6 ms·

Riots are destructive, but can lead to social reforms

32 points by ralmidani 12y ago

penprogg 11y ago
While I hate that riots exist, it honestly makes me feel good that there is a group of people in the US that get angry enough with the system to get up and do something. Every time I hear about protests and think about people standing outside the whitehouse all I can think of is how futile it is. Especially after Occupy Wallstreet where the media did it's hardest to discredit the entire movement.
- hueving 11y ago
  The movement discredited itself by failing to organize any coherent goals. "why aren't bankers in jail" isn't a message, especially since the majority of the protesters couldn't come up with laws the bankers broke.
  - tel 11y ago
    I want to agree with this, and I do agree with it, but the concept also scares me. It feels like rule-mongering, like winning on a technicality alone. Occupy Wall Street failed to express any unified goals and demonstrated a lack of understanding of specific reasons why they felt grievance was justified. In many ways it was more of a mob and its message was lost. But it's also difficult to claim that it does not represent a growing fear and pain felt by a fairly large number of people. An emotional plea if not a logical one. A representative government should have an ear to such things and the fact that it appears not to is about as clear a statement of purpose for OWS as I think history will ever have. This is often the case with civil unrest of any kind. When a system for representing the needs of citizens fails to do so---whatever the reason---then by the notion that the powers of government are given by its citizenry it becomes important to create a message to show the extent and damage of this failure. There are a lot of ways to do this and people will find the ones that they feel might work. They might fail and pick methods which do not work (riots, e.g., which invite pollution of message, judgement, loss of support, and legitimate reason to oppose) and they might be forced into methods which are poor. But I fear to live in a place where the government fails to hear these things for too long. Not individuals in government, either, but government. Voting is not the only tool of civil will. It's supposed to be designed well enough to keep civil will from turning to less constructive tools, though.
    - hueving 11y ago
      But OWS wasn't representative of a very large portion of the population. That's the issue with not having a message. Other than acting as a way for people currently pissed off about something to get together, it provided no message for the broader population (e.g. baby boomers with collapsed retirement accounts, etc) to get behind. Every time I asked someone about OWS that wasn't an early twenties reddit user, they would just mention that they were the modern 'hippies protesting the system'. Successful protests have leaders are not nearly as organic as they initially appear. OWS participants failed to realize this and instead sat around empathizing with each other.
      - tel 11y ago
        I'm not claiming OWS was at all successful. I'm claiming that ignoring people complaining just because they fail to organize well is something of a warning sign.
  - calibraxis 11y ago
    Media employees ("journalists") claimed Occupy discredited itself. As well as those activists who think it's all about presenting a list of "demands". But if you read analyses of people in it (take for example "The Democracy Project" by Graeber), the goal was direct action. It spawned a lot of organizing to fix problems without begging elites. Nor did they decide to become another Tea Party (flunkies to billionaires/politicians). Once they decided to do that, the state and corporate media decided it was an enemy, not a tool. Hence endlessly repeated talking points about how it "discredited itself".
    - hueving 11y ago
      If it's as successful as you seem to believe, what useful action resulted from it? >But if you read analyses of people in it (take for example "The Democracy Project" by Graeber), the goal was direct action Of course people that participated are going to claim that action was their goal. However, the fact that they had no experience organizing people (or chose not to organize people through leadership) led them absolutely nowhere.
- konstruktor 11y ago
  Supposing that most of the rioters did not make use of most of their means of nonviolent action for years, I cannot agree with your statement. Occupy was a different story, being a mostly nonviolent movement.
higherpurpose 11y ago
Completely agree with this. I don't think anyone truly wants this to happen. The point is it may have to happen, if people want to see serious change. If criminals take over the government and its power, how else can you take down down? But some people don't even like protests because they "make them be late to work" or whatever, when they block traffic. Well guess what, the point of riots, protests and even strikes is to inconvenience to the point where change has to be made and demands listened to. Otherwise if you just go and protest on a mountain, like the Tibetans do, nothing will ever change since you won't be inconveniencing anyone in the slightest.
- gambiting 11y ago
  Yeah, but for most people(me included), if the rioters make me late for work I am angry at them,not at the government. Therefore I am more likely to support any effort to get rid of them as a nuisance.
  - SwellJoe 11y ago
    "if the rioters make me late for work I am angry at them,not at the government" Then, you were never on their side, anyway, and it makes no difference who you're angry at. The protesters are making it very clear who they're angry at, and making it clear they're willing to escalate in the interest of altering the status quo, even if it costs them more than it costs those in power (and it always does). That's what desperation looks like. I'm personally uncomfortable with the status quo, if the status quo has large segments of people who feel so unheard that they have to riot to get media, to get the attention of those in power, to have any sort of voice at all. Whether I agree with the tactics, or not, I recognize how much this means to so many of my fellow Americans, and I recognize that means there's something really wrong, even if I don't personally feel it in my daily life. In short: I don't like people getting hurt. I don't like people going to jail. I don't like random acts of destruction. But, even moreso, I don't like my country stepping on the throats of ~13% of the population to maintain the privilege of a few. So, I'm gonna go to the events in my city in solidarity with the folks in Baltimore. Just like I went to the solidarity events for Michael Brown and Eric Garner. And, I'll go to the events for Larry Jackson, an unarmed black man who was gunned down by an Austin police officer, despite having committed no crime (in a rare instance of sanity, the officer has been indicted on a manslaughter charge). I'm a white, middle class, male. I don't necessarily understand all of this...but, I know I can't tell an oppressed person how to respond to their oppression.
