MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Fires burned and looters struck Thursday after violent protests over the death of a black man in police custody rocked a Minneapolis neighborhood for a second straight night, with damage stretching for miles across the city and Mayor Jacob Frey appealing to the governor to activate the National Guard.
On Thursday morning, smoke hung over Minneapolis and looters carried merchandise from a damaged Target store with no interference by police. Video of the store’s interior showed empty clothing racks and shelves and debris strewn about. Obscenities were spray-painted on the exterior of the store.
In the midst all that, I hope the focus can remain on the murder of George Floyd.
I doubt it will. Looting is not protest nor is arson. They’re crimes and never justified. This bullshit will erode sympathy for the protesters and their cause. Stupid.
I think there is long-standing anger and there is opportunism.
They aren’t necessarily easy to separate.
Some anger goes into what one might think of as legitimate protest.
Some anger is expressed in ways an observer might find opportunistic.
And then there is pure opportunism.
Inevitably.
The city needs to release the police officers’ body cam videos. If the evidence supports it, charge them with murder. If not, show why not. Otherwise, things will only get worse now, and when this information finally comes out if it is damning.
There’s also history. When these things ( think Rodney King ) devolve into this bullshit the cause is lost and “thugs” becomes the topic. You have to wonder if this crap isn’t instigated by folks with a stake in defending the Cops. Because it sure works out that way.
And Trump will invariably make this worse.
Time for Obama to put his presidenting shoes back on for a spell…
The unrest usually is confined to areas where the POC are.
That’s what eyeballing POC does.
It is unlikely that people marched up and looted the homes and environs of those who initiated the initial travesty or–in the case of the mook who has lowered our social discourse at all levels–The White House
Why haven’t the fired cops been charged with anything?!
Time for Obama to put his presidenting shoes back on for a spell…
And what, “walk that picket line.” Not in your lifetime or mine.
Worse for us, certainly.
Perhaps he could help to some extent. It would come naturally.
Others, like Bobby Kennedy, could help, too, but they had to learn how.
If you want to appeal to history, please tell it all like it really is: “These things” are the dead bodies of Black lives lost at the hands of police and citizenry at moments when their communities felt powerless to claim justice through ordinary means. Each victim was a real person. A human being. The looting and mayhem is unlawful and wrong and unhelpful - it provides no justification or cover for dehumanizing Black people in your rhetoric.
Not the intention, I assume, but good point regardless.
people like you sure will be glad to help with that
Thanks @cervantes. As someone prone to be regarded as potentially one of the “thugs” whenever I leave my house, I appreciate your solidarity.
Exactly this is simply a gift to the racists and the Trumpists, and there’s no excuse. Looting and burning businesses in the community has nothing in reality to do with police violence.
Hmmmm… I see you changed/expanded your original response.
After the Watts riots, then CA Gov. Pat Brown established the McCone commission which came up with a number of very good programs and ideas for mitigating and solving some of the systemic problems in the neighborhood. Some of these were put into practice. But many were ignored and remained unimplemented 25 years later.
While some of the recommendations were adopted and sustained, bringing with them a handful of substantive changes in Watts, most were not. Some were enacted and then, for a variety of reasons, were scaled back or allowed to die out altogether. Others were simply ignored.
“I guess I’m struck with a sense of futility,” said Ben S. Farber, a young prosecutor fresh out of the U.S. attorney’s office when the commission recruited him to work out of its headquarters in the Sierra Building.
“I feel the same futility as the people in Watts–although I guess I’m not as uncomfortable with it,” he said. “We (the commission) did all that I think we could do. How do you break the cycle of (problems), I don’t know.”
And this is key. The pervasive feeling that nothing will change. I feel it as a white man. How much more do people of color feel it?
au contraire: While not condoning the mob actions in any way, I feel compelled to point out that In this very real and particular instance, the protests with attendant looting and burning are not likely to have ever occurred had police not choked a man to death while in handcuffs with onlookers filming the episode and pleading with officers to be merciful on his behalf. The one has everything to do with the other - in reality.