This is what putting people in a pressure cooker of $8/hr minimum wage, state violence and $1500/mo rents yields.
Also, whatever you think of this action (I happen to be against it because it's illegal.), acknowledge that mobilizing this many people is the result of invisible forms of organizing, not neccesarily legible to the "left" whose traditions cross-polinate with the professionalized activism of ngos, labor unions and political parties.
It's just a shame that it was expressed this way. We need major social democratic reforms and avenues for disenfranchised people to exercise political power so these kinds of desperate actions don't disrupt our lives.
The provocative title is a way to call attention to the ways that overseas reporting and domestic reporting on social conflict differ. A detournament of imperialist propaganda if you will.
It’s not a waste. It’s directly fighting back and putting pressure on the powerful to demand the city stop killing people so their businesses don’t get looted anymore.
Getting people accustomed to going into the cool zone as a community is also a plus
Has this worked in practice in America though? Looting causing change?
If it did I'd join in in a heartbeat but I haven't seen evidence of it working like that
iirc widespread rioting pushed the Civil Rights Act to be passed
Yeah. Any time anything good has happened in this wretched country it's because people burned shit down.
Pick up "This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed" by Charles Cobb. it's a real eye opener about what was sanitized out of the official history of the Civil Rights movement.
Also countless labor actions in the early 20th. And it's worth remembering - The US traditionally has used it's vast amount of "free" land to let off the pressure of proletarian revolt. Whenever things came to a boiling point the government gave out a bunch of cheap land to white people to get them out of the cities. That situation doesn't exist anymore. One of the tactics the US used in the past to shut down popular unrest is no longer available.
has anything else?
looting has been one portion of lots of movements that resulted in changes but I suppose no it hasnt solely or directly lead to changes on its own
If we have a few options that don't work, that means we need to find new options. I don't see how trying one thing that doesn't work makes sense just because other things don't work.
such as
?
That falls under options that don't work, or at least don't work very well.
We clown on libs for deifying elections despite how little they change. Protests and looting have a similar effect but we don't hold them to the same level of scrutiny.
yes. see womens suffrage, civil rights movement, etc etc. read pacifism as pathology
Looting itself? No. In the past looting was often accompanied with organizations saying “you can stop this any time” - hell even JFK admitted that if the US kept oppressing other nations, violent revolution will be inevitable.
But nowadays every activist organization denounces anything that isn’t holding a sign and chanting, so there’s no cohesion. Is it any surprise there hasn’t been any meaningful changes in the past two decades?
We’ve seen back to back killings and protesting and rioting for so many years. Not a thing has changed.