benmmurphy 11y ago
I don't understand why people are defending property destruction and looting. The whole point of a democracy is disagreements are solved peacefully without resorting to violence. Intellectually defending this behaviour is helping to encourage it and the people defending this behaviour should be ashamed.
- barrkel 11y ago
  The risk of riots is a reason for not using the machinery of a non-representative democracy as a velvet glove for enforcing the will of a privileged elite. There's a more detailed explanation of this viewpoint here: http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5911.html http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5911.html You should look at this from the same perspective as irrational rage, or nuclear war. The risk of a destructive conflagration even when it is also harmful to the people who start the destruction is an impetus to solve disputes peacefully and fairly, and to not push structural power imbalances too far to gain an advantage.
  - sktrdie 11y ago
    Here in Italy riots usually happen directly against the institutions. In Baltimore it was pretty much black people throwing stuff at everyday white people. The difference in race allows for a stronger generalization by both parties. Similar to when we attack institutions, we just go against all politicians. We fail to understand that many of them are not corrupt and are on our side. Generalization is a scary thing.
    - kajecounterhack 11y ago
      > In Baltimore it was pretty much black people throwing stuff at everyday white people. Citation needed. Lots of white people are protesting along with blacks. The protests in general are against law enforcement. > We fail to understand that many of them are not corrupt and are on our side. This doesn't seem relevant, the protests are not happening against "white people at large." Law enforcement is not on the side of the oppressed in this case. The corruption is systemic.
    - 11y ago
owen_griffiths 11y ago
I'm left puzzled after reading this. So riots can be effective, but the response to the last riots sowed the seeds that led to these riots. Doesn't that imply rioting is indeed a bad way of making positive change?
- kajecounterhack 11y ago
  > Doesn't that imply rioting is indeed a bad way of making positive change? No. Nothing changed since the last riots systemically, so of course there are more riots. We are now however raising public awareness of previously unheard injustices, and by doing so (hopefully, if our system works correctly), inducing positive change. Riots are happening because people literally don't know what else to do. The system has failed them. The system has decided it's OK for white cops to kill and imprison and mistreat black men en masse. Very public trials aren't yielding change, poor blacks continue to be terrorized, prejudiced tickets and arrests further amplify vicious cycles of poverty. Riots are acts of desperation that get a lot of attention (for better or for worse, depends on the system, many variables are unknown). When the system moves in response (to correct in injustice at hand) that is when the riots will stop. (Unfortunately that means either oppression will reign or true social change will be effected.)
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- kajecounterhack 11y ago
  Here are more things riots accomplish: 1) They make us talk about motives and where the reaction is coming from. 2) They inspire empathy. They often start out as peaceful protests that go ignored -- they can be understood as the suffering going unheard. 3) They require urgent response. They are an extreme reaction, so they must have an extreme reason. And in some cases the reasons are valid (mass oppression & living in terror qualifies, I'd say). Invalid cases: Sporting events, bigotry. In re #6: > 6) They end up costing a lot of money, on the order of 10s to 100s of millions of dollars. Legal fees, fees paid for civil rights abuse, property destruction, hospitalization fees, and more. Most of which tax payers foot the bill for. A drop in the bucket, maybe, but this money could do a lot to improve a community instead of repair it. You could just as easily count the number of incarcerated blacks, lives taken by cops, time caged for crimes as simple as not being able to pay a fine for "manner of walking in the street." Looking at this money in isolation without considering the poverty on the other side is myopic.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - kajecounterhack 11y ago
      Eddie Gray et al are the MLK, Rosa Parks, Gandhi of this situation. The riots are often peaceful protests gone awry, and this has happened over the course of various civil rights movement(s). > The only thing that riots do, in my view, is give a more negative view/stereotype of the class in question - I wouldn't say they are a step forward, but a step backward. This assumes the reaction to the riots is a stereotype and not people trying to empathize or understand where it's coming from. While there may be some like you who seem to react in the former, journalists and bloggers (and even this discussion! thanks for engaging) are doing their best to make the outcome the latter. > As for #6, yes, the cost of incarceration is a problem as well, but rioting is not fixing that problem in any way, only making it worse (by putting more people in prison). Actually rioting is in response to the problem in hopes it'll change, so in the long term making it better. What I'm saying is yes short term cost of riots are a thing. Long term benefit is much greater, long term harm/suffering caused by no awareness is much greater too.
glogla 11y ago
I feel the idea of riots is to say "Hey neofeudal overlords, this is over the line. Get you dogs to behave, or the city you own will burn down." Of course it will not make the moderates agree. But the moderates were okay with people being tortured or murdered by police for fun.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - davidgerard 11y ago
    They just behave as though they are. Frankly, the victims have no reason to care about the moderates' inner mental state - only their observed behaviours.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

