The bro with his hands around a copâs throat wasnât shot dead because he wasnât wearing headphones and his hands were in plain sight. Oh, and he was white.
Did you see any signs saying âblack lives matter?â No? Then how could it be a riot?
Huh? âRiotâ does not mean âlarge assembly of people, mostly behaving themselves.â It means "large crowd of people behaving destructively. A riot also implies a level of anger; this crowd was, by all accounts, upbeat and good natured, aside from a few isolated incidents. One has to suspect the only reason the writer is labeling this a riot is because it mostly involved white people. What does that say?
I see from your profile that you are a Chicago resident so this is directed at you Caroline.
I too am a Chicagoan and have been around long enough to remember the the riots in 1968. My older brother was a campaign worker at McCarthy headquarters when the cops kicked in the doors and started billy clubbing people who had nothing to do with the demonstrations in the street. What happened here after Mondayâs hockey game was not a riot. It pales in comparison to the aftermath of the murders of MLK and Bobby Kennedy and Richard Daleyâs police riot at the Democratic national convention.
So maybe a little perspective would be in order.
Donât get me wrong. I donât excuse the behavior of the idiots who got liquored up and took advantage of the situation to act like, well, idiots. It happens whenever you get a large group of people together for any reason. Unfortunately, there are idiots everywhere.
Actually, Iâm surprised that there were only 5 arrests on Monday. Thatâs a typical Friday night on Rush Street or an average White Sox night game, both of which gather only a fraction of the number of people who were in Wrigleyville last Monday night.
It says⌠she is being clever, in a way which you are not being clever.
A riot includes some element of lashing out destructively, surely. Now, look around. Think, and tell me who is lashing out?
You think choking people and smashing vehicles is non-destructive?
The point is not to condemn this as a riot (although there have been tons of âriotsâ that donât get reported as such, just because white people are involved) but instead to point out how all the demonstrations that get called riots wouldnât, if it was white people as the majority.
BTW, hereâs an example of white people rioting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Vancouver_Stanley_Cup_riot
With the added bonus of it being related to the Stanley Cup.
AgainâŚperspective please.
http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/riot42.jpg?w=940&h=628
I get that. Iâve been to my share of demonstrations, including Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter to mention recent history. I plan on possibly being at another later this year if the asshole Rahm Immanuel finally makes his move to bust the teacherâs union. Wait 'till you see how the corporate press reports on that. The demonstrators will be racially mixed but theyâll mostly show the black ones on TV and try to make it out as being thugs and hippies trying to mess up the place. So yeah, I get it without any need for your lecturing.
Hey, they were good naturedly smashing vehicles and choking cops! Although really, given the usual standards of post-sporting-event-violence, this was rather tame. Itâs not so uncommon for vehicles to be torched and people seriously injured, etc., (and that still doesnât get labeled a riot).
#whiteboyswillbeboysamirite?
In the end, I guess you were fairly incited to turn nuance out of this conversation. Just my opinion of course.
Itâs truer with the nuance. Just sub âso manyâ for âallâ and suddenly your truthy lie becomes truthy truth!
You could disagree, or try it and see how much nicer people are to you when you respect their intelligence alongside your own.
Remember that Baltimore riot? The one where hundreds of people politely stood around and a few dozen caused trouble after the police attacked the polite people?
In Ferguson and Baltimore most people behaved themselves.
Right, so when you have a large group of protestors behaving themselves with isolated incidents, itâs a riot. But sports fans? BTW, riot doesnât imply anger outside context. The Vancouver stanley cup riots werenât angry affairs, but because the destruction was more sensational, evident and involved burning rather than just breaking windows, I bet youâd have to concede it was a riot.
Had the police reacted with the same vigour they typically do when faced with isolated incidents in connection with protests over police violence and murders, this riot would have escalated drastically and youâd get the pics you need to concede. But they didnât, did they? Even when directly, physically assaulted, even when their cars and such were attacked.
Or because it is technically a riot, but media doesnât call it that. Major media outlets instead say âChicagoans go crazyâ with pictures of violence. Or âKid smacked with bottle in Stanley Cup Meleeâ to promote a particularly violent bit of video.
A riot is a violent public disturbance. Full Stop. But nowadays it is a buzzword for justifying actions against certain segments of society, unless you torch a police car and itâs caught on camera, then even the media capitulates and calls it a riot.
To be fair, there are some outlets characterizing it as a riot, not just boing boing, not just witnesses, not just average people, many of which are calling it a riot.
So, basically youâre saying that the people in Ferguson were genuinely upset about systemic oppression and violence done disproportionately to their community, and thus a few outbursts of violence and destruction among a peaceful, albeit justifiably angry crowd are to be expected, perhaps even, in context, appropriate. By contrast, youâre saying, sports-related âhappyâ violence is entirely senseless and unjustified. Huh, you might actually have a point there winkyfacesarcasmtag.
If you can hear over great sound of whooshing, the point of putting the label of âriotâ on these activities is to intentionally use the very low standard set by the media for what is considered a riot when it comes to race-based civil unrest, and then contrast that with the extremely high bar for celebratory wanton destruction and the respective police/media reaction to both. You arguing that this is not actually a riot makes the point. If this isnât a riot, why are protests?
The one example here that is appropriate is the choking of the cop. The guy was arrested, but clearly if it was proportional, heâd have been beaten/shot for doing that. The rest of the so called âdamageââŚI could only find one report of a carâs window being smashed, so letâs take it easy on the âsmashing vehiclesâ as if there was some crazy amount of rioting going on. The comment above is correctâŚIâd love to see a normalization of how much damage happens on a typical Cubs night game/college football Saturday.
I hate that Iâm even on this side of the argument, because I feel it diminishes the real double standard going on. Clearly, the system is broken. This is just a really lousy example of that.
I canât speak to what happens in Evanston on game days, but I do know what happens in Ann Arbor. Not much. Property destruction is incredibly rare, public intoxication and possession of alcohol by a minor are on the order of about 10-20 arrests per game.
[edit] I should add, for anyone who isnât familiar with the Big House, that it seats 104,000 people. The arrest rate is 0.02% on a particularly raucous Saturday.
So, 5 arrests, public intoxication, and one damaged pedicab for a championship seems clearly to fall within that range, IMHO.
Again, to clarify, no one is defending this behavior, but itâs a stretch to say that it was a riot. But if the point is to say âif this behavior happened with a minority crowd, it would have been much different,â the answer is yes, yes it would have, especially in that neighborhood.
And even if there was media bias, I canât even find anything outside of Twitter pictures of drunken bros crowd surfing. Sites like Everyblock usually have neighbors whining about every little thing, and thereâs narry a mention of anything outside of the usual Wrigley drunken gameday revelry.
Six police vehicles windows busted out. No count on civilian vehicles but twitter accounts of cars being âbouncedâ (suspension activated to an extreme by people jumping on them) & windows broken out were common. They even wrecked the pedicab of some poor guy trying to earn a buck. Over 100 incidents of weapons being fired (celebratory shooting) with no or minimum police response. The choked cop you mentioned, along with 5 slightly injured officers. 23 arrests, not 5.
No it wasnât like 2013, and thatâs credited to police keeping a military response to a minimum, low amounts of riot gear, deliberately keeping arrests low and letting misdemeanor offenses slide altogether.
Now, what other situations could benefit from such an approach? Hmm.
So police treating people differently certainly contributed to media treating people differently.
Except the points @CarolineSiede makes still stand for this and other white people riots. No one is asked during or after to hold themselves or others to account, or to condemn their own community or itâs actions. Media de-sensationalized what violence and disturbance occurred and no one denounced any of it.
