‘Riot is the language of the unheard’
What MLK would have said about the London riots
Original article at http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/riot-is-the-language-of-the-unheard-what-mlk-would-have-said-about-the-london-riots/
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Speaking just weeks before his assassination, which catalyzed rioting across America, Martin Luther King offered his thoughts on the type of civil unrest that devolves into violence and looting, saying:
It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.
If there’s any question—in this time of deep spending cuts and high unemployment—as to whether the same can be said about the riots plaguing parts of London these past four days, one need only look at where they are occurring.
In the following map, published by The Guardian earlier today, the riots are clearly taking place in the poorest areas of London (represented by the dark red), indicating that the spark-plug has more to do with the staggering economy than anything else. Nevertheless, the racial component and police brutality should not be overlooked, as they are all kin in the same dysfunctional system.
None of this is, of course, an excuse of the violence, which has ruined many small businesses and resulted in injuries, as well as death. But something can be inexcusable, while at the same time being understandable. After this realization, however, it is only appropriate to point out how nonviolence is better suited to resist injustice.
Egyptian activist Mosa’ab Elshamy made that point in a tweet that gained a lot of attention:
CNN then had Elshamy on to further discuss the difference between the London riots and Mideast protests, which in short boils down to the latter actually considering how to appeal to the wider public.
It’s at this point that some might say it’s too late for nonviolence—that it couldn’t ultimately supplant the rioting now going on. But King actually had the experience of such a transformation occurring when he visited Watts shortly after the race riots in 1965. As he wrote in his autobiography:
What I emphasized is that, in spite of all of the hostility that some Negroes felt, and as violent and destructive as the mood temporarily became, it was not yet a blind and irredeemable condition. The people of Watts were hostile to nonviolence, but when we actually went to them and emphasized the dangers of hatred and violence, the same people cheered. Only minutes before the air had been thick with tension, but when they were reminded of the Rev. James Reeb and Viola Luizzo, the martyrs of the Selma campaign, they cheered the thought that white people can and do cooperate with us in our search for jobs and dignity.
Then again a year later in Chicago—a city brimming with segregation, poverty and violence.
After the riot in Chicago last summer, I was greatly discouraged. But we had trained a group of about two thousand disciplined devotees of nonviolence who were willing to take blows without retaliating. We started out engaging in constitutional privileges, marching before real estate offices in all-white communities. And that nonviolent, disciplined, determined force created such a crisis in the city of Chicago that the city had to do something to change conditions. We didn’t have any Molotov cocktails, we didn’t have any bricks, we didn’t have any guns, we just had the power of our bodies and our souls. There was power there, and it was determined once more.
There are signs of hope in London through the peaceful acts of those who have been organizing cleanups through Twitter and Facebook. According to the Daily Telegraph:
An online campaign, Clean Up London, (Riotcleanup) had 27,500 followers on Twitter by mid-morning on Tuesday, as it instructed people to congregate to remove the glass and bricks strewn across the streets of the city.
But these Londoners must do more with their sense of civic pride than merely clean up the streets—they must clean up the filth of the economic system that bred these conditions, and so with nonviolence. As King noted, “It must be remembered that genuine peace is not the absence of tension, but the presence of justice.”
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While this article fully embraces nonviolent struggle as the more effective way to seek social change, it seems to me that fifty years on from the time of Dr. King, and after more than twenty remarkably successful nonviolent movements that have changed the history of nations and propelled whole societies into fuller political rights and improved social justice, and in a year in which nonviolent organizing and mobilizing is being conspicuously adopted in societies that were dismissed as never likely to change — the societies of the Arab world — we had better be cautious about saying that it is “understandable” if violence is being used to challenge a “system”, because if we do so, we may be on the edge of rationalizing violence.
Assuming that the riots in Britain are primarily such a conscious challenge, rather than acts of inchoate anger and even violent partying (of which there is also evidence), are we to make the further assumption that despite the enormous historical evidence of the relative futility of violence and the visible availability of another way to challenge the status quo, that it is still “understandable” if violence is used in deprived communities? Or does that perhaps unconsciously give credence to the stereotype that poor people have no alternative except violence or are even expected to be violent?
