Looters and those who bash people's skulls in are opportunists who don't care about change. The ones that want change see their opportunity slipping away.
Actually, have you seen Daniel Shaver's killing? No riot. Outcome: that policeman collects a pension and rests easy at home. So it is established your technique doesn't work.
When the good things don't work, eventually you get the bad things. That's not even through people changing. It's through the people changing. I remember reading in the WSJ or the NYT about one particular time in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's recent history when there was a bit of tension between their young firebrand wing and their older mellower leaders (though both were still religious). At the time, the older leader was in hiding (on account of the military looking for him) and there was a bit of violence so he came out to appeal for peace and was promptly arrested. This had the predictable effect of weakening the mellow side and turning the organization more radical (or so the article predicted).
So you don't have to turn people into rioters, you can just destroy the credibility of everyone calling for peaceful resolutions by dismissing them out of hand repeatedly. Eventually no one will listen to them. And then the only people with power in those groups are the firebrands. A complete own-goal if you're looking for peace.
A government is supposed to be afraid of the electorate (Jefferson). They’ve lost that fear, and you see that trickle down from legislators all the way to law enforcement.
All of this does not mean that the reasonable peaceful path is not effective. It just tells us citizens must take part.
It is yet to be determined if looting and violence can result in change. What is most likely is that the government uses this to justify greater oppression.
Just how long do you think the civil rights movement has been a thing? 50 years of doing things the way the white people demanded - peaceful protests, sit ins, black political leaders. Yup, it helped, it went down, but it never solved the problem, and I see no indication that it would have on a reasonable time scale. And the whole time you've got people STILL saying "no not like that. No you can't kneel at a football game. Shut up and dribble. Shut up and sing."
Nah. The money to pay back damaged shops should come straight out of the police budget for two reasons: 1. Failure to stop police brutality. 2. Failure to deescalate peaceful protests, in fact, for doing the opposite and firing on peaceful protesters and driving them to riot.
Absolutely disgusting the videos coming out of the last three days. A few burnt out targets is a small price to pay for popping the eyes of multiple people, for tear gassing little girls, for running over protesters, for letting go white people firing arrows at protesters. The cops are lucky it didn't get even more violent. They're damn lucky nobody snapped after getting shot by paintballs on their own porch and started firing back.
It works, and we should keep doing it until the lesson is learned.
The only thing that may work is to get everyone to use their voice. Historically, probably only a tiny fraction of the population have used their voice. The vast majority of us need to stop being silent.
"Blacks commit crimes at higher rates than others."
"It's not a police problem, it's a crime problem."
"I don't want to hear this crap when I get home from work."
The inaction of police to reform themselves and elected officials to reform the laws that govern them is incentive to make it much easier for domestic terrorism to thrive.
Let them try...
Consider that the US government deems what we want (no more police brutality) unacceptable, by definition, we need to work outside the system to solve the problem.
It's similar to 2a people I've met that think that somehow the constitution guarantees their right to overthrow the US government if it becomes tyrannical. That's absurd. The US government would never let itself be overthrown. There's no internal system for such a thing.
Especially worth looking at Rep. Joyce Beatty who is a 70 year old black woman who got peppersprayed with the protesters. An elected lawmaker was attacked by the cops. Think about it.
Violent Protest: Guy got arrested
It's already achieved more, so I think we're good here. But the truth is that this is out of control of individuals. The system of groups of people responds to the stimulus in predictable ways. This was unavoidable.
Everything you casually take for granted people had to die for.
Fyi this is an example I often see spoken of, and then when it gets linked to it's actually a man that was charging at protesters with a sword unprovoked.
not a happy cycle