[Primateus]

Tiste Simeon, on 27 May 2020 - 09:13 AM, said:

He was arrested because a grocery store employee thought he was writing a bad cheque.

And this around the same time as the utter shcumbag Amy Cooper calls the police because a black man asked her to out her dog on the lead. The video is horrendous she says to him "I'm going to call the cops and tell them that an African American threatened my life!"

Awful people.

At least, at the very least, the four officers involved have all been fired. But if no charges are raised against them, it is probably likely they could end up being "reshuffled" to other districts. That has happened before.

[Tsundoku]

Damn, that escalated quickly.

https://www.news.com...85cf3cd4973212e

i know there's always bad elements looking to take advantage of any crisis, but why all the looting and burning?
Is it because the police are too well armed to take on so the mob takes its fury out on the defenceless?

To be fair though, it's not like this is the only time mobs have gone totally batshit crazy after a trigger event. I remember Canadians burning the place down after losing a goddamn hockey game!
Does a mob frenzy fuck people's heads up so much they totally lose all sense of proportion, justice and consequence?
It would be interesting to see what a brain scan could reveal if you could fit a device into a helmet. Of course that assumes foreknowledge of events but ah well ...

[Tiste Simeon]

Maybe cos they tried kneeling peacefully and that didn't work so they're left with no other recourse if they want to be heard?

[Tsundoku]

So there are only those two options? "Listen to our gripes or we'll loot a bunch of places that have nothing to do with this and don't even sell food, and then burn them down plus anything else that will ignite?"

You should know better than that.

I think they went from zero to chaos way too early. Seems to me a bunch of bad elements decided to use it as an excuse. Pouring petrol on and then lighting the tinder box (not, not THAT Tinder).
Thus depriving it and the actual protestors of any real legitimacy.

I mean, the vision of people stealing big screen TVs and laptops is very bad. If they had all robbed a few chain supermarket for food and staples, you could understand that. But stealing tech items is just blatant opportunism.

It just seems like nothing was achieved besides a bunch of businesses and people got robbed or burned out.

Any calls for an inquiry about Floyd's death will be drowned out by the usual suspects banging on about the need for law and order (translation: even more brutal crackdown on minorities).
I think all they did was make things much worse. I wonder how many genuine protestors saw what was happening and just gave up and went home because any chance of seeing justice just went up in smoke?

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 29 May 2020 - 06:50 AM

[Mezla PigDog]

I don't know Sombra, walk a mile in a mans shoes, and all that. With every protest movement against a huge institutionalized injustice there always ends up being violence and people roll out those arguments that it defeats the purpose etc. You have to step back and wonder if that response to the violence is part of the institutionalized response. If voting, being raised to be careful around the police and protesting peacefully when they kill you doesn't work (amongst a million other small things black people in the US are supposed to suck up including lack of access to decent education to enable a more palatable response to being treated with utter contempt by the state), what's left?

[Aptorian]

Political assassinations. What? Somebody had to say it.

[Morgoth]

I agree with Mez. If decades of injustice have gone by and nothing has been done, despite numerous peers being murdered on camera, and protests and political activism is ignored or condemned, where else are you to direct your frustration and anger?

[Tsundoku]

Not at the people in your neighbourhood.

[Mezla PigDog]

Tsundoku, on 29 May 2020 - 10:08 AM, said:

Not at the people in your neighbourhood.

Yeah I agree. And in a lot of senses it is really patronizing as a person with a lot of privileges to sit here and say "well of course the poor down trodden people are rioting". I feel like both conclusions are right at the same time. It's almost as if life is complicated or something. I am enjoying John Boyega on Twitter.

Watch how much Trump / Republicans / Fox will use this to deflect scrutiny of their coronavirus response.

[QuickTidal]

If I read the news right, there are 100+ cops protecting the cop who murdered Floyd’s house....what the everloving fuck is going on?

I’m Not wrong right, like he’s on video kneeling on his neck for 9 minutes. He killed him. So why don’t they just put him in jail if they want to keep him from riot retribution....like he did it...why waste resources protecting him in a civilian house During riots ?

This needs to be the turning point. This needs to be the one where the cop gets charged and incarcerated for murder. Like there is no grey area. There are cops from other places online saying that this guy killed Floyd.

Why do I feel like this won’t be the turning point though? Why do I feel like nothing is going to change in the USA?