Tunisians and Egyptians were poor, but they weren’t violent in making their challenge to their oppressors. Most of the West Papuans, Sahrawis, Burmese, and Ethiopians who are organizing and mobilizing themselves this year to continue to challenge the forcible injustice in their countries with nonviolent action are far poorer than the rioting British youth, and they don’t have nearby stores from which to loot flat-screen televisions or packs of Carlsberg.
A young black English blogger who grew up in the neighborhoods that have erupted this week, and who is now a well-educated independent journalist, wrote tonight of the rioters: “The kids are completely disturbed and there is no rational reason for the level of violence that they are dishing out.” He believes that many of these young people have been “demonised” by society, but he doesn’t suggest that what they are doing is remotely close to a rational challenge of the “system”.
In fact, the riots are very unlikely to arouse public sympathy for the neighborhoods they come from. In the words of another British friend of mine, a man of the left, writing sarcastically today, “We genteel middle classes are in a state of moral hyper-ventilation. The conservative working classes are forming posses and neighbourhood defence squads.” In other words, the violence on the streets is being heatedly resisted by the heart of British society, and new programs to ameliorate the conditions of those neighborhoods are unlikely to come from a government that today promised to “fight back” against the rioting, or else it might be seen as rewarding violence. As it almost always does, in democracies or autocracies, violence as a way to challenge any condition may end up setting back the communities in which it occurs — as happened in Los Angeles, Washington and other cities hard-hit in the violent eruption of black neighborhoods after the assassination of Dr. King in 1968.
We rightly venerate Dr. King for his leadership of the successful civil rights movement for African-Americans, but we are not obliged to believe in all circumstances that “a riot is the language of the unheard,” particularly in societies where speech is not suppressed. And that’s the point: In a society where organizing and mobilizing to overturn injustice is possible, and where the number and intelligence of civic and political activists are equal to the task, is it useful to lament that the state doesn’t proffer justice and to find violence understandable when it isn’t? If the opportunity to capture justice through nonviolent struggle makes the use of violence unnecessary, is it useful to leave room in politics for believing that violence is understandable?
Jack, thank you for this wonderful comment. So very thoughtful. I think you highlighted something that I struggled to express. When I say the rioting is understandable, I’m trying to speak to those who would dismiss it entirely as just irrational hooliganism, which is what the prime minister, the mayor of London and people in the media are saying. While that may be accurate in some instances, I’m more concerned with the other instances—the ones that are clearly related to economic injustice, and therefore something we as a global society have a hand, if not a stake, in. And I believe that is what King is getting at.
If you read the rest of the speech I cite at the beginning or the chapters of his autobiography I cite toward the end, you’ll see several instances where he buffers his moments of understanding with a clear statement that he does not support rioting. Understanding is not the same thing as supporting. Understanding is taking the time to find out why people engage in a certain action. From there, that action can be criticized, which is exactly what I did. Of course I’m going to criticize violence. I don’t believe it to be right or effective.
But for King, it all comes back to this point: “A mere condemnation of violence is empty without understanding the daily violence that our society inflicts upon its members.”
True, we are talking about different societies—1960′s America verses 2010′s Britain. But I don’t think we are in a position to say that because one is presumably more advanced than the other that injustice isn’t occurring. We must be mindful of that, particularly when the evidence does point toward economic disparity as a source of the unrest.
So that was the distinction I was trying to make. But I realize it can be like treading on thin ice to say that violence is understandable. Another way to look at it, would be to say that it’s understandable that there was an Iraqi insurgency against the US-led invasion. But supporting it, again, is another thing. I would never support an insurgency because I know that nonviolence is more likely to succeed and result in fewer deaths in the process.
In any case, I appreciate the opportunity to make myself more clear. I hope I’ve done that.
Furthermore, and I think you probably got this from what I was saying (but again, just to be clear), my purpose of reiterating King’s line that “riot is the language of the unheard” is not to say that riots are therefore a just response to being ignored. I see it as a neutral statement of fact from which we can talk about a more effective and just means of resistance. That is why I included the video of the Egyptian activist criticizing the riots.
