The largest democracy on earth was spawned by a frail old man, Mahatma Gandhi.
He began the fall of the mighty British Empire on which "Sun never set".
India was the biggest prize in British colonial empire.
So how Did Gandhi accomplish this feat of driving Brits out of India?
The same Brits who fought valiantly in WWII and helped defeat Hitler.
Gandhi did it by exhorting the masses to protest NON-VIOLENTLY.
Non violent protests win more often because it is such a bad picture to kill non-violent protesters.
And the peaceful protesters win sympathy and goodwill from everyone.
Violent protests have the opposite effect.

and logic and reason. I’m suggesting that those things don’t apply in this situation. There is currently no Gandhi-like leader capable of channeling this anger in a productive direction.

I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if this social unrest ends up producing future leaders who, having witnessed it up close, decide that there is a better way forward. Which was kind of the point of my OP. Good leaders make good choices which lead to better outcomes.

And I should add, we’re here because peaceful protests haven’t worked. Colin Kaepernick took a knee to protest extra-judicial killings and he was repeatedly mocked and ridiculed and accused of hating America by no less than the President of the United States. Bad leaders make bad choices which lead to bad outcomes.

There needs to be a serious conversation among all involved regarding racial tensions, and that will not happen so long as there is violence, arson, looting, defying curfew etc is going on.

Peaceful protest do not produce immediate results. It took Gandhi decades of non-violent protest to free up the crown jewel in British colonial empire.
Protesters were beaten with sticks, put in jails, and even shot with live bullets in Jallianwala Baug incident. Finally the British authorities gave up because they just could not figure out what weapons to use against mass peaceful protests. All the weapons they used in WWII were useless against millions of people protesting non-violently.

What’s needed now is action. And we’re not going to get that from Trump or the Republican Party — we’re going to get more race-baiting, disenfranchisement, abuse, and oppression.

We need to elect leaders who will ACT to improve things. (And I believe, as I always have, that electing Democrats and rejecting Republicans is the best way to do that.) Whether we can do that or not is of course an open question — there are still a LOT of people in this country who get a kick out of oppressing their fellow Americans.

I’m just pointing out that if our leaders won’t act to address the root causes of the problem, this is unfortunately going to happen again. I’m absolutely not advocating for it. I’m a firm believer in peaceful protests, and have participated in many myself. I’m simply observing that non-peaceful protests eventually become inevitable if the powers that be won’t take their knees off people’s necks, both literally and figuratively.

This situation has been slowly heating up for a long, long time, and there was plenty of time to address it before it boiled over. We failed to address it as a society, and here we are.

You bring words of wisdom.

1) The action he started resulted in massive rioting and would only subside when he nearly died by fasting until death multiple times.

2) The separation of India and E/W Pakistan resulted in hundreds of thousands murders by sectarian gangs.

3) Ghandi was murdered by a Hindu nationalist.

Ghandi is the right standard for all protests but the protest against England and the establishment of India was born in the loss of a million lives due to violence. One can only wonder how many would be lost without him.

for independence, would still have cost lives.

may be digging a little deeper might help. You might learn that India was divided into secular India and Muslim Pakistan.
Hindu's living in areas which became part of Pakistan fled the country due to subjugation to subordinate status in official Muslim Pakistan
and their properties were looted by violent people. May be some of them fought to protect their belongings and got killed.
Every action has reaction. Hindu's sought revenge after hearing of atrocities. Gandhi tried to make peace between Hindu's and Muslims.
And was assassinated by one extremist Hindu. One out of Billion Hindu's does not make a rule.

India

Nothing that followed was Ghandi's fault

However the idea that the process that followed Ghandi's leadership was peaceful is not true. There were riots even while Ghandi was still alive and hundreds of thousands died on both sides, almost all of it triggered at grass root levels by both sides.

The idea that there was a "secular" Hindu India and a "religious" Pakistan is not reflective of the reality that was India.

The BBC has an excellent documentary(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_India) which goes into great detail explaining how the people living in the subcontinent didn't primarily identify by religion but by village and clan and that members of the villages freely participated in both Mosque and Temple in the same village. It was only after the colonial administration of the Brits were people asked to identify as either one or the other and it became a binary decision.

The idea that the founders of either country were more "secular" or "religious" is not based in fact. Jinnah was more of a secularist than his Indian counterparts. Educated in England he looked down on many aspects of traditional culture and only wore Western dress, it was once noted that with more than 200 western suits Jinnah was the best dressed westerner in the world. At one point he wanted to be a Shakespearian actor.

The creation of the government of Pakistan was done on secular principles. Both Pakistan have moved from secular to religious to secular administrations, in about equal strength.

India's religious nationalism is not tied to a single individual or even a small group and is not new. The Hindutva Movement is 100 years old (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindutva) and has appreciated support from the masses, in the past and currently forms the basis of the BJP Party which came to power in 2014 with a majority of seats.

The idea that Indian Politics is "secular" and Pakistani Politics is "religious" is not true and reflects an anti Muslim bias.

My father lost his job in the kingdom in India when all kingdoms were dissolved and merged into new country of India in 1947.
he was assigned a job to assist and repatriate refugees from Pakistan, all were Hindu's.
So we saw first hand how horrible their getting uprooted from Sindh province (which became Pakistan) was. They lost all their businesses and wealth.
They basically had fled with clothes on their backs. My father had a huge job on his hands to help those hundreds of thousands of refugees in Mumbai.

Gandhi was assassinated by a right wing hindu .

the current problems in that part if the world all go back to that.

and his strict adherence to his leading non-violent mass protests.

The mass slaughter you talk about happened AFTER the British were driven out by NON_VIOLENT protests which were relentless and the British had never seen anything like that, and were confused and lost on how to stop them. Finally they must have decided it was best to leave and maintain good relations with the newly independent country. Portuguese also had an enclave colony in India, refused to leave, and were removed by force by Indian military.

People who are downtrodden and powerless finally have a breaking point. