Not the 60s, the rioters are not burning down thier own hood

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In the years since American cities erupted in anger in the 1960s, many of the conditions that fueled that unrest — even with the ideas drafted to address them — have changed little. Most deeply poor urban neighborhoods have remained that way. Schools that for a time grew more integrated have resegregated. Aggressive policing has continued as a defining feature of urban life for young black men.

But the American city itself has changed. Or, at least, many of them have. Downtowns became a destination again for white diners and even residents. “Tech hubs” arrived. Stadiums and condos were built. Restaurants proliferated. Rents rose. Decent manufacturing and clerical jobs all but disappeared, replaced by a vast low-wage service sector. And the gaps between the most prosperous neighborhoods and those still trapped in poverty grew wider and more visible.

This expanding urban inequality is now implicated in new waves of unrest, another source of rage, inseparable from race, bound up with all the older ones. If protesters in the 1960s cried out from black neighborhoods that had seen severe disinvestment, now they are calling attention to cities that have experienced enormous investment — that excludes them.

In Chicago, protesters have converged on Michigan Avenue, the city’s famous strip of high-end retail. In Atlanta, it has been affluent Buckhead. In Philadelphia, Center City. In New York, SoHo. In Los Angeles, protest leaders have deliberately steered toward upscale neighborhoods, including downtown and Beverly Hills.

The late-night looting that has followed some of these demonstrations has left a similar string of upscale targets: a Nordstrom in Seattle, an Apple Store in Minneapolis, an R.E.I. in Santa Monica.

There is limited symbolism in a store hit by opportunistic looting. But historians have noted the shifting geography of protest. In 1964 in Philadelphia, black neighborhoods along Columbia Avenue and North Broad Street were damaged, Thomas Sugrue, a historian at N.Y.U., pointed out. This time, it was high-end Chestnut and Walnut Streets around Rittenhouse Square downtown. In Los Angeles, where Watts was a site of unrest in 1960s, now Rodeo Drive is one instead.

In Washington, where protest in the 1960s left decades-long scars on commercial corridors in black neighborhoods, some people at protests near the White House this week also vandalized the surrounding blocks of high-end restaurants that host power lunches and offices where the well-off bank and work. Scrawled across several buildings, alongside “Black Lives Matter,” was another slogan: “Eat the Rich.”

“The anger being felt is not just the deep injustice of police brutality,” said Saru Jayaraman, who has for years organized for fair wages for tipped workers. Those workers, she said, are now being told that their wages aren’t high enough to qualify for state unemployment insurance — at a time when large corporations are getting millions in aid. Anger boiling over now, she said, is also about “the injustice of the corporate control of our democracy and the 1 percent really benefiting off the fruits of their labor.”

George Floyd, she adds, was a restaurant worker — a security guard at a Minneapolis restaurant and nightclub — and had lost his job in the pandemic.

In Washington, where protest in the 1960s left decades-long scars on commercial corridors in black neighborhoods, some people at protests near the White House this week also vandalized the surrounding blocks of high-end restaurants that host power lunches and offices where the well-off bank and work. Scrawled across several buildings, alongside “Black Lives Matter,” was another slogan: “Eat the Rich.”

“The anger being felt is not just the deep injustice of police brutality,” said Saru Jayaraman, who has for years organized for fair wages for tipped workers. Those workers, she said, are now being told that their wages aren’t high enough to qualify for state unemployment insurance — at a time when large corporations are getting millions in aid. Anger boiling over now, she said, is also about “the injustice of the corporate control of our democracy and the 1 percent really benefiting off the fruits of their labor.”

George Floyd, she adds, was a restaurant worker — a security guard at a Minneapolis restaurant and nightclub — and had lost his job in the pandemic.

“There’s a lot of people who are there to serve the comfort and convenience and care of affluent individuals,” Mr. Autor said.

Such low-wage jobs in cities are disproportionately held by minority workers. And these are the people hit hardest by job losses this spring, during a public health and economic crisis that has highlighted urban inequality. While the virus itself has preyed on poor African-Americans who could not work from home, the public-health prescription for it — people must stay apart — has preyed on service-sector employment.

Over the long term, these economic changes in cities have been accompanied by shifts in policing, according to Lester Spence, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University. As federal investments in cities have dwindled and many states have curbed the ability of cities to raise tax revenue, the police have increasingly been used to generate revenue by fining citizens in smaller cities like Ferguson, Mo. In larger cities like Baltimore, Detroit and New York, Mr. Spence has written, the police have become a blunt instrument to control the poor “so they don’t threaten elite-driven economic development.”

Baltimore’s Port Covington redevelopment or The Wharf in Washington only work as city officials envisioned, by Mr. Spence’s argument, if the homeless are kept off the streets and young black men with little money to spend are kept away from the stores. In such places, the economic critique of Occupy Wall Street meets the cause of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Mr. Sugrue, the N.Y.U. historian, suggested some other possible reasons that the sites of protest seem different this time. The commercial streets in traditionally black neighborhoods have been hollowed out in many cities, lessening their significance. And even if school and residential segregation hasn’t broken down with time, cities have become more integrated in a commercial sense; Buckhead isn’t off-limits to African-Americans in the same way anymore.

Alison Isenberg, a historian at Princeton who is writing a book on uprisings in the 1960s, suggested one way things are not so different from that era. Cities then were undergoing a wave of transformation, too, with urban renewal projects tearing through poor neighborhoods.