Bryan, thanks. This is one of those instances in which I think it’s important to take a radical, even principled stand against what I see as a potential breach in the wall of refusing to tolerate offensive violence, which is what the London rioting certainly is. I’m not a pacifist, as I’ve said many times, and I’d use violence as a last resort in self-defense, whether personal or civilizational. But I believe that one of my chief tasks, as a promoter of nonviolent resistance as a way to fight for rights or other worthy political or social goals, is to break down the false enchantment with or romanticism about insurrectionary violence that — because of the age-old human default belief in the justifiability of violence in so many categories of cases — disinhibits violence.
In the wake of global news about riots in a world capital in which outright criminal behavior has reached lavish proportions, to begin our discussion by contextualizing the riots by reference to unfortunate living conditions faced by the rioters is to risk turning our political and moral responsibility on its head: It may implicitly elevate the plight of the rioters above the plight of other citizens living in the same communities who’ve suffered from the violence, and indeed above everyone else in the same society who is on the receiving end of social violence, as if it were possible to diminish violence purely through palliative methods.
Civil resistance or even “nonviolence” is not a way to palliate violence, it’s a way to replace it altogether with a different mode of political and social action, to the extent that what might motivate violence is some concern for political and social problems. But to assume that rioting displays such concern is to attribute motives to actions that cannot be known in the midst of such violence, except on the basis of a handful of mainstream-media man-on-the-street interviews motivated primarily, as Al Giordano has said, by the media’s desire to broadcast riot porn.
If you are saying, however, that there is some sort of public responsibility for social conditions that should motivate us to have sympathy for rioters because we should assume they are acting, knowingly or unknowingly, to express concern for the conditions of their lives, then it seems to me that you are saying that Society and the State must intervene to pre-empt social violence by trying to remove conditions we assume will lead to social violence. But that, I’d argue, relieves social actors of responsibility for their acts even before the full causal basis for those acts can be known.
Nonviolent resistance is always taken up by self-responsible, self-organized individual actors who develop plans and strategies for taking collective action intended to reach concrete goals, and to force states and institutions to accept those goals. It comes from below, not from above. I’d argue that the contextualization of any rioting as potentially “understandable” on the basis of social grievances is based on transferring responsibility to Society, which is to say, functionally, to the State (or the “system” or the “Machine”), from the individual. It doesn’t support the case for civil resistance, it undermines it, by looking to the state and to institutions of social intervention rather than to political self-responsibility, manifested in self-organizing and resistance, as the mechanism of forcing redress of explicit grievances or, indeed, of reconstructing society altogether, as often if slowly happens when an authoritarian system is replaced by a democratic system.
The day after September 11, 2001, the airwaves and op-ed pages were full of talking-heads and articles claiming that terrorism was an expression of social and political discontent, and had to be “understood” as such. To demand, right after the wholesale slaughter of innocents, that the deeper motives of those who committed the slaughter needed to be “understood” was to dilute the need at that moment to refuse to grant any legitimacy to such violence. A few days after 9/11, I made a presentation at an Australian university about nonviolent resistance. A subsequent speaker, a radical left environmentalist, said that he approved of the 9/11 attacks because “flying airplanes into buildings was a creative act of protest,” expressing understanding of the oppression by imperialism that had allegedly motivated the attacks.
At a minimum, I’d argue that right at the moment when gratuitous violence is being committed against innocent people and their places of employment is not the time to consider whether their grievances might be understandable. When King spoke about the riots in American cities, there had already been three years of such riots, a presidential commission examining conditions in the neighborhoods, and thousands of trees cut down to publish books on the subject. While I still disagree with his formulation that a “riot is the language of the unheard” as a general proposition in a democracy, at least he was speaking in the context of a well-developed national conversation about the entire subject. I’m not opposed to such a conversation, but it must begin with a categorical refusal to relieve violent actors for their individual responsibility for violent acts.
