[Peace-discuss] What he saw in the riots (excerpt)

[David Green]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/interview-journalist-michael-tracey-riots-protests/


In terms of targets and patterns of destruction, it varies somewhat by
city. Minneapolis and St. Paul are what set off the nationwide convulsion
and underwent the most extreme destruction, so the patterns there may be
most instructive. The initial target was the Third Police Precinct
building, which Minneapolis police ultimately fled upon orders from the
mayor, Jacob Frey — allowing protesters/rioters to seize it for a time. A
nearby Target store was then bombarded. But one fallacy that was often
heard in the early days of the riots was that the “targets” were merely
corporate chains that could easily cover the damage. It’s plausible that
the insurrectionary activists, many of whom came from out of town, did
initially “target” corporate chains to some degree. But once the chaos
breaks out, it’s impossible to contain.

One block away from the Third Police Precinct building, a resident named
Rick told me about an Indian restaurant and a brunch restaurant that had
been burned to the ground. Was the initial target some “corporate” chain?
Maybe, but it’s not as though that could be strictly adhered to as some
kind of clearly delineated rioting ethos. In the Lake Street area of
Minneapolis, entire blocks are boarded up and/or destroyed. Elsewhere in
the region, individual parcels of land are reduced to rubble, almost
without rhyme or reason. For instance, it’s not clear to me why an
Ethiopian restaurant in St. Paul was subjected to an arson attack and
reduced to rubble. Or why a Goodwill’s windows were smashed. It could
simply be that many of the rioters were so amped-up (and probably
intoxicated) that they had no ability to discern what they were going after.

Elsewhere, such as the heavily black areas of cities like Chicago and
Milwaukee, “looting” broke out when there was a vacuum of municipal
resources caused by the mass protests and other riot-like activity. I would
distinguish this form of opportunistic “looting” from the ideologically
driven insurrectionary rioting that initially sparked the unrest. If you
are a black 16-year-old and there’s no police around, and all your friends
are rushing into a busted-up streetfront store to take sneakers, it’s
understandable why you’d follow suit. According to residents, the “looting”
in heavily black areas like Chicago’s West Side started in earnest at
apparel stores like Foot Locker and branched out from there. Police had
generally stood down. In Philadelphia and the Bronx, I was told by
residents that the acquired goods ended up being sold in black markets,
such as the K&A (Kensington and Allegheny) intersection in Philadelphia.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20200801/5f58fe77/attachment.htm>