don't seem to care who is doing it

[BlueWI]

64. Riots have many different effects

some positive, maybe, in the long term, but some horrendous. NYC Draft riots, Krystallnacht, Tulsa Race Riots - can't pretend that the effects consistently support justice.

For a few years, I lived around the corner from where the death of George Lloyd took place. My daughter and her friends went to South High, about 3 blocks from the remaining shell of the 3rd district police precinct and the ruined Target. In the middle of a COVID-19 sheltering in place, many of the food stores are burned to the ground, with much of the damage caused by out of town actors engaged in arson.

Is something being solved that I am not seeing here? A neighborhood with immigrants from Latin America and Somalia beside other ethnicities burned beyond recognition, amid 20% unemployment (twice as high among black and brown people of course), a pandemic, white supremacists run amok, a government that couldn't afford Bernie Sanders already spending in the trillions, and a narcissist in the White House?

I'm all for historical insight and the value of protest but I sure see more problems than solutions in these currenly disastrous developments. It's going to take more than theoretical debates to respond to an escalating national emergency with conditions we may not have encountered, in our history.

[Blasphemer]

73. The two threads on this topic prove Jason Johnson's point

As was posted earlier: https://thegrio.com/2020/05/28/george-floyd-minneapolis-riots/

If we're talking like this, we're having the wrong conversation.

[StarfishSaver]

75. Word

[Skittles]

74. you think arson is a swell idea?

FUCK that nonsense

[ancianita]

76. You think everything else has worked out so well for the last 400 years?

Fuck THAT nonsense.

[Skittles]

77. are you for real?

you think arson is an effective tool for fighting oppression?

DONE HERE

[ancianita]

79. Are you? Seriously, what constructive idea do you offer for solving black people's problems?

What do you offer that they haven't thought of?