Finally, while it is true in an abstract sense that there is a distinction between making a value judgment about an action and offering an empirical account of what caused that action, it seems to me that to defend a request for “understanding the causes” of rioting, by saying that there is a distinction between approving an act and understanding its cause, is to make an assumption that speculating about the possibility of a “deeper” cause which may “explain” violent acts will not distract the public debate from the need to demand accountability for violence. Otherwise how would it be possible to say that rioters have full responsibility for acts which may have been autonomic responses to “conditions” for which they were not responsible? Is our first public responsibility at a time like this to try to explain ancillary factors in social violence apart from individual responsibility for violent acts, or to disenjoin and delegitimize the violence?
Jack, thank you so much for your comments in this discussion. They’ve been really, really meaty, and raise very clarifying points. Let me add two bits of my own.
First, the direction you go in at the end here, about accountability for the rioters. I think you’re posing a false either-or here between structural causes and human decisions. Both can be a part of the discussion without one ruling the other out. (Cf., in philosophical discussions of free will, the current majority position of “compatibilism” between libertarianism and determinism.) To say that there are reasons influencing my actions doesn’t mean that those reasons fully account for my actions, much less justify them. In his post, Bryan addressed this implicitly by bringing up the case of Egypt: clearly, other people in the world are finding more constructive ways of dealing with injustice. I think both you and he are saying, in different ways, that the evidence of nonviolent action in places like Egypt is all the more a reason to condemn rioting. But it doesn’t necessarily follow from that to say that we should not try to understand what factors brought this about. That seems to verge on a kind of willful blindness—though I trust that is not what you’re calling for here.
Second, the matter of structural violence. I’m concerned that your “principled” position in this case might lead you to overlook the fact that the rioters are not the only ones committing acts of violence. This is not solely a case of violent rioters against innocents. The kind of understanding Bryan is calling for is a recognition that there was already violence happening in English cities, though it was being ignored—the violence of poverty, mistreatment by police, racism, and so forth. The riots participate in this larger system, a system of violence and massive power imbalance. Doing so does not, again, mean blaming the riots fully on “the system,” or what have you. It is merely asking what seems to me a very sensible question: What violence were we not noticing before that these riots are revealing?
I don’t see why one can’t ask that kind of question while also asking, “How could that structural violence be dealt with more effectively, with more dignity, so as to bring out the best in human nature rather than the worst?” In fact, one can only answer the latter once one has a grasp of the former. Mary King’s post today addresses this, as did Bryan. And because this kind of “understanding” is vital to developing alternative approaches to the conflict, I’d disagree with you that the discussion should be put off until a later time. It is profoundly urgent.
As for 9/11, I do think one can condemn the violence of the attacks while also recognizing that certain behaviors on the part of the US—like maintaining a strong military presence in countries around the world and thereby meddling in their affairs—made it more likely that someone might do something like that. It’s kind of obvious. There’s no need to conflate this sort of sensible position with approval of the attacks as either a creative or morally justified protest tactic.
Nathan, I love your writing and your thoughtful insights on so many subjects, but alas we profoundly disagree on all the points you’ve raised above. So I won’t stint on candor.
First, I didn’t say there was an “either-or…between structural causes and human decisions.” I said, to use your terms, that if “structural causes” were raised as a speculative reason for violence while the violence is still occurring or just after it has been committed, that could well distract the public debate at that time from the urgent business of the society, which is to make absolutely certain that the society rejects the use of violence for any political or social purpose, including any equivalent for an act of speech. Violence is not an alternative to “being unheard.” Defining it that way accepts its propriety. If a society misses the opportunity of just-committed wholesale violence to make clear its intention to severely penalize individual violent acts, it is not serious about stopping violence. In our cacophonous, media-saturated societies, it is hard enough getting people’s attention even for an existential public message, and my view is that there is no more important such message to be sent in our time than that acts of violence are never to be condoned, excused or left unpenalized.
Second, by saying that rioting is part of a social fabric that includes “the violence of poverty, mistreatment by police, racism, and so forth,” you are implicitly precluding the ability of the community, expressed through its institutions of justice, to find violent public acts to have been criminal, because under such a definition of violence, why would looting a store be thought criminal if the looter had experienced a racist act which may not be criminal? If you diffuse the definition of violence to include even exploitative or discriminatory behavior which is not physically violent, you open the door to seeing some sort of parity between the kind of violence that has been penalized severely since the origin of English common law, indeed since the laws of the Roman Republic, and a new definition of violence including acts which still do not trigger criminal penalties in most societies (though, fortunately, new laws against hate crimes are a step in that direction). I think that could implicitly lighten the social disgrace and perceived inexcusable nature of physical violence. If you cannot democratically persuade the public to penalize formally such “structural” violence, then there is no functional equivalence, except as a sociological thesis.
