Re: Corona Virus: is it the beginning of the end?
Actually, I disagree with you there. Here's why.
So, first things first. There are absolutely people who are part of this for the wrong reasons. I won't pretend otherwise; that would be foolish. Some rioters are breaking and taking because they want to, and that's the end of it.
But I think you simplify all rioters into that same camp at your own peril.
Yes, here comes a short capitalism rant.
Capitalism is a tool of oppression. People say it's necessary, but it's really only about two hundred and fifty years old, and we got along pretty well without it. It's led to the systemic oppression of billions, while a few reap the benefits.
Why does this matter, you ask? Simple.
Big businesses, cops, infrastructure are all essentially just outgrowths of capitalism. Some people who are protesting what happens to people of colour are just sick and tired of the way the machine grinds them down. Now they're fighting back. One of the most visible ways you can do this is by doing things like breaking windows, stealing stuff, and even setting fires. It's a tangible, physical fuck-you to the man, basically, and it's provoked by a whole lot of anger, and decades of people telling them that all their other forms of protestation were wrong somehow.
So I'm not going to sit here and tell you that it's totally okay when rioters burn things down and destroy people's livelihoods. It's not. But stop and think a moment. Is it really equal to the systemic oppression we see and experience every day? Put them next to each other. Is Derek Chauvin, the man who killed George Floyd, equally guilty to the dude who hurls a brick through a window?
Spin it another way, and you can look at rioting and looting as a manifestation of consequences. People have been harassed, shot, killed, beaten, brutalized, profiled and otherwise treated badly for decades. I think I read a statistic somewhere that said less than two percent of police who murder people of colour are ever brought up on charges. This means, in essence, that despite all the peaceful protests and attempts to improve our justice systems, bad shit keeps happening. Well, finally some people had enough, and now the physical damage is occurring. It took awhile, and it'll die out, and then it'll come back and happen again I'm sure before we see progress, but when you push the people in a system hard enough, eventually they push back.
To be entirely clear here, I don't condine violence against innocent people. Any rioter who deliberately hurts an innocent person directly is basically no different than Mr. Chauvin. My understanding is that most protestors, even the louder, angrier ones, tried to limit the damage they did to people, and made a point to only damage property.
In military terms, I'd consider this as collateral damage, something you want to minimize but which, under the circumstances, was bound to happen.
So really take a minute and think about these protestors. Don't just write them off and condemn them. Ask yourself what realistic other options there are. When you try and protest peacefully, sometimes you're shot with rubber bullets by police. When you block traffic, you're a public nuisance. When you try to change laws, people in power, who have more resources than you do, simply block you out, shut you down. When you shout, you're told that you shouldn't be so angry. So what the hell else is there?
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