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Well first and foremost, the looters aren't the protestors. Second, protests don't just bring out people who care about that particular cause. Third a lot of news outlets are reporting that Antifa/anarchists groups are attempting to co-opt protests for their own agenda. If you have social media (IG or Twitter) there are numerous videos showing Caucasian people dressed in black breaking windows, spraying BLM etc. While actual protestors are asking that they stop and attempting to stop them.
Almost every significant change in this countries history has been brought about when people are fed up and no change comes from peaceful protests. What happens next is rioting. There are obviously opportunistic people there who are taking advantage of it. But I think it’s decisive and ignorant to ask how looting and rioting helps anything and ignore the facts that people are being killed for having a pigment. The disease is the killing of black men in with country without remorse and the ease with which an armed group of white protesters are met with little to no action against them but I have a broken tail light as a black man and I get killed or I am in my own home as a black woman and I get shot because “you made a mistake”. Rioting and looting, however wrong they are, are the symptoms of the bigger problem.
For some of these looters, it’s a consequence of psychological damage the society has inflicted on our people . It is a real issue in our community and just because a few of us have been able or lucky to pull out of it should not discount rest.
From Dr. King himself: “Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention”
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As someone that recognizes the looters and rioters have their own agenda, I’ve still had people still try to defend it as unchanneled rage that can’t be properly directed.
It 100% matters. The cycle you just laid out starts with underserved communities. But the real starting point is racist policies which purposefully diminished, stole, oppressed, and victimized those communities for GENERATIONS - no bias or fudging involved. And in response to the DAILY aggressions which receive silence - or more often dismissal and derision - there are generational events like the riots that took place across the country. And in response, after years of silence, the first we hear from the crowd is "they're protesting the wrong way, riots are bad". OF COURSE THEY ARE BAD, THATS WHY THEY DONT HAPPEN EVERY DAMN DAY.
The mindset that allows people to demonize the systemically oppressed, but remain silent at the systemic oppression they are rioting against, is not one that has listened to the hundreds of peaceful entries of the past, nor is it one that will suggest or support the foundational reforms needed to address the root cause of police brutality. Echoing their criticisms of communities that are crying out is to spit in the face of the communities that are suffering, which is why it absolutely matters.
And to borrow from Facebook posts which I'm sure most people have seen by now: "Instead of saying 'It's a shame that man is dead, but this property damage needs to stop,' try instead saying 'It's a shame about this property damage, but police need to stop killing people.'"