Third, I did not say that one cannot ask how unjust, abusive or discriminatory social conditions can be addressed. They are addressed every day by progressive legislators and elected executives in many of the world’s democracies, and as someone who has worked, contributed to, and written for such leaders, I’d be the last person to say that such problems shouldn’t be addressed. But to do so does not require constructing what I think is a false equivalence, between physical violence and social abuses, however profound. I think that such an equivalence would inhibit the critical moral and political work of disenjoining physical violence. It is physical insurrectionary violence which derails nonviolent change, and physical repressive violence which delays it. These forms of violence represent the great immediate worldwide problem which is inhibiting the development of democracy and peace where those conditions would make it far easier to correct the kinds of social abuses you cite. I am less concerned with the timing of how societies debate and deal with “structural violence” than I am about making sure that no public excuse or sympathetic “understanding” of physical violence interfere with the latter’s thunderously clear rejection by the society.
On the issue of 9/11, I do not think it is “obvious” that “one can condemn the violence of the attacks while also recognizing that certain behaviors on the part of the US—like maintaining a strong military presence in countries around the world and thereby meddling in their affairs—made it more likely that someone might do something like that.” Really? Using airplanes with terrified civilian passengers aboard, to kill 3,000 civilians in buildings in New York City, was made “more likely” by American military bases in Kuwait or Diego Garcia? Does that make 9/11 “understandable”? Or is this just another indictment of American imperialism? There’s nothing wrong with such an indictment, but make it directly. Don’t make it by somehow suggesting that there might be a relationship between that misguided and damaging national-security policy, and one of the most gratuitous, insane and horrific acts of violence in the past half century. That supposed causal connection was explicitly proposed, by the way, by Osama bin Laden himself, and repeated ad nauseum by Zawahiri and his other henchmen for a decade — because they knew it would rally rhetorical support among critics of the United States everywhere, and so it did — and made the work of suppressing real terrorism slightly less well-supported in some quarters. But debating terrorism is another subject.
You can see from these comments that I feel strongly about the work of building higher civic and social ramparts against any belief in the justifiability of violence, and I believe it’s important to err on the side of wanting to deprive it of any sympathy or understanding. By the way, let’s be aware of both meanings of “understanding.” I don’t like the use of that word in regard to discussing the causal factors behind violence, because it doesn’t just imply the knowledge that one gathers, it also implies having a measure of tolerance for a person or acceptance of a motive, as in “I understand him” or “I understand why he did that.” Tolerance of violence, however one might define violence, is what we need to breed (and not bleed) out of our human proclivities.
Final thought: I think this is a disagreement about means and not ends. We’re aiming at the same kind of eventual, nonviolent and just society. We disagree about how best to respond to large acts of violence that have to be metabolized in public experience and reflected in political judgments about what to do correctively and when to do it. Thanks…
except form my experience with brits, the racism and classism is very subtle, and entrenched in the larger white culture. in the current climate, it all seems futile. Also, in communities where nonviolence has not been taught, we cannot expect it. The sad thing is how frequently the kinds of things that triggered these riots occur in the US, with little to no reaction from the community they occur in, or the general public. And there are always pieces of the population that participate in riots that are doing it just for destructive fun, but often those pieces also have a disenfranchised view of authority to begin with. The point is, these people aren’t trying to change the system, they have given up on changing the system, and are simply reacting, ultimately making their situation worse, especially due to close minded people who refuse to “understand” them. In general, when a crime is committed, a motive is sought. Seeking the motive, means seeking understanding. Understanding is NOT condoning, and we cannot reachout to, or teach, others, without first understanding them.
