Comment by pm90 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pm90 | Hacker News Reader

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Fellow HN user, I welcome you with warmth so please don't take what I say offensively, but as a different perspective.

> What happened is awful. It doesn't reflect how genuinely kind people in Minnesota are and how we, collectively feel about what happened and the movement at large. There will always be edge-cases as there is with any situation in any context. But for everyone that I've known, for everyone I've met and encountered with in Minnesota, when I look back at my time spent on either coast I always have found the people in Minnesota to be great.

Characterizing what is happening as an edge case is a huge mistake. People do not spontaneously start protesting with so much anger if it hasn't built up over so long. The police do not act with such impunity against citizens "just in this off case". It needs to be systemic for the reactions to be this strong.

If you haven't experienced this personally, that's great! I will not question your experiences. But please understand that others have not had the same experience. They've had such a bad experience that they're willing to go out in the streets during a pandemic to say "enough is enough". The police have had enough experience to be well prepared with crowd control tools and to use them immediately on peaceful protestors, when they could have de-escalated. People don't burn down a building they consider a symbol of tyranny just because of a single incident; their experience so far has ingrained into them a deep hatred for the police who are meant to protect and serve them.

As others in this thread have said, please try to listen to other perspectives. People experience different realities, and all of them can coexist without having to disprove the other.

The anger is justified. Protests are justified. Maybe even violent protests, if not justified, are understandable.

Looting and burning unrelated businesses have no justification whatsoever.

This comments reads as "god save capitalism. Everything is justified unless dollars are burned in the process."

More like "god save common sense and basic human decency"

WTF is the matter with people?

May you never experience the generations long frustration of any of the people driven to burn down a police station just to get their voices heard.

May you never experience having your livelihood burnt down because of an unrelated issue.

It seriously blows my mind anyone does think this is justified or supports it. That is way beyond reason, even from an understandably aggrieved point of view.

I'm not in favor of burning and looting, but i'm not convinced it wasn't kicked off by the cops, gladio style. If we ever found that out, it won't be for decades, at which point anyone who talks about it becomes a crackpot going on about ancient history.

Once burning and looting starts, well it's like fire, or panic buying.

A group of people who are systematically disenfranchised witnessed a visceral oppression committed by the guardians of that system. They are now extremely upset and frustrated and expressing their anger and frustration at a system that for a long time now made snail's pace progress toward equitable treatment of them.

The police largely function as protectors of personal property and relationships of ownership. I mean, look at the very reason that the cops arrested George Floyd; an alleged fake $20 dollar bill. In a time of pandemic 4 police offers showed up to enforce the ownership of capital.

Those guys who the state dispatched to enforce the value of money then ended up killing a guy. Its quite possible that the people who are rioting and protesting feel pretty damn angry at their treatment under capitalism and don't give a damn ownership of resources right now. They might even feel angry about ownership of resources in general. This is their community, and I suspect it's not yours. They get to decide their relationship to owners of resources, not you.

Another fellow Minnesotan here and former Minneapolis resident (used to live a mile away from Hiawatha and Lake back in the day).

>Characterizing what is happening as an edge case is a huge mistake. People do not spontaneously start protesting with so much anger if it hasn't built up over so long.

These protests are at least partly drummed up by out of state agitators, and are implicitly condoned by a feckless and weak state and local government that would rather give ground (literally) than enforce the rule of law. Saying "enough is enough" means going to the polls, not burning down all of the businesses in your neighborhood that were already on the verge of collapse thanks to the pandemic. That people are making up excuses for this behavior is disturbing to me, and signals that America is farther along the path of Imperial collapse than I previously thought. What end do you think we end up with here by condoning this? Agitators taking over City Hall? Disbanding the police department?

Please don't excuse burning down entire neighborhoods. Thanks.

Why did the cops shoot tear gas at peaceful protestors yesterday, when they didn't two weeks ago when armed militia stormed the statehouse?