[Terez]

Target, at least, is directly complicit in the Minneapolis police department's failings. From 2006:

WaPo said:

Target also has been paying for a lawyer and a paralegal in the Minneapolis prosecutor's office through its charitable foundation, with an emphasis on prosecuting repeat criminals. "They don't just give us money -- they demand accountability," said Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar. "There were huge strings attached when we received the funding for our new staff, and we were expected to routinely communicate how the money was used and what kind of results we'd gained. Here's an example: In the past, the DA's office tracked input numbers [how many criminals were charged], though once we were working with Target, we were required to track output numbers, or how many convictions we get in a year."

Before Target's involvement, the prosecutor won convictions for about three repeat criminals a year. Since adding the new staff and changing how it operates, the prosecutor now has more than 90 such convictions in a year.

https://www.washingt...1-88b77eafb891/

[Terez]

CNN field crew was just arrested for reporting on the riots.

[Aptorian]

Was there a reason why they were arrested?

[Terez]

If you watch the video, you can hear them repeatedly asking the cops where they were allowed to be. They don't get any response, so they keep reporting until they are arrested. The black reporter was arrested first, then his producer, then the cameraman. Just one block away, a white reporter for CNN was not arrested.



This is far from normal and almost certainly unconstitutional.

[Siergiej]

Tsundoku, on 28 May 2020 - 11:20 PM, said:

Damn, that escalated quickly.

https://www.news.com...85cf3cd4973212e

i know there's always bad elements looking to take advantage of any crisis, but why all the looting and burning?
Is it because the police are too well armed to take on so the mob takes its fury out on the defenceless?

To be fair though, it's not like this is the only time mobs have gone totally batshit crazy after a trigger event. I remember Canadians burning the place down after losing a goddamn hockey game!
Does a mob frenzy fuck people's heads up so much they totally lose all sense of proportion, justice and consequence?
It would be interesting to see what a brain scan could reveal if you could fit a device into a helmet. Of course that assumes foreknowledge of events but ah well ...

There is someone who has lost all sense of proportion, justice, and consequence in this conflict. But it's not the rioters.

To quote an essay from years ago that popped on my Twitter feed today (https://www.propubli...olice-heres-why):

Quote

This fear is not unjustified. Young black men today are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than young white men. Still, it's not that black Americans expect to die every time they encounter the police. Police killings are just the worst manifestations of countless slights and indignities that build until there's an explosion.

Since 1935, nearly every so-called race riot in the United States—and there have been more than 100—has been sparked by a police incident, Muhammad says. This can be an act of brutality, or a senseless killing. But the underlying causes run much deeper. Police, because they interact in black communities every day, are often seen as the face of larger systems of inequality in the justice system, employment, education and housing.

You reap what you sow. If you sow decades of injustice and violence, it will eventually spill over.

[Tsundoku]

Violence against police and (white) political, social and financial establishments I could understand. Especially the prominent examples of shit that keeps them down.
Looting food and staples from an Establishment supermarket, I could understand.

But when Dipshit looks at some random Honda Civic (for example) a street over from his place or some random building that could be a block of units or a corner store and thinks "Yeah, I'll loot and/or torch that!", then you lose my sympathy and any claim of legitimacy.

You don't make your people's (race and/or social class) better by looting and burning down your fucking neighbourhood.

[Siergiej]

It's telling when people are more mad about a burnt Honda Civic than about decades of systemic violence, oppression, and neglect of entire communities.

[QuickTidal]

This could not be more black and white (for lack of a better phrase).

A black man who was not in any way resisting arrest (we have video evidence) for the crime of, I heard, possibly writing a bad cheque? was killed by a white officer (with a viewable history of excessive force on his police record over the years....which former presidential hopeful and sitting Senator Amy Klobuchar reportedly REFUSED to charge in those previous incidents) who knelt on his neck for 9 minutes, while he cried that he could not breathe. Three (or four?) other officers stood by and did absolutely nothing to stop their fellow officer from summary execution of a citizen in their jurisdiction.

If any of the bystanders (heard on the one video) who were telling the cop that the man was going to die had done anything to STOP this murder (let's be clear, it's a murder...it's not even manslaughter to me) then the cop and his friends would have possibly killed someone else, or at the very least arrested and incarcerated someone else. So if the 4 cops aren't holding each other accountable, then no one can.

These cops will then close ranks around the offender and try to make it seem like this was justified, up to and including lying about the altercation before video evidence came out (I think they tried to say he was resisting?)...and now one of the officers is cooperating with the DA because he was part of that cover-up. Even if he's charged (I hope he is), then you have to get him convicted and that does not happen often (if ever? I don't know the statistics) and thrown in prison.