If you want to “understand” any group of people, you have to live among them, work with them, do community organizing of them. Having been caught in some very violent events of this sort, which is my experience, there is nothing romantic or insurrectional about them. They bring out the worst, primarily in young men, who revert to bullying behavior. What role is there in events like this for elders, young children, most women, the handicapped, the bookish, the gentle musician or poet? They are excluded from these events by definition, locked in their homes, waiting for the dust to clear and for it to be safe to live life again. How about the shopkeeper whose livelihood is ruined? The taxi driver whose only source to feed his family has been torched? The child caught and damaged in the fighting? Events like these are by definition undemocratic, anti-democratic. They are fascist in the sense that testosterone rules and everyone else is made to feel afraid.
The person who criticizes this kind of activity is no less understanding than the person who does not claiming to be so damn “understanding.” I don’t buy it. I’ve organized and worked with adolescents who live in far worse poverty: no electricity, dirt floors, cardboard shacks… And I’ve organized and worked with urban adolescents from that kind of poverty and repression, too. There are plenty of other ways to go about voicing “the language of the unheard.”
I share the Egyptian’s disgust, above, with those who compare these events in Britain with those of the Arab Spring. It’s an insult to those who have used explosive moments to increase self-management and organize a people. In Britain (and so much of the “first world”) it is the abject failure of “The Activist Class,” the college-educated self-described leftist, progressive, liberal, whatever word they use. They ignored these kids just as much as the big media and the State did! (90 percent of “Activism,” it must be said, is as segregated as South Africa under Apartheid!)
Don’t tell me – a working class guy without a college degree who has put in the spade work and organizing with marginalized and repressed populations – that because you don’t critique infantile tantrums that you are more “understanding” of these folks or events than me and others like me, who are not “activists,” but organizers. The fetishization of events like these is just that, a fetish, having more to do with a Hollywood film director’s after midnight fetish with, say, high heels and women’s underwear, than it does with serious revolutionary praxis.
Thanks Al. You’ve said many great things here. I suppose what I’m trying to say, however, is that we need both understanding AND criticism. The former makes the latter go down smoother. Like navi said above, understanding is necessary to reach out to people—people you might be able to convince on the merits of nonviolence. I see that as what King was able to do in Watts and Chicago (because he took the time to understand the people–and live there). Again, I do realize that London in 2011 is not the same as these places 40 years ago, but outbursts of violence are always an opportunity to educate about nonviolence.
As you said, there are plenty of other ways to go about voicing “the language of the unheard.” Those ways can be taught, but not effectively without first understanding the students. And absolutely, the best way to do that is to live in the same community—not from behind our computer screens.
The specific Hollywood director I was thinking of was Quentin Tarantino, but it might also apply to Stanley Kubrick, as well!
In that case, Al, you might be interested in seeing what Bryan previously wrote about Tarantino’s glorification of violence in Inglorious Bastards:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/2009/09/an-inglourious-basterdization-of-history/
Great discussion, all!
From the quote given, MLK pointed out that 1) the conditions causal to the rioting were not being made prominent in the press and should be, and 2) rioting is undesirable and not efficacious). What he did NOT say, probably to leave his main point distinct, is that rioting is NOT the same thing as civil disobedience.
We should be careful to let the press know that it should not be implied or stated that the two are the same. Rioting, which has violence as its basis, is a detrimental, unplanned loosing of anger while civil disobedience is the harnessing of anger under discipline which gains an effective result.
Absolutely, and that’s why I supply those other quotes by King from his autobiography later in the piece, which explain how his understanding of the riots in Watts and Chicago enabled him to connect with people and create a greater culture of nonviolence.
This is an opinion, not universally held: “Rioting, which has violence as its basis, is a detrimental, unplanned loosing of anger.” But rioters can also be (a) casual looters, i.e. thieves, (b) members of a spontaneous gang caught up in televised public agitation, (c) deliberate instigators of violence for political purposes, and (d) acting on a preternatural taste for violence. There seem to be such motivations represented among the rioters in London, based on news coverage thus far, but it’s not knowable at this time what proportions of these kinds of actors are represented among them.