The cops brought this on themselves. There's nobody to blame here but them.

"I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection." - MLK

Ah, yes, I'm in the wrong here because I hope for order and not chaos. And someone will pull an MLK quote out of a hat to say as much.

You're failing to understand that the ordered system of justice that you're prescribing only works for a small portion of (wealthy, powerful) American society, because the processes of that order are intertwined with a systematic, institutionalized effort to deprive minorities of rights. People are fed up with trying to work inside of a system that barely considers them human.

So it's anarchy then, huh.

I think what you're failing to understand is that your kind of rhetoric is directly adjacent to the standard communist revolutionary rhetoric employed across e.g. South America.

>People are fed up with trying to work inside of a system that barely considers them human.

Amazing that people actually believe this, when there's literally laws on the books making it a crime to commit an offense against protected classes of people because of their race alone.

> your kind of rhetoric is directly adjacent to the standard communist revolutionary rhetoric employed across e.g. South America.

Yeah, I'm a Marxist. I align with many (not all) ideas about proletarian revolution.

> Amazing that people actually believe this, when there's literally laws on the books making it a crime to commit an offense against protected classes of people because of their race alone.

We've seen how powerful people, the wealthy, politicians, and law enforcement have time and again broken laws and attempted to circumvent them for their own gain or to preserve the established order.

Dissent is the most American value. The country was founded on it.

Accusing people who are trying to explain the logic of why reasonable citizens will take extreme actions as "communist revolutionary rhetoric" is neither here nor there. What if it is? Does that by itself make it false? Please engage with the facts, and if you can't, refrain from such nonsense. It won't take the discussion anywhere.

> Amazing that people actually believe this, when there's literally laws on the books making it a crime to commit an offense against protected classes of people because of their race alone.

The presence or absence of laws by itself means absolutely nothing. Can you not see how tone deaf you seem when there are all these people trying to express their frustration and you dismiss that with "why the f are you so angry, there are laws that protect you".

It's useful to point out communist rhetoric where it exists because they typically get to employ all sorts of useful tricks to shutdown discussion, like you just did with calling me "tone deaf" for not excusing rampant looting and destruction. It's effective to say things like this because it triggers a guilt response in people, and they usually back down.

If you want some facts, here's a list of all of the buildings damaged or destroyed by people "expressing their frustration". Notice that some are government buildings that provide services to the poor, who are obviously more affected by the ongoing pandemic. You can continue defending them, if you like.

>Dissent is the most American value. The country was founded on it.

This statement is thrown around all the time, but it's really an attempt at gaslighting people into thinking that chaos and calamity was what the people who started the American Revolution were fine with. Of course, the opposite is true, and the chaos and calamity of a weak and ineffective English Imperial Regime was what they were rebelling against and the final form of the revolution was an institution of essentially the same style of English Common Law but with distinctly American characteristics.

https://www.startribune.com/these-minneapolis-st-paul-buildi...

Would you please stop using HN for ideological battle? It's not what this site is for, and it's against the guidelines because it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>there's literally laws on the books making it a crime to commit an offense against protected classes of people because of their race alone.

do you think the laws are literally broken or figuratively broken then? also there are many laws at many levels of priority. some of them in effect enable you to kill protected classes of people under convenient circumstances

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/29/poli...

> there's literally laws on the books making it a crime to commit an offense against protected classes of people because of their race alone.

Laws are meaningless when those responsible for enforcing them flaunt and ignore them, and the judiciary lets them off again and again with barely a wrist-slap.

People don't look at what's written in a law book and feel like the system is protecting them. They look at how the system actually acts toward them. And in this case, they're justifiably terrified.

"Order" is not the same as "justice". I have no respect for people who advocate for the former without ensuring the latter is done. And those who are in a position to ensure justice is done, but refuse to do it, don't deserve order.

MLK wasn't talking about rioting.

