The article points out that many protests in the U.S. went smoothly through the practice of police and protest organizers meeting and jointly managing protests, but that this practice fell into disuse after the 1999 Seattle WTO meeting in which protesters violated the negotiated terms and police responded with violence.
While some recent (and ongoing) protests have turned violent, many didn't. In the coming months we'll have time to do a postmortem. I strongly suspect spontaneous protests without organization will be found to have the most potential for violence, while those with organizers committed to self-policing and, ideally, cooperating with police will be found to have fared much better.
Individual people may be intelligent and responsible, but crowds have their own rules of behaviour and need to be managed. Protests are more dangerous when unplanned or when their organizers give no thought to self-policing.
There will always be organizers who want violence because it reliably brings press coverage and attention to their protests, but social media is also creating new problems. Coordinating a large number of people to show up at the same time and place used to take considerable planning and effort. When you have to work hard just to get the even to happen, why wouldn't you plan how it will unfold as well? Now a couple of tweets or posts on the right reddit subs will suffice. How can police meet with the organizer of a protest when it's really just some dude who had a lot of social media followers and might not even bother showing up himself?
The right to protest is baked into the first legal document the country as a political entity wrote. For the last 250 years politicians and cops have had the knowledge that Americans care a great deal about their right to stand in front of a statehouse and shout to their heart's content. They should create their own policies to deal with that fact. If that means ensuring no roads go near the statehouses, that there's ample space around popular protest spots, hell that there's guaranteed public restrooms in those areas, so be it. It also means that cops should have 250 years of collective knowledge in how to deescalate... But instead they've always gone the violent route (remember the 60s, when young black people were being shredded by police dogs?)
Now that being said, black lives matter in particular suffers from (in my opinion) a lack of leadership and organization. Over the weekend I wanted to attend protests. I have 100 surplus masks and shitloads of water bottles I wanted to give out. But after a straight hour of searching on every social media platform I could conceive of (as well as Google and just asking on Twitter) I found nothing but out of date websites, with articles from the beginning of the black lives matter movement.
If I want to donate money, I can choose between several different variations of the name "black lives matter," with no way to verify that these are representative organizations, or where the money goes.
During the protest (I just turned up at city hall and hoped for the best - it happened to work out), I didn't see any sort of leadership. Sure some local community leaders turned up, but nobody that represented any sort of modern iteration of a black rights movement.
Far be it from me to tell people how to best accomplish social goals - in my opinion raw, unfettered, and disorganized rage is a perfectly valid outlet for the people against the crimes of the American police system. I just feel like organization could only help.
A universal problem with "leaderless movements" is that they quickly devolve to the lowest common denominator level. Anyone can put out their slate and call themselves an "activist" and it's inevitable that some dim person will come along and try to make a name for themselves by taking things farther. Put that person into a crisis situation with quickly gathering flash mobs, and what should we expect?
Then, on top of that, add on extremist opportunists who decide to exploit the situation, with the goal of destabilizing social order. A "leaderless movement" has all of the biomass of a huge national organization, but none of the immune system and command/control to counter such organized exploiters.
in my opinion raw, unfettered, and disorganized rage is a perfectly valid outlet for the people against the crimes of the American police system.
No. Outside of a protest, the worst actions we've seen would be crimes and qualify the perpetrator as a bad person. Just because they're in a protest doesn't change that. Would you feel that way if they came and burned your house or business down?
Evil is evil. Violence is violence. Another's evil is no excuse to perpetrate your own. Especially if it falls on innocent bystanders.
Yup, and I have the receipts to prove it: my motorcycle was vandalized in Oakland during the protests. A small price to pay for unsung voices being heard.
You say violence is violence, yet I bet you have no problem with criminals being put in jail, i.e. their freedoms being violently removed from them.
The state should have the monopoly on violence. Then, instead of everyone doing violence, we have certain, appointed people given the responsibility who can then be trained and monitored. This is part and parcel of the Rule of Law. Certainly, this system isn't perfect. But you only have to live in a country or region without Rule of Law to know that it's much preferable to improve the system, than to abandon it.
Yup, and I have the receipts to prove it: my motorcycle was vandalized in Oakland during the protests. A small price to pay for unsung voices being heard
Are you going to speak for the elderly woman who was beaten by a 2x4, or her husband who was beaten when he came to protect her? Are you going to speak for the independent owner of the vintage clothing store in LA who was preparing to re-open and had his windows smashed and his inventory stolen?
Can you determine who will pay, and what "price" they will pay?
Have you ever criticized someone for their callous opinions on these matters, because it doesn't affect them so much? Well, perhaps the tenor of your opinion is connected to your not being affected so much.
Your circumstances just happen to afford you that privilege.
Well shit it isn't, it results every year in people being murdered in cold blood, nobody being arrested for it despite the perpetrators being known, and the majority of the population is apparently utterly fine with this - even you are merely saying that this situation "needs improvement", like you're marking homework. "The police only murdered one person in cold blood today rather than two, have a cookie!"
I've had a friend in an EU country have the police break their bones and leave them locked up without medical treatment for weeks, because they were an Eastern European refugee. This is what "Rule of Law" looks like - it looks like entire populations being utterly terrorised by a sanctioned force that they have absolutely no power to stop.
Law is a bunch of words on a piece of paper, it has no power to rule. We leave that to organisations (the police, prosecutor's office, courts and prisons) with a history and present of institutionalised racism and no accountability to the communities they terrorise.
After the George Floyd incident, everyone was in agreement that this should stop. What's happening with the violence and the vandalism is just muddying the waters. It's almost as if the purpose isn't to make things better, but to foment a race war to destabilize the USA.