32 points by ralmidani 12y ago

While I hate that riots exist, it honestly makes me feel good that there is a group of people in the US that get angry enough with the system to get up and do something. Every time I hear about protests and think about people standing outside the whitehouse all I can think of is how futile it is. Especially after Occupy Wallstreet where the media did it's hardest to discredit the entire movement.

hueving 11y ago
The movement discredited itself by failing to organize any coherent goals. "why aren't bankers in jail" isn't a message, especially since the majority of the protesters couldn't come up with laws the bankers broke.
- tel 11y ago
  I want to agree with this, and I do agree with it, but the concept also scares me. It feels like rule-mongering, like winning on a technicality alone. Occupy Wall Street failed to express any unified goals and demonstrated a lack of understanding of specific reasons why they felt grievance was justified. In many ways it was more of a mob and its message was lost. But it's also difficult to claim that it does not represent a growing fear and pain felt by a fairly large number of people. An emotional plea if not a logical one. A representative government should have an ear to such things and the fact that it appears not to is about as clear a statement of purpose for OWS as I think history will ever have. This is often the case with civil unrest of any kind. When a system for representing the needs of citizens fails to do so---whatever the reason---then by the notion that the powers of government are given by its citizenry it becomes important to create a message to show the extent and damage of this failure. There are a lot of ways to do this and people will find the ones that they feel might work. They might fail and pick methods which do not work (riots, e.g., which invite pollution of message, judgement, loss of support, and legitimate reason to oppose) and they might be forced into methods which are poor. But I fear to live in a place where the government fails to hear these things for too long. Not individuals in government, either, but government. Voting is not the only tool of civil will. It's supposed to be designed well enough to keep civil will from turning to less constructive tools, though.
  - hueving 11y ago
    But OWS wasn't representative of a very large portion of the population. That's the issue with not having a message. Other than acting as a way for people currently pissed off about something to get together, it provided no message for the broader population (e.g. baby boomers with collapsed retirement accounts, etc) to get behind. Every time I asked someone about OWS that wasn't an early twenties reddit user, they would just mention that they were the modern 'hippies protesting the system'. Successful protests have leaders are not nearly as organic as they initially appear. OWS participants failed to realize this and instead sat around empathizing with each other.
    - tel 11y ago
      I'm not claiming OWS was at all successful. I'm claiming that ignoring people complaining just because they fail to organize well is something of a warning sign.
- calibraxis 11y ago
  Media employees ("journalists") claimed Occupy discredited itself. As well as those activists who think it's all about presenting a list of "demands". But if you read analyses of people in it (take for example "The Democracy Project" by Graeber), the goal was direct action. It spawned a lot of organizing to fix problems without begging elites. Nor did they decide to become another Tea Party (flunkies to billionaires/politicians). Once they decided to do that, the state and corporate media decided it was an enemy, not a tool. Hence endlessly repeated talking points about how it "discredited itself".
  - hueving 11y ago
    If it's as successful as you seem to believe, what useful action resulted from it? >But if you read analyses of people in it (take for example "The Democracy Project" by Graeber), the goal was direct action Of course people that participated are going to claim that action was their goal. However, the fact that they had no experience organizing people (or chose not to organize people through leadership) led them absolutely nowhere.
konstruktor 11y ago
Supposing that most of the rioters did not make use of most of their means of nonviolent action for years, I cannot agree with your statement. Occupy was a different story, being a mostly nonviolent movement.