“Urban renewal was understood at the time to be pushing out people with fewer means to make room in cities for business and people with bigger pocketbooks,” Ms. Isenberg said.

That exact diagnosis echoes in cities today.

Looting and vandalism can be more targeted than you think

In the US, hundreds of businesses have been damaged, and there has been widespread looting in LA and Minneapolis over the weekend.

However, Prof Stott warns that while it's easy to assume that riots and crowds are "irrational and chaotic, none of that is true - it's highly structured and meaningful for the people taking part".

"To some extent, looting is an expression of power - black citizens may have felt disempowered in relation to the police - but in the context of a riot, the rioters momentarily become more powerful than the police."

Studies of previous riots show that places that get looted are often related to big businesses, and that looting "often relates to the sense of inequality related to living in capitalistic economies", he says.

Prof Hunt has studied the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which were sparked after four white police officers were acquitted over the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King.

He says there is "a long history of targeting, or selectivity", in vandalism and looting. "In the LA uprisings, you'd often see 'minority owned' spray painted on minority businesses, so that people would bypass those."

However, both Prof Stott and Prof Hunt caution that looting is complicated - especially as lots of people with different motivations take part, including people in poverty, or organised criminals.

The idea that violent protests are targeted and meaningful events to those taking part can also explain why looting occurs in some protests, but not others.

In Hong Kong, for example, protesters smashed shop windows, threw petrol bombs at police, and defaced the national emblem - but there was no looting.

Lawrence Ho, a specialist in policing and public order management at the Education University of Hong Kong, believes this is because those protests were triggered by political developments and anger at the police, rather than discrimination and social inequality.

"Vandalism was targeted at stores seen to have a strong connection to mainland China," says Dr Ho. "It was a deliberate attempt to convey a message."

Unlike the 1960s as much as these are "Black Lives Matter" riots they are not like the "race riots" of the 60s, but class riots, white civilians are not a target, no modern day Reginald Denny's being dragged out his truck and murdered so far, indeed the rioters are often a diverse group.

What I don't understand is, why are these looters doing so much looting and damage to property, even after the four officers involved in the murder, are now facing second degree murder charges? It's not like the officers walked free from this. They are now facing second degree murder, which is serious. So why isn't that satisfaction enough for justice, and why are the looters still continuing?

What I don't understand is, why are these looters doing so much looting and damage to property, even after the four officers involved in the murder, are now facing second degree murder charges? It's not like the officers walked free from this. They are now facing second degree murder, which is serious. So why isn't that satisfaction enough for justice, and why are the looters still continuing?

What I don't understand is, why are these looters doing so much looting and damage to property, even after the four officers involved in the murder, are now facing second degree murder charges? It's not like the officers walked free from this. They are now facing second degree murder, which is serious. So why isn't that satisfaction enough for justice, and why are the looters still continuing?

If police keep brutalizing the peaceful protesters I wouldn't be surprised if they start being served a taste of their own medicine and it will be increasingly difficult to criticize those using force in response to these violent gestapo tactics. If they behave like an occupying force they will be treated as one, it's inevitable.

Wait, you still think that these protests are just about the murder of George Floyd? That was a spark that set it off, but it is more than finding justice for just those four people, there has been a long problem that has not been addressed. It took too long to arrest the man that murdered Floyd, it took too long for something to do about the others on the scene that allowed it to happen, and it took getting an autopsy from a third party to get evidence that he died from what you saw on the video, rather than the one the system did that said something about a heart problem and made guesses about possible intoxicants. No justice can even undo what happened, and took freaking protests for something to be done, and is ridiculous to ask that protests and riots would have to be done every time there needs to be something done, and only in cases where someone happened to record something so obvious.

I can't really say about every looting nor every property damage, you can find cases where bad actors have been inserting themselves into to the protests just to cause chaos, even people highly suspected of being police officers that go into do things like break windows. But the people are angry and sick of not being listened to, and you could argue that those in power have simply met them back with even greater violence, all of this after those in power have been looting those in the lower classes. Those in power have shown themselves to care more about things, than they do about people.

Oh okay. Why would the pathologist who performs an autopsy want to falsely doctor an autospy though? What's in it for him/her? Sure the people who murdered Floyd could bribe the pathologist, but would they be able to bribe a pathologist with enough money that it would be worth the risk of taking a bribe and hopefully not being caught? I assume that pathologists make more money than police, so the bribe wouldn't be cheap likely, or would it?

Unlike the 1960s as much as these are "Black Lives Matter" riots they are not like the "race riots" of the 60s, but class riots, white civilians are not a target, no modern day Reginald Denny's being dragged out his truck and murdered so far, indeed the rioters are often a diverse group.

Why would the same pathologist that the cops regularly interact with possibly lie to conceal the cops criminal behaviour? For starters, probably because they'd like to still get along with the people they need to interact with after they announce their findings. That's why police agencies also shouldn't be trusted to investigate themselves, the feds probably should have jurisdiction to perform that job.

But even if the pathologist gave an autopsy that the police didn't like, it's not like the police can just fire him for it. If the police were to be antagonistic towards the pathologist as a result, than the pathologist can just go to the higher ups and report it, to which hire ups would tell their officers to get a long with the pathologist, because our cases depend on it.

But even if the pathologist gave an autopsy that the police didn't like, it's not like the police can just fire him for it. If the police were to be antagonistic towards the pathologist as a result, than the pathologist can just go to the higher ups and report it, to which hire ups would tell their officers to get a long with the pathologist, because our cases depend on it.