Pretty sure there are laws against mass arson, looting, rioting, vandalism, etc. so if the people can't follow laws why should the government?
If the government is allowed to throw out the law at this point because people are rioting in response to delayed charges against a police killing caught on video, why did the government even have to exist in the first place?
In addition, saying that people are rioting because of only one isolated incident is not true and reductionist. There is a history of law enforcement treating black people's lives as unimportant.
Maybe "riot response" is an ambiguous term, but I'm saying the response to the riot has to be completely legal, responding to a parent poster who was saying that it's okay for police the break the law in their response, which I strongly disagree with.
That said, rioters here seem more like opportunists than protesters..
Unfortunately, I think the police department's handling of this has only encouraged rioting. I would give them the benefit of the doubt if the officer was suspended pending an investigation or review. But he was fired. That's a mountain of paperwork and HR involvement - so they were probably pretty certain they couldn't defend what he did. But they didn't arrest him, which I'm pretty is less of a bureaucratic headache, until after the rioting.
Maybe someone can give a plausible and reasonable explanation for that sequence of events, but from where I'm sitting this just screams "rioting got our attention".
I would reword that to say "any time the government breaks a law and harms me, I HAVE THE OPTION to disregard the law as well and retaliate."
That's just the way it is. It may be stupid to fight your government, but if they beat you down enough you may look at that as your best option.
The question I have about your statement is what do you expect an oppressed people are supposed to do when nothing else works?
Telling them to continue to work within a system that has failed them for hundreds of years seems to be the equivalent of telling them that you don't want to change the status quo.
Property != people. People > property. Period. Nothing else to consider.
Additionally, it's fairly common for security forces to instigate criminal behavior during protests in order to justify the extreme measures they use to suppress those protests.
But let's be real, we saw a 182 unit multi story low income housing unit burn down to ash (the blaze was enormous). We also saw a police department building burn to ash. Countless local businesses have been completely destroyed by fire. That's a little more than spray paint and tv looting.
This was a housing development that had some low-income units, but the majority were "market-price."
"Please use this system of peaceful protest that hasn't worked for you since forever." LA was 92, we're almost 30 years to the year. Has anything changed?
Do you tell HK protestors to write a letter to the CCP instead? It's such a double-standard.
In fact, I saw the arsonist that set the police department on fire and it was a Caucasian male. This is not a group of African Americans rioting in protest. It's a diverse bunch of a bad actors ruining a community.
The protesters themselves seem rather peaceful.
Post-9/11, especially in the early to mid '00s, there was this fetishization of the military and military aesthetic in American culture that had changed the public's appetite towards militarized police.
It is important to consider that a significant portion of the public thinks "the troops" aren't going far enough to end the protests in Minneapolis.
It should be noted that most mainland Chinese shared that same opinion, with respect to Hong Kong.
I'm not going to step into what is clearly an emotional argument for you, but I will say that downplaying what's going on in Minneapolis does not lend you any credibility. Social housing units, and hundreds of locally owned businesses have been rubbled and torched; and retailers have watched basically all of their inventory walk out the door (last time they bother setting up shop in this powder keg, seems Target was prettymuch expecting this to happen eventually).
One prominent case of this is Scores Sports Bar; there's video of the owner standing there powerless and crying, watching common crooks walk out with his life savings, all he earned working as a firefighter. You can see it set in on him when they come in right in front of him and start busting open the safe. After all this, he went to work the next day, at his day job as a firefighter, where he got a call that the bar had been torched to the ground. Now there's a GoFundMe, but he's never getting that time back.
So don't downplay what the rioters have done there, there are active warzones which are less rubbled and arsoned than this.
Insurance will replace the buildings and stuff. Insurance can't bring George back, nor can it undo a bad system.
Insurance only works for the insured.
I know that insurance only covers the insured. I charitably assumed the reading audience of HN knows that, too. Is there something more insightful you wanted to share? For example: have a conversation on the general risks of taking insurance versus not, or whether in these particular anecdotes the owners in fact did/didn't have insurance and their reasons for it? Or was it really just to try to make me look like a dumbass to the crowd?
If you don't want to feel criticized when people point out basic facts to you, don't use things you don't know as the basis for an argument why people should feel justified in committing crimes against innocent people.
It's not about you, it's about the boneheaded idea that these riot traps are some sort of component of a movement for social justice.
There is zero justice in looting and arsoning this sports bar, stop trying to say that there is, and you won't feel like a fool when presented with the facts.
It's true that insurance can't bring George Floyd back; it can't bring back the dozen or so people killed so far in the riots either.
Dude! As I said, you could treat me as a full fledged adult and we could have an actual intelligent conversation. Rather than you try to not-very-wittily say a one-liner "pwned a lib" stand-in for an actual conversation.
> don't use things you don't know as the basis for an argument why people should feel justified in committing crimes against innocent people.
Is the "thing I don't know" about "whether the guys is insured"? How does this tie into your goalpost-shift into moralizing me about the riots? Could you really not have taken a second to construct an argument so we can have a conversation? 'Cause now it seems like you are really hell-bent on merely trying to make me look like an idiot in a "got'em" zinger.
> There is zero justice in looting and arsoning this sports bar, stop trying to say that there is, and you won't feel like a fool when presented with the facts.
Are you trying to censor me? I can say what I damn please, thank you. You may not like it, but my arguments are here to stay.
My original point highlights there's going to be a wide spectrum of anecdotes coming from the riots. Using a sports bar example is stupid because I see a distinction between life and property. I wanted to challenge that anecdote directly with a counter-anecdote. I even said insurance "can't undo a bad system" which I intended to also be a point in favor of the very anecdote I was providing a counter-example for: the system has obviously failed the guy as he's at a total loss of his business. I showed the absurdity of loss of things versus loss of life. You don't see me straw-manning you by imagining you're OK with genociding people to protect "stuff".
On the other hand, you then assumed a lot and constructed a strawman of me, imagining me as, as far as I can tell, some drooling idiot that doesn't know "only insured parties are covered by insurance" and thinks that "the dozen or so people killed so far in the riots is OK" and that "the riots are a part of the movement for social justice". I highly recommend taking a step back and really look at yourself and ask what kind of conversation you're looking to have here. So far, it feels like you just want to insult me.
Let me tell you what I think straight up so we can clear this air and you can see me for what I actually believe. If you want to keep insulting me, that's fine. I, quite frankly, don't care about your opinion. I'm stepping away from your toxic bullshit after this. I'm frustrated that ideological-incest of Reddit and /pol/ is leaking to HN.
I believe these riots are a part of the wider movement to draw attention to police brutality (but not associated with the BLM organizers necessarily) due in part to the way the police over the last 20 years has shifted their training to be less community-focused and become much more military in training and viewing confrontations in a militaristic rather than civic light. This affects every citizen, not just black people.
Do I want riots in general? No. Do I want these riots in particular? No. Do I applaud the loss of life in the riots? Hell no! Do I think the damage to property is OK? Fuck no. Do I think comparing total loss of a man's business to the loss of George Floyd is OK? No. But as uncomfortable as the riots are, they're here. In reality. I've got to accept that and figure out what the hell to make of it.
But fuck my beliefs, if people are so frustrated that they are rioting and the National Guard can't even restore order, that is a very strong signal that the civic system used to govern the people is broken. That should start a productive dialogue to those of us outside and able to look in. Is it only the police force no longer connecting with the local community and becoming more of a State Police? Is it local elected officials who've been ignoring their constituents? What are all the straws that broke the camels back?
There are additionally conversations about how movements against injustice should be conducted. We could be having similar conversations to the original debates around Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr's differing approaches to changing civil rights.
Finally, a word of warning: it's too easy to paint all the rioters as bad guys, their cause as obviously flawed, and therefore their movement as immoral. Liberties and injustices cuts both ways: when it's your pet protestors rioting, I sincerely hope you don't have to face your anti-clone.
For the record, I'm not feeling like a fool here, despite your operating assumption as such (there were no facts presented in your non-argument).
The sports bar, inventory, etc can be replaced. Why should locals care about those things when there's a real, non-zero chance their family and friends might be killed arbitrarily?
Personally, I'd rather have my kids and wife than a Target.
You literally just characterized the largest mass arson in at least several decades as "spray painting a building or stealing a TV".
> ...your points don't dispute my major argument of people are more important property.
I guess the ten or more people who have already died in the riots don't matter though; nor the numerous women who have been raped under the cover of chaos, nor the victims of the kidnappings.
Effectively nobody is happy about the murder of George Floyd, but why cover for the killing of several more people and the destruction of countless lives? Is it over some bizarre sense of justice? What justice are you enabling, making cover for looters who were happy to bust the sports bar owner's safe right in front of him, and take what they please?
This is incoherent. If the riots were out of a regard for human life, they would not callously destroy so many such lives.
It’s not exactly like the bar was going to be profitable in the next 6 months anyways considering the pandemic, it’s probably a blessing in disguise that may save him from bankruptcy, who knows?
He has a job still, he’s luckier than a lot of people.
Do you know who else decided to shoot rioters? Iran, Syria, China.
Are you saying this is what we've come to? In that case, more power to these rioters to rid us of this disgusting state.
edit because of Kent State, not after. Almost immediately after they still fired 460 shots at protesters in Jackson State.
The locals sat down and said: "sorry we do apologize but we do not want you here anymore; please kindly go". And then Brits responded: "sure! we spent centuries conquering the whole world, hundreds of thousands of our brothers and fathers died in the process, but since you so peaceful and ask so politely, we have no problems to give up on this vast land of minerals and opportunities, pack our belongings and sail home. See ya!".
In reality the 1776 happen pretty much the same as you watch the riots today, other than they didn't have tear gas and there were no cellphones.
the locals sat down and said "we know you've made treaties with the natives to not expand anymore, but we want that land! So if you could get gone and let us get to our genocide we'd appreciate it."
and the Brits responded" "sure..."
Just a little different... High school history doesn't like to mention it was a battle between new and old aristocrats, but the whole slavery and 3/5ths of a person business and initial land owners only sort of system kind of shows the truth.
Damn, this should be framed.