I have no doubt that there are people taking part in the riots who represent all four of these types. And I agree that no matter the motivation, rioting is violence and as such is inexcusable. But that doesn’t mean we should try to find out what the overarching motivation might be. Articles in the New York Times, Reuters and other publications have made the case that economic disparity is playing a role. To me, that says we have people acting out of frustration and desperation, which is an opportunity to educate about nonviolent forms of resistance. Those of us who understand how civil resistance works should want to seize these opportunities, not ignore or overlook them because they are ugly. King confronted such ugliness and found that because he understood where people were coming from—and they in turn understood he was more than just a critic—he was able to convince many to channel their frustration through nonviolent means, which then ultimately led to some successes.
As I explain in my further reply to Bryan (above), this is not true: “the conditions causal to the rioting [in the U.S.] were not being made prominent in the press.” In fact King spoke after three years of intense discussion in all media about annual riots in black communities of American cities.
Non violence is not a way, it is the one and only way. The belief that violence answers problems, for the frustrated and unemployed youth, whose one escape from poverty has often been violence in the media and in gaming parlours, shows what happens when alternatives are not seen as possible. The street riots are the virtual world invading reality. As you sow so shall you reap.
I am Egyptian and it seems to me that Mosa’ab Elshamy wasn’t in Egypt between 25th of January & ~9th of March.
And thanks to Tunisian comrads, i can assure you Tunisian revolution was even more revolt-y.
As someone who lives in the heart of London and is residing in one of the towns that was destroyed and looted. I feel I could give some insight into the culture and circumstances of the riot that has occurred this week.
I agree with jacks category regarding the different motivation of the riot youths. However I like to point out some alternative motivations which may have not been addressed and will provide a different perspective on your arguments.
I was there when the riot was happening, I witnessed, buildings been burnt, banks and shops been broken into and generally people who just smashed for “fun”.
I witnessed people from the community who went out and participated into the looting and destruction of their own community! (why would you destroy your own town?)
I witnessed people who were just for fun and something to look at like it was a circus on show. From my own observation and experience, Ibe concluded that the main motivation is nothing political, racial or a protest against the system. Merely an opportunity to destroy, steal and feel empowered in the face of helpless police.
As s Buddhist, I agree strongly with understanding an action before criticizing it, and I criticize it extremely with no no merit of explamation of excuse what so ever. People who were arrested and convicted consisted of people with no history of bad behaviour, good decent paying jobs, good education and bright futures(who’s hopes are now diminished). A girl was asked in news who they were doing this, she responded by saying that they weren’t feeling respected and heard. I assure you, they have been heard but they never listened, they been given respect but didn’t respect back, the youth today expect to take everything and not give anything back in the return, the system allows every young person to excel and succeed but only if you open up to it and realise you have to struggle sometimes to get somewhere in life. The youth today expect everything to be given for free. They don’t understand the concept of give and take. And so when that fails, they resort to crime, violence and drugs as a easy solution to their problems. That is the main issue here, they don’t like things that are hard. Everyone who gas experienced studying a higher education or a full time work has appreciated that it took them some level of effort and hard work to recieve some level of respect, the youths today would run at the sight if such notion.
Mentioning king as a pinnacle example of the London riots will be effortless and justified. Black people in those times were really to put in the work and become something of themselves, the main problem was the culture and givenment preventing them from doing so thus becoming equal. The uk youths are not facing those issues. They are just LAZY.
Thank you for sharing your comments, Tung. I appreciate knowing they come from someone who’s seen the riots first hand. But I think calling the British youth “lazy” is a risky generalization to make. It’s far too easy for the rest of society, and particularly those who are well off or in power, to say this has nothing to do with politics. Not surprisingly, that’s the position taken by the Prime Minister and mayor of London. Calling the riots mindless, absolves them of any responsibility. Yet, it’s been far from proven that the riots had nothing to do with politics. In fact, more and more reports seem to point toward racial tensions and high youth unemployment as two of the main factors that sparked the riots. That makes a lot more sense to me than laziness. If you’re lazy, why would you be out causing mayhem and risking arrest, if not worse? You might do that if you’re unemployed, angry and bored. That doesn’t make it right, though. Had young people in Britain responded like the young people in Spain, we would be having a very different conversation right now.
Grate!