(And seldom his far more radical statement, âA riot is the language of the unheard.â)
Maybe I finally pruned my friends lists enough during the Mike Brown protests, but this time around, âlanguage of the unheardâ has been literally the only MLK quote Iâve seen anyone sharing. (Until now of course.)
âA different kingâŚâ
I donât see anything in that quote that justifies rioting.
Does anything in your view? How bad do things need to get in order to justifying rioting?
Maybe. I canât say never, right?
But I fail to see how riots help anything. Letâs not act like these people are out to alert the world to the injustice in their lives or fight to make things better. No, they are taking advantage of the situation to steal and break things. That has done NOTHING to help the cause. It has painted their community as being full of criminals and prompted the observer to write them off.
The actual protest were about trying to wake up people to the cause. Police injustice and brutality doesnât touch every community, but is a national issue. But I canât see anyone seriously advocating violence as a way to make anything better.
Xeni posted stats on the neighborhood yesterday. That area is full of violence with out the cops behaving badly. People who say they need to go after the cops to stop the killing and protect themselves arenât using rational and logic. Looking at the murder and assault rate, their fellow citizens are more of a danger to them than the cops.
And to be clear I am not in anyway defending the cops actions that lead to Grayâs death. If what is being reported is true, they should do time.
Because weâre still talking about Freddie Gray today. And weâre still talking about all the other injustices that black people face in this nation.
Would we still be talking about Freddie Gray if Al Sharpton had just had a prayer meeting at a local church?
Would we still be talking about Michael Brown and Eric Garner if we had just had a couple of articles in the Atlantic, instead of the protests?
Sure, they could just march in the streets. But people have been marching in the streets for months now over similar things. That doesnât even get into the news any more.
Or, as someone else posted in a related thread, maybe the cops precipitated it in the first place (from @hereticbranding in the thread about Baltimore and stats) :
From the same thread (posted by @chgoliz):
Also, this:
Letâs not forget:
And
And
http://www.ultimatehistoryproject.com/bread.html
Ireland:
I donât see this as a âjustification of riotingâ so much as âan expression of anger and frustration toward those moderates who have a bigger problem with riots than the ongoing conditions which led to them.â
Riots may or may not further the cause of justice. I canât say Iâm a big fan of them myselfâI lived near L.A. during the 1992 riots which followed the Rodney King beating verdict and I lived in downtown Oakland when police used tear gas to stop protesters who were smashing up neighborhood businesses after the Oscar Grant shooting in 2010. But I can sympathize with the anger that leads to them, and recognize riots as the ugly but inevitable consequence when a population of people are pushed beyond a certain point.
In Baltimore protesters marched peacefully for six days and were all but ignored by the national media. Is it really all that surprising that some of those angry people would decide it was time for more extreme measures?
I donât see it as a good talk. Hell I think some people see this type of behavior and then are empathetic more with the police. People in general arenât empathetic to people who commit crimes. And while the protestors and rioters are two different groups, it is very easy for people to lump them in as one and the same.
I agree with this. Honestly, like Sam and Max: Hit the Road taught me, people donât care about others if it isnât someone they know or care about.
While on the surface people are against police brutality, etc, but if it doesnât directly affect them it is hard for them to get too upset over it to do much about it. Conversely, no one likes criminals wantonly stealing and destroying things. And it just reenforces any cognitive biases they may have had.
But hey - this is life. âIf it bleeds, it leads.â People watch all sort of trash shows of people behaving badly. People gossip. Etc etc. It isnât ârightâ, but what gets attention and put on the news isnât the 100 people doing something right, itâs the one guy doing something wrong.
But that isnât what happened, is it? Was the protestors who took it up a notch? Or people who saw it as an opportunity to cause trouble? People burned down a CVS (costing neighbors their jobs) to make the world more aware of their blight? Or because they wanted to watch it burn because they donât have a more constructive outlet for their anger.
Probably some of each. When you have a situation where a lot of people are filled with righteous anger, some of that is going to boil over in violent and non-productive ways unless thereâs a positive outlet for it. The longer that peaceful protests remain ineffective the greater the odds that some people will resort to non-peaceful means.
(Via The Nib)
What you say is true, but I donât think it is a good thing, necessarily. Clearly you can find examples where people had to stand up and fight for a cause. In some of your examples the level of oppression I think is quite a bit different than the current situation. You could also say violence solved things like WWII, etc.
But at the same time I could probably make snarky cartoons of when violence didnât really help the cause the violence was a result of.
And problems these people face are much deeper than just police brutality. Looking at their stats, they would still be poor and the violence in the area is much higher than in other areas. Will rioting stop either of those things? Of course not.
Again, itâs not really an issue of whether rioting is a âgoodâ thing. Itâs just a thing that groups of people do when events push them beyond a certain threshold. For some people that threshold is âmy favorite sports team just lost a game!â For others itâs âmy favorite sports team just won a game!â
In this case that threshold was âmy community has faced decades of brutality from the unaccountable police force sworn to protect us, and the last week of peaceful protests hasnât yielded any tangible action in response to the latest tragedy.â
This quote needs me context. He went on to say: âStealing preservative-filled pastries from convenience stores is a great thing that everyone should do. Sorry/not sorry.â --Dr. Martin Luther King
And heck, letâs not forget the Baltimore RiotâŚof 1812.
(Hint: lily white rioters, all of them.)
Itâs like when you go to the dentist, and the manâs going to take your tooth. Youâre going to fight him when he starts pulling. So he squirts some stuff in your jaw called novocaine, to make you think theyâre not doing anything to you. So you sit there and 'cause youâve got all of that novocaine in your jaw, you suffer peacefully. Blood running all down your jaw, and you donât know whatâs happening. 'Cause someone has taught you to suffer â peacefully. - Malcolm X
Oooooo⌠One more! Not in Baltimore, but stillâŚ
Except I think that plenty of people are pissed off enough to care at this point, but our moribund, crooked, and backasswards political/justice system is a problem.
Actually, I care much more about the young men killed by police than I do if someone smashes a window and walks off with⌠whatever. People over stuff.
From some of the stuff Iâve read, it was the cops who escalated. Again. They seem great at that lately.
I assume you meant plight? Or maybe both⌠but Iâm not sure that a low paying job at CVS is something to get upset about. Sure, itâs a job, but not all jobs are great jobs.
I think youâre missing them point weâre⌠or rather I, I guess⌠am making about riots, that itâs a political act, as much as it is an act of seemingly wanton violence and destruction.
And this seems it.
Not, but maybe it will draw attention to it? It seems like weâre finally having a discussion about this stuff, which we should have had YEARS AGO.
Later in Letter from a Birmingham Jail:
In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy.
