Must be great living in America right now.

[The Curmudgeon]

One race riot, followed by another outrage over a(nother) black kid getting shot by white cops, which will no doubt lead to another riot.. man oh man. I'm reading a lot of stuff over here about it, but it must be crazy over there right now. Thoughts?

[trashcanman]

I'm old enough to remember the race riots over the Rodney King verdict in 1992, in which three cops were filmed beating a prone black man for an uncomfortably long time and let go, preceding similar riots in LA. This seems to be a cyclical thing. There is a serious problem with the police over here, as there often will be when you take a group of people who are eager to risk their lives in order to have the authority to tell people what to do and commit acts of violence at will for pay and give them that authority they crave. Are you going to get some people who really do want to enforce truth, justice, and the American way? Sure, but you're also going to end up with a bunch of ex-droogs and soulless hicks and bullies who can do what they want almost with impunity. We're taught to worship and trust these people no matter what and it fucking disgusts me.

A lot of this stuff has been publicized and in recent years and this is only a year or so since a white man left his home to pursue an unarmed black kid through an alley, SHOT AND KILLED HIM, and then claimed he was "standing his ground" when he was attacked. The teenager who he was chasing through a dark alley with a gun hit him. My fucking heart bleeds, bro. The media response was to focus on a marijuana charge the kid got previously and paint him as a "thug". The shooter got off and he wasn't even a cop. So yeah, this was coming.

There's still pockets of institutionalized racism in this country and the longer this goes on, the more pissed off people will get about it. If they don't listen to words, maybe this'll get their attention. CAN YOU HEAR THEM NOW!? I'm anti-violence, but I'll take an occasional riot over constant sustained violent authoritarian abuse if that's the only way to send a message.

[Ben]

There are legitimate examples of institutional racism and police abuse every day in America. This was not one of them.

Make no mistake- the rioters this most recent time around were not "responding" to the jury decision any more than I was by sitting on my couch at home watching it on television. I would also bet a large sum of money the majority of them weren't even citizens of Ferguson but low-lifes who poured in from other areas knowing full well what they'd be able to get away with if the decision went sour. Case in point: legitimate protesters formed human walls in front of small businesses to keep the degenerates from destroying them, and the people who were rioting (many of them black people, as you would expect given the nature of the case/decision) largely looted and destroyed small businesses owned by other black people. Fuck every single one of them.

[trashcanman]

Is there any actual evidence of that? I find this shit rather depressing so I'm not exactly doing any research on the nature of the protests. But I do know that these protests have been going on for a longass time and it wasn't exactly unexpected that a violent reaction would ensue given the level of commitment, emotion, and defiance of police displayed in the lead-up. When sports fans destroy their cities after winning a championship or kill each other in the stands and parking lots do we assume that they are non-fans who went to the big game just to fuck shit up or is it that people are less upset by police arresting, assaulting, killing, and convicting people of their own skin color at a much larger rate than the majority while the people who are using their authority to perpetrate this crap get off scot free most of the time?

I know that if I'm a cop and I'm such a coward that I'm going to gun an unarmed kid down on the POSSIBILITY that he might attempt to hurt me, I shouldn't be in that position in the first place. Go bag groceries and flip burgers. We need people who are strong, confident, and not looking for an excuse to shoot in uniforms. And it's way too easy for cops to be in a position to drum up fake witnesses and evidence to muddy up any attempt at a real trial and get their people off to save face. I'm really sick of hearing about this shit.

[Ben]

It's too early to tell for sure in Ferguson, but arrest records following riots usually show a disproportionate number of non-locals being booked. I've seen a few of the talking heads mention it in passing but everyone in the media is too scared to suggest anything about Ferguson that conflicts with the Unarmed-Angelic-Black-Kid-Gunned-Down-By-Cowardly-Racist-Cop narrative.

I haven't paid much attention to any riots in the last few years apart from the Vancouver Stanley Cup hockey riot, but that one saw similar damage and comparable arrest numbers. I think it's unfair to characterize the police response to the Ferguson riots as "racist" for that reason. I mean, I don't know any black people that like hockey and I can't imagine there are too many living in Vancouver. When people set fires and flip cars over they get arrested.

I do understand why people are upset, but the Ferguson incident has always struck me as an odd one to turn into the next high profile "racist cops" case. I've yet to see any actual evidence this was a racially-motivated killing. It's established fact Michael Brown robbed a store, physical evidence suggests he assaulted the officer in question (and that the officer's gun went off inside of his car), and witness testimony is all conflicting. It's unfortunate that he was killed, but he wasn't simply "minding his own business" as various persons would have us believe.

There are other incidents that have happened since which just as strongly (or more strongly) suggest a systemic problem with our police force in America than Ferguson. An unarmed Hispanic kid named Dillon Taylor was shot to death by a "non-white" (the only more specific description I've found suggests the officer was also Hispanic) police officer in Salt Lake City right around the same time as Ferguson, and that officer also got off despite video evidence of him shooting the kid.

[trashcanman]

The response to a riot isn't racist. They're just cops trying to restore order in a fucked up situation....hopefully. But racism did help create that situation. Like with the Rodney King thing, it wasn't about that one person. It's about the fact that this stuff goes on and on and on and when a case finally gets national attention, people get their hopes up that everyone will see what goes on and then they see proof that it doesn't matter. Cops can pretty much do what they want regardless. Like that vid of a cop from a few years shooting a trussed up prone black dude in a subway full of people or that idiot who shot someone in the back of her car for kicking the back of her seat or some shit who claimed she thought her gun was a fucking taser. It builds and builds until you get something like this that becomes this massive deal and build everyone up t the breaking point. Then they break.


But yeah, it does make sense that the looters are opportunistic criminals taking advantage of the chaos. Looting a store is in no way a protest against authority. It's just stealing from the community. Then again, rioting never struck me as the most logical thing, although I get why people are so worked up from a psychological perspective at least. I like the idea of people forming human chains to protect the local businesses. That's some old school passive resistance.