In a country where their votes have been stifled by gerrymandering, and other tactics to keep their voices unheard, and they can't speak up without getting slapped down, arrested, and killed by people/cops. The minute something happens to one of them, the white powers that be DIG through their lives to find something to point at to say "See? Bad guy. He was a bad guy!" like an old tweet or a charge from their youth.

Where does that leave this trodden down part of the US population? At what point does the system that fails them REPEATEDLY become so unfair that they break out of it any way they know how? Every single recourse they have available to them in that system will fail them. It's proven that this is the case time after time after time since...what Rodney King? Most certainly before that, but King was the first big televised evidence that made everyone kind of wake up to what was really happening. A country divide by class and colour with different rules that apparently apply to them. Contrast the initial protests in Minneapolis where they were tears gassed and the police stomped down...to the bunch of ARMED white assholes who walked INTO the capital building in (Michigan, was it?) to protest having to "wear a mask" and be in quarantine. The difference between these events is stark.

Understand that IF these cops killing young black men were being held accountable, and charged and not protected when they've cleary done something wrong, then these riots likely would not happen. If the white cop (I'm not going to mention his name) was promptly arrested, and charged, pending a trial....this would not have occurred. It's the injustice that is being railed against. The fact that he still walks free while the people seeking to protect him try to find ANY avenue to keep him that way. It's disgusting.

As someone on twitter said, "They tried peacefully protesting this by kneeling during NFL games, and everyone had an issue with that too"

And when another twitter user said "Burning down your city won't bring back George Floyd"...someone aptly replied "Bombing the Middle East won't stop 9/11"...

As a student of history, the way I look at it, until the system in the USA begins to serve everyone equally regardless of skin colour or social status, then things are just going to keep heading towards collapse and revolution. The situation as it stands is entirely untenable.

[Tsundoku]

Siergiej, on 29 May 2020 - 01:38 PM, said:

It's telling when people are more mad about a burnt Honda Civic than about decades of systemic violence, oppression, and neglect of entire communities.

Sorry mate, you are clearly missing my point. It's not the property damage (well it is a bit), it's who owns it.

You don't get justice for people in your neighbourhood by burning your neighbourhood down.
You don't shit in your own nest.
You don't get justice from a corrupt system by fucking on your own people.

And when it comes to attracting attention to these injustices - when you do the above actions to get that attention you've already lost in the court of public opinion. The bad elements undercut the efforts of the good people.

And the cycle repeats itself.

How can I make it plainer? Am I speaking another language?

EDIT: if someone came up to you and said "the system is so corrupt, I have no other recourse but to burn down the local greengrocer" you'd think he was crazy and want to punch them in the face. No reasonable person could agree with that logic. I'm sorry, but while I agree with 90% of the above reasonings, I will never, ever understand or condone fucking on your neighbour when they are not your enemy - they're in the shit with you! It's like going to war (a good one, against Nazis or something like that), and then shooting your squadmates and looting the bodies because "The bad guys had too much of an advantage, so I had to express my rage and do SOMETHING, get attention, etc ...".

Burning down police stations ... whoa, severe. But you know in this situation, that I can understand. Not approve, mind, but definitely understand.

EDIT2: I see that CNN crew got hastily released (only because of the cameras I'll bet, and the fact it went out LIVE. Otherwise there may have been a more reluctant response from the authorities, if any). Bloody hell, what a clusterfuck. Is anyone in charge over there?

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 29 May 2020 - 03:19 PM

[Siergiej]

Nah, I'm not missing anything. I'm just tired of hearing people constantly moving goalposts for response to injustice. People in Minneapolis don't riot because they just happen to want to smash some shit. They riot because communities like theirs tried every possible avenue to address racial injustice in America and accomplished fuck all. That country has unquenchable thirst for their blood and when they respond with violence suddenly they are the problem because they, to use your words, shit in their own nest?

The system they live in has been telling them over and over again that this nest isn't theirs but that it demands their labor and their blood.


When a black person is killed and people protest in the streets, they're met with tear gas and branded as thugs.
When a black person is killed and athletes refuse to stand up for the anthem, they're told it's disrespectful.
When a black person is killed and people petition to prosecute the cops responsible, fuck all happens.
When a black person is killed and people riot, you call them dipshits because apparently that's too far.

Black people get killed (not to even mention all other forms of systemic racism in the US) and however they respond, people just focus on the response. Fix the racism and you won't have to worry about riots.

EDIT

To address your edits
Riots get out of hand. No one drafts a careful strategy for a riot. Violence escalated and property gets damaged. I doubt anyone joined the protests with the goal of specifically fucking up a grocery store. Blame the injustice that sparked the violence.

This post has been edited by Siergiej: 29 May 2020 - 03:22 PM