zlacker

>>pera+(OP)
Native Minnesotan here — living in Minneapolis — that has lived on both coasts:

With all that's happening the last few days, please don't generally associate Minnesotans with the violent riots that have captured the attention of everyone. The peacefulness of the protests and gatherings has been overshadowed by the violence. There are countless examples of Minnesotans standing up to those who choose to loot and destroy the innocent. Those images are being overlooked.

What happened is awful. These violent riots, and the violent images aren't reflective of Minnesotans at large. The violence doesn't reflect how genuinely upset people in Minnesota feel about what happened and greater 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 most great.

I have friends and colleagues asking me "what's going on with everyone in Minnesota?" and I have to explain to them that these images aren't representative of the place I call home and my neighbors I call my friends.

There are businesses that didn't do anything wrong which have have been effectively `rm -rf` because of a small group of bad actors. The Target on Lake Street didn't do anything. Banadir Pharmacy didn't do anything. Seward Pharmacy didn't do anything. The pawn shop didn't do anything. The WIC office didn't do anything. The liquor stores didn't do anything. MoneyGram didn't do anything. The tobacco store didn't do anything. Disrupting those businesses and the livelihoods of their employees and owners doesn't prove a point.

But burning down the precinct? Yeah, I can get behind that.

>>joshmn+Db
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.

>>pm90+7i
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.

>>remark+xn
"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

>>testbo+Sw
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.

>>remark+Hx
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.

>>testbo+NB
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.

>>remark+3I
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".

>>pm90+DK
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...