higherpurpose 11y ago

Completely agree with this. I don't think anyone truly wants this to happen. The point is it may have to happen, if people want to see serious change. If criminals take over the government and its power, how else can you take down down? But some people don't even like protests because they "make them be late to work" or whatever, when they block traffic. Well guess what, the point of riots, protests and even strikes is to inconvenience to the point where change has to be made and demands listened to. Otherwise if you just go and protest on a mountain, like the Tibetans do, nothing will ever change since you won't be inconveniencing anyone in the slightest.

gambiting 11y ago
Yeah, but for most people(me included), if the rioters make me late for work I am angry at them,not at the government. Therefore I am more likely to support any effort to get rid of them as a nuisance.
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  "if the rioters make me late for work I am angry at them,not at the government" Then, you were never on their side, anyway, and it makes no difference who you're angry at. The protesters are making it very clear who they're angry at, and making it clear they're willing to escalate in the interest of altering the status quo, even if it costs them more than it costs those in power (and it always does). That's what desperation looks like. I'm personally uncomfortable with the status quo, if the status quo has large segments of people who feel so unheard that they have to riot to get media, to get the attention of those in power, to have any sort of voice at all. Whether I agree with the tactics, or not, I recognize how much this means to so many of my fellow Americans, and I recognize that means there's something really wrong, even if I don't personally feel it in my daily life. In short: I don't like people getting hurt. I don't like people going to jail. I don't like random acts of destruction. But, even moreso, I don't like my country stepping on the throats of ~13% of the population to maintain the privilege of a few. So, I'm gonna go to the events in my city in solidarity with the folks in Baltimore. Just like I went to the solidarity events for Michael Brown and Eric Garner. And, I'll go to the events for Larry Jackson, an unarmed black man who was gunned down by an Austin police officer, despite having committed no crime (in a rare instance of sanity, the officer has been indicted on a manslaughter charge). I'm a white, middle class, male. I don't necessarily understand all of this...but, I know I can't tell an oppressed person how to respond to their oppression.

benmmurphy 11y ago

I don't understand why people are defending property destruction and looting. The whole point of a democracy is disagreements are solved peacefully without resorting to violence. Intellectually defending this behaviour is helping to encourage it and the people defending this behaviour should be ashamed.

