No, we don't know that.
Historically it has been violence that stopped violence, and crime (like toppling an unjust government, breaking segregation laws, etc) that stopped crime.
>People should use modern tools to reduce racial issues. Like voting or social media’s, never burn a state property.
Yeah, they've tried blogging about it. There are also tons of books on the matter, vlogs, articles, etc. They voted Obama twice. Didn't work.
A few months of angry riots and a few burned down police departments though, could send a very clear message to politicians and police chiefs, and help change laws to restrict police abuse.
Police departments around the country are being downsized, kicked out of their unions, and in some cases defunded entirely. That's good news! The money will be used for better things.
It's not the sort of thing HN likes to hear but the techniques used in these protests are pretty much working as expected.
The police are not perfect. We need to hold them accountable to some reasonable standards of behavior. But if you defund them entirely, then what do you expect is going to happen? Peace and harmony?
No, what's going to happen is that criminals will still be criminals, and perhaps bolder and more blatant criminals. Drug addicts will continue to be drug addicts, and will do crazy things while they're high, and crazy things in order to get money to get high. Such people will continue to interact with non-criminal non-addict people, who will feel threatened. But now the police won't be there. Now what?
In a country with an armed population, the police probably reduce the number of misbehaving people who are killed, because (for all their flaws) they are still less trigger-happy than a frightened gun-owner who feels threatened by an encounter with some strange-acting person.
As someone who has had many of these encounters, I've never had the police help. At best they'll show up a half hour later and take a report. The police were never "there" in any meaningful sense.
> because (for all their flaws) they are still less trigger-happy than a frightened gun-owner who feels threatened by an encounter with some strange-acting person
Time after time, this has proven to not be true. When a frightened gun-owner reaches for his weapon, he knows he is risking all his money and probably his freedom if he's found to have fired it when it wasn't necessary. And so they tend to use some discretion. Cops do not risk the same, and so they shoot people all the time when their life isn't threatened.
I want to see people use live streaming to debate first, but then organize so effectively to just swarm on the old systems to make change. People need to move faster.
Black people in the US constantly fear being killed or harassed by police. Yeah, burning a car doesn't solve anything, but keeping quiet and playing ball since the civil rights movement hasn't really moved the needle. Policing and constant surveillance of black communities has gotten worse since then, and protections for police, both legally and politically, have increased. Sometimes you have to burn a car or break some glass for the nation to pay attention.
Also I would say that the initial reaction of rioting is what drove people to organize and peacefully protest, and in a lot of US cities and states, the combination of these has already resulted in policy change. I'm sure most of these people are also posting on social media and planning to vote as well.
I guess this is a long winded way of saying that torching a car is small potatoes compared to government sanctioned murder and oppression, and this kind of thing is forcing people to pay attention and have conversations about this stuff.
World War II and the US civil war didn't ended the violence, it just changed the way that violence manifests. If you look in many groups on Facebook, 9gag or redit , you will see Violence in protests are being used to create more hate in people who hates. I really believe that the society was improved by ideas not wars.