Is the expectation that curfew is an order that should not be enforced in the strictest sense?
From what I could see on the news, parts of your country were being burned down and looted by some rogue elements who used the cover of peaceful protests to spring into action. To protect the lives and livelihoods of those affected, a curfew was imposed, which was then violated. If I lived in those areas I would have liked to see the curfew enforced as harshly as possible because if it is not enforced then I will lose the local businesses who I depend on to live in that area.
What is the expected approach to law enforcement when extreme measures like curfew orders are not obeyed, particularly during a pandemic?
A lot of these videos seem to be omitting the all-important context. In my country I would want the police to beat the ever loving expletive out of people who do go out in large crowds during a pandemic. I would want the police to use all measures available at their disposal to injure and dissuade people from breaking a curfew and unwittingly providing cover for criminals.
Perhaps in first world countries life has become soft and comfortable so there is some expectation of civil behavior from everyone in society, but clearly that has not happened in the USA and many other countries.
Many of the protests are peaceful, and a lot of anger can be easily empathized with, I can't imagine anyone who was not furious after seeing these horrible videos of police inflicted killings. Under no circumstances can I be convinced that looting and rioting is an acceptable outcome. If protesters know that their peaceful assembly is being hijacked by criminals who go out and loot and riot under the cover they provide, and they go out and protest more, then they are complicit in the rioting.
Perhaps these are cultural differences, but coming from a police where the police are infinitely more barbaric, corrupt, rude and ruthless than the USA, I find the police doing the best they can to manage the absolute mess that the citizens are creating.
You all live in a country where many police wear body cameras. That is privileged beyond anything I can hope to imagine for my country. It's weird to empathize with you when you have it so good.
Maybe in your country blind, extrajudicial violence is not a no-no. This is not the case in democratic countries.
>To protect the lives and livelihoods of those affected, a curfew was imposed, which was then violated.
This is a) a slippery slope (a corrupt government would declare a curfew every time it wanted to stop protests) and, b) it prioritizes material wealth over a movement that wants to achieve social change (in the grand scheme of things, decreasing racism is much more valuable that the stores of some neighborhoods).
>Under no circumstances can I be convinced that looting and rioting is an acceptable outcome.
Really? Under no circumstances? Social equality movements have produced riots since time immemorial. Do you denounce the acts of Spartacus? The peasants revolt? The French revolution?
People who claim this are usually ignorant about how social change is made.
Police all around the world use non-lethal force when the law is being broken and the perpetrator is not cooperative. This is absolutely not blind or extra-judicial. The whole point of this is to deter this kind of behaviour, and police are equipped with batons etc. for this reason.
> This is a) a slippery slope (a corrupt government would declare a curfew every time it wanted to stop protests)
I would agree if this was the case in this instance but this is not the case - there was a very obvious need for a curfew given the breakdown of law and order. Death, destruction of property, theft, loss of livelihoods. This is not what one expects in a civilized place.
Material wealth is a disingenuous framing. Someone's grocery shop is not accurately categorised as material wealth - it is their source of livelihood and it is a resource for the neighborhood. As President Obama pointed out in his letter, we all watched that poor old lady sobbing about the fact that she had nowhere else to go to buy groceries. To dismiss this kind of destruction as loss of material wealth is not at all accurate.
> Social equality movements have produced riots since time immemorial. Do you denounce the acts of Spartacus? The peasants revolt? The French revolution?
I denounce anyone who sets the shop of a small storekeeper or restauraunteur on fire, destroying their livelihood. You can go out into the streets and protest but this kind of behaviour is unconscionable and wrong. Setting fire to low income housing? How does this behavior help anyone? It's despicable. Your country can afford to build actual homes for low income folks while millions live in abject poverty and some rioter burns it down, and others justify it as a legitimate protest.
You can enact social change through all sorts of violence but it is most certainly not something that decent and civilized people ought to support. Everyone is rightfully furious at the incident that sparked this entire ordeal. The police presence on the streets was essential given the degree to which people were misbehaving and committing crimes.
a) That it happens around the world (which by the way it does not, protesters broke curfew laws in e.g. Germany and there was not nearly as much violence), does not make it right and b) there was a lot of indiscriminate violence against non-violent (just breaking curfew is non-violent) protesters. The police have in no way the right to act violently upon just because you have broken the law, the bar is much higher than that.
>I would agree if this was the case in this instance but this is not the case...
Do you understand what "slippery slope" means? This time it was maybe not the case.
>Death, destruction of property, theft, loss of livelihoods. This is not what one expects in a civilized place.
While police stepping on the throat of an innocent civilian until he dies is expected in a civilized place? Those riots did not spring up spontaneously from nothing, they are a reaction to a situation.
>Material wealth is a disingenuous framing. Someone's grocery shop is not accurately categorised as material wealth - it is their source of livelihood and it is a resource for the neighborhood.
So... Material wealth. I don't see where I was disingenuous. Societal progress is much more valuable than any shop.
>I denounce anyone who sets the shop of a small storekeeper or restauraunteur on fire, destroying their livelihood.
So you do denounce all those things I mentioned. You understand that by not having those things we would still live in a pre-feudal society, right? There is no such thing as non-violent change, read a history book.
Should we be happy that a small storekeeper lost his shop? Absolutely not. But we should see it from a historical perspective that this is how change sometimes looks like.
>How does this behavior help anyone?
Again, read a history book. No one is focusing on the poor Roman store owner who had his store burned down by rioting slaves in 70 B.C. No one is focusing on some restaurant being burned down during the Watts riots in 1965. Those are transient events that impact the few (as devastating as they might be for the owners, they are but a drop in the ocean for society as a whole).
>You can enact social change through all sorts of violence but it is most certainly not something that decent and civilized people ought to support.
Until you invent a better way, I will support social change by any means necessary. You focus on the 10 owners who had their stores burned down once. I focus on the millions who are repressed and killed every day.