barrkel 11y ago
The risk of riots is a reason for not using the machinery of a non-representative democracy as a velvet glove for enforcing the will of a privileged elite. There's a more detailed explanation of this viewpoint here: http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5911.html http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5911.html You should look at this from the same perspective as irrational rage, or nuclear war. The risk of a destructive conflagration even when it is also harmful to the people who start the destruction is an impetus to solve disputes peacefully and fairly, and to not push structural power imbalances too far to gain an advantage.
- sktrdie 11y ago
  Here in Italy riots usually happen directly against the institutions. In Baltimore it was pretty much black people throwing stuff at everyday white people. The difference in race allows for a stronger generalization by both parties. Similar to when we attack institutions, we just go against all politicians. We fail to understand that many of them are not corrupt and are on our side. Generalization is a scary thing.
  - kajecounterhack 11y ago
    > In Baltimore it was pretty much black people throwing stuff at everyday white people. Citation needed. Lots of white people are protesting along with blacks. The protests in general are against law enforcement. > We fail to understand that many of them are not corrupt and are on our side. This doesn't seem relevant, the protests are not happening against "white people at large." Law enforcement is not on the side of the oppressed in this case. The corruption is systemic.
  - 11y ago

owen_griffiths 11y ago

I'm left puzzled after reading this. So riots can be effective, but the response to the last riots sowed the seeds that led to these riots. Doesn't that imply rioting is indeed a bad way of making positive change?

kajecounterhack 11y ago
> Doesn't that imply rioting is indeed a bad way of making positive change? No. Nothing changed since the last riots systemically, so of course there are more riots. We are now however raising public awareness of previously unheard injustices, and by doing so (hopefully, if our system works correctly), inducing positive change. Riots are happening because people literally don't know what else to do. The system has failed them. The system has decided it's OK for white cops to kill and imprison and mistreat black men en masse. Very public trials aren't yielding change, poor blacks continue to be terrorized, prejudiced tickets and arrests further amplify vicious cycles of poverty. Riots are acts of desperation that get a lot of attention (for better or for worse, depends on the system, many variables are unknown). When the system moves in response (to correct in injustice at hand) that is when the riots will stop. (Unfortunately that means either oppression will reign or true social change will be effected.)

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

kajecounterhack 11y ago
Here are more things riots accomplish: 1) They make us talk about motives and where the reaction is coming from. 2) They inspire empathy. They often start out as peaceful protests that go ignored -- they can be understood as the suffering going unheard. 3) They require urgent response. They are an extreme reaction, so they must have an extreme reason. And in some cases the reasons are valid (mass oppression & living in terror qualifies, I'd say). Invalid cases: Sporting events, bigotry. In re #6: > 6) They end up costing a lot of money, on the order of 10s to 100s of millions of dollars. Legal fees, fees paid for civil rights abuse, property destruction, hospitalization fees, and more. Most of which tax payers foot the bill for. A drop in the bucket, maybe, but this money could do a lot to improve a community instead of repair it. You could just as easily count the number of incarcerated blacks, lives taken by cops, time caged for crimes as simple as not being able to pay a fine for "manner of walking in the street." Looking at this money in isolation without considering the poverty on the other side is myopic.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - kajecounterhack 11y ago
    Eddie Gray et al are the MLK, Rosa Parks, Gandhi of this situation. The riots are often peaceful protests gone awry, and this has happened over the course of various civil rights movement(s). > The only thing that riots do, in my view, is give a more negative view/stereotype of the class in question - I wouldn't say they are a step forward, but a step backward. This assumes the reaction to the riots is a stereotype and not people trying to empathize or understand where it's coming from. While there may be some like you who seem to react in the former, journalists and bloggers (and even this discussion! thanks for engaging) are doing their best to make the outcome the latter. > As for #6, yes, the cost of incarceration is a problem as well, but rioting is not fixing that problem in any way, only making it worse (by putting more people in prison). Actually rioting is in response to the problem in hopes it'll change, so in the long term making it better. What I'm saying is yes short term cost of riots are a thing. Long term benefit is much greater, long term harm/suffering caused by no awareness is much greater too.

glogla 11y ago

I feel the idea of riots is to say "Hey neofeudal overlords, this is over the line. Get you dogs to behave, or the city you own will burn down." Of course it will not make the moderates agree. But the moderates were okay with people being tortured or murdered by police for fun.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- davidgerard 11y ago
  They just behave as though they are. Frankly, the victims have no reason to care about the moderates' inner mental state - only their observed behaviours.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]