8 ms·

Change does not require looting and beatings does it? Wouldn't looting and beatings simply give the police more power, and be counter productive against making

Change does not require looting and beatings does it? Wouldn't looting and beatings simply give the police more power, and be counter productive against making police more accountable? 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.

renewiltord 6y ago
Yeah that's what people said for twenty years. So people wrote letters and went to court and the media. Turns out that didn't work. 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.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Regardless of the effectiveness of peaceful protests over the past 20 years, violent ones are even less likely to see change. Those already on the fence or against the issue will just use it as an opportunity to dismiss it all as thugs interested in chaos, no matter that the majority are peaceful.
  - silverreads 6y ago
    Can't dismiss it now. Every major corporation and most congressional lawmakers are now pushing for reform. 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.
    - briefcomment 6y ago
      Looting and violence give them a path to dismiss it. It's risking the ground gained through mass protests.
    - yters 6y ago
      i would say it is short term gain, but longer term police and businesses will just leave black neighborhoods leaving them even more broken and poverty stricken, meanwhile the politicians will keep them on welfare and drugs to bring in the vote not a happy cycle
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Peaceful Protest: Nothing 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.
  - mempko 6y ago
    40 hour work week resulted from violent protests. it's pride month, ask your gay friends. Most change does. Look up Haymarket affair. Everything you casually take for granted people had to die for.
toomuchtodo 6y ago
If the change hasn’t happened yet, what other options are left? Looting? Probably not. Protests until meaningful reform occurs? Might help if nothing else has. 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.
- briefcomment 6y ago
  The electorate induces fear by holding the ability to give and take power from the government. They make their demands known by being loud. The vast majority of us have been guilty of being silent when our neighbor is desperately imploring the government for change. I am guilty of silence, and I regret it and will make my demands known. 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.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    “If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.” - Victor Hugo
  - komali2 6y ago
    They burnt down the police station and we had an arrest 8 hours later. It works, and we should keep doing it until the lesson is learned.
    - briefcomment 6y ago
      The lesson will not be learned. The only thing that will happen is that even more excess force will be justified, and our civil liberties will go away in the name of order and safety.
ikeyany 6y ago
The problem is that decades of peaceful protesting went ignored. Remmeber how kneeling during the national anthem against police brutality got mocked?
- thephyber 6y ago
  The police and police wives in my family were the loudest mockers of the kneeling protests, which were perfectly quiet and peaceful. "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." > Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. -- John F. Kennedy, 1962 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.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Getting mocked was its method of operation. Politicizing a sporting event is controversial and controversy brings media coverage. The fact that it got a lot of media coverage meant that it was doing something.
komali2 6y ago
> Change does not require looting and beatings does it? 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.
- briefcomment 6y ago
  They will not listen just because a couple thousand people break windows and light things on fire. They will instead tell us there is no choice but to make this more of a police state. 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.
  - komali2 6y ago
    > They will instead tell us there is no choice but to make this more of a police state. Let them try...
    - briefcomment 6y ago
      You don't understand the power the government can wield if there is "justification" for it. The only way to have the government serve us instead of control us is to be loud, in the majority, and peaceful. At least in a country like the US.
jeffbee 6y ago
According to Donald Rumsfeld, looting is a normal step on the road from oppression to freedom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGGrS0VPrbc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGGrS0VPrbc
- silverreads 6y ago
  Hey that's not fair, that's from 2015! What does he think now? Don't just judge a man forever by his past actions!
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    It's from 2003.
    - silverreads 6y ago
      I just looked at the first date I saw on the youtube page, ha, sorry.

renewiltord 6y ago

Yeah that's what people said for twenty years. So people wrote letters and went to court and the media. Turns out that didn't work. 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.

ineedasername 6y ago
Regardless of the effectiveness of peaceful protests over the past 20 years, violent ones are even less likely to see change. Those already on the fence or against the issue will just use it as an opportunity to dismiss it all as thugs interested in chaos, no matter that the majority are peaceful.
- silverreads 6y ago
  Can't dismiss it now. Every major corporation and most congressional lawmakers are now pushing for reform. 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.
  - briefcomment 6y ago
    Looting and violence give them a path to dismiss it. It's risking the ground gained through mass protests.
  - yters 6y ago
    i would say it is short term gain, but longer term police and businesses will just leave black neighborhoods leaving them even more broken and poverty stricken, meanwhile the politicians will keep them on welfare and drugs to bring in the vote not a happy cycle
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Peaceful Protest: Nothing 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.
- mempko 6y ago
  40 hour work week resulted from violent protests. it's pride month, ask your gay friends. Most change does. Look up Haymarket affair. Everything you casually take for granted people had to die for.

toomuchtodo 6y ago

If the change hasn’t happened yet, what other options are left? Looting? Probably not. Protests until meaningful reform occurs? Might help if nothing else has. 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.

briefcomment 6y ago
The electorate induces fear by holding the ability to give and take power from the government. They make their demands known by being loud. The vast majority of us have been guilty of being silent when our neighbor is desperately imploring the government for change. I am guilty of silence, and I regret it and will make my demands known. 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.
- adamsea 6y ago
  “If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.” - Victor Hugo
- komali2 6y ago
  They burnt down the police station and we had an arrest 8 hours later. It works, and we should keep doing it until the lesson is learned.
  - briefcomment 6y ago
    The lesson will not be learned. The only thing that will happen is that even more excess force will be justified, and our civil liberties will go away in the name of order and safety.

ikeyany 6y ago

The problem is that decades of peaceful protesting went ignored. Remmeber how kneeling during the national anthem against police brutality got mocked?

thephyber 6y ago
The police and police wives in my family were the loudest mockers of the kneeling protests, which were perfectly quiet and peaceful. "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." > Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. -- John F. Kennedy, 1962 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.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
Getting mocked was its method of operation. Politicizing a sporting event is controversial and controversy brings media coverage. The fact that it got a lot of media coverage meant that it was doing something.

komali2 6y ago

> Change does not require looting and beatings does it? 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.

briefcomment 6y ago
They will not listen just because a couple thousand people break windows and light things on fire. They will instead tell us there is no choice but to make this more of a police state. 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.
- komali2 6y ago
  > They will instead tell us there is no choice but to make this more of a police state. Let them try...
  - briefcomment 6y ago
    You don't understand the power the government can wield if there is "justification" for it. The only way to have the government serve us instead of control us is to be loud, in the majority, and peaceful. At least in a country like the US.

jeffbee 6y ago

According to Donald Rumsfeld, looting is a normal step on the road from oppression to freedom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGGrS0VPrbc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGGrS0VPrbc

silverreads 6y ago
Hey that's not fair, that's from 2015! What does he think now? Don't just judge a man forever by his past actions!
- jeffbee 6y ago
  It's from 2003.
  - silverreads 6y ago
    I just looked at the first date I saw on the youtube page, ha, sorry.