Not in /Letter from a Birmingham Jail/ (1963), but he would later go on to state the following (1967):

"Let me say as I've always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. ... But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation's summers of riots are caused by our nation's winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again."

That seems very applicable today.

> These protests are at least partly drummed up by out of state agitators

This is a scary response. We saw, today, a black CNN reporter arrested by state police on live television. If that’s how an educated, gently-speaking, Constitutionally-protected member of the press is treated, there is a root issue festering. Blaming it on agitators deflects from introspection.

A big part of the problem is Minneapolis’s moderates have turned a blind eye to the problems in their police force for years. That civic neglect has consequences. Those consequences are coming home to roost.

If you watched an of the live feeds from the last two nights there are plenty of people who announce that they're from e.g. Nebraska and part of some Antifa faction.

>A big part of the problem is Minneapolis’s moderates have turned a blind eye to the problems in their police force for years.

I don't understand how people can honestly think this is true. The Police Commissioner is literally the guy from Internal Affairs who filed a lawsuit against the city for not promoting black officers fast enough. The state attorney general is the guy who has proudly photographed himself with an anarchist handbook. All across state and local government in Minnesota you find people who are, allegedly, the kind that are supposed to address the "civic neglect" you assume to exist. What more do you want?

For police to stop killing unarmed people. If I knelt on someone's neck for five minutes, I wouldn't get two days at home! Police need to be held to a higher standard, not a lower one.

> The Police Commissioner is literally the guy from Internal Affairs who filed a lawsuit against the city for not promoting black officers fast enough.

Looking after their own. Should I give them a cookie too and a belly rub?

The protests are not about officer promotions.

And the protests are clearly also not about the death of George Floyd. Unless you think all of these small businesses being burnt to the ground were somehow complicit in his tragic death.

How about sending the bill for the civil suits from all these unlawful killings to the policemen's union instead of the city? How about cops who keep getting involved in officer involved shootings get their house taken to pay judgements?

I don't know if you've seen a map of the area, but outside of St Louis way to the south, Minneapolis is pretty much the only metro area near the states of ND, SD, NE, IA, MN. Many minorities in these states have felt marginalized for decades (particularly the Native American people, but that's a whole different story). Driving to the closest metro area in solidarity is the only choice for many people to be part of the cause they support without having to do it individually.

> A big part of the problem is Minneapolis’s moderates have turned a blind eye to the problems in their police force for years

that is a massive leap in agency that doesn't seem appropriate at all. any cities' "moderates" (??) have extremely limited agency over "the problems in the police force": if the head police officer is elected, that's one, and perhaps city council members who control budgets or other things related to police work.

since you're strongly implying that civic neglect is what caused this issue, what are the civic actions that this city's moderates should have taken in order to have prevented these problems?

> These protests are at least partly drummed up by out of state agitators, and are implicitly condoned by a feckless and weak state and local government that would rather give ground (literally) than enforce the rule of law.

Its primary failure in enforcing the rule of law has been its inability to enforce it on police officers.

What we're seeing is the consequence of decades of lawless behavior by police. People have had enough of being terrorized by it.

I don't think people are condoning or encouraging rioting, but are pointing out that violence is completely expected given the degree of disenfranchisement people feel in these situations.

"Going to the polls" hasn't worked. Allowing the courts to dispense justice has done anything but that. What then? People get frustrated and angry, correctly feel like they have no voice and no options, so they unfortunately resort to violence.

Local businesses being destroyed is a horrible outcome of this, but I can't even make myself feel bad about the police precinct burning. (I do feel very bad for and worry about the safety of firefighters.)

If you want to blame anyone, blame the police for getting us to where we are today.

> Saying "enough is enough" means going to the polls

What if voter suppression or gerrymandering exists? What if no candidate wants to address police brutality? What if issues are easily forgotten over a multi-year cycle with a complicit media?

Rioting shouldn't be a first choice, but polls don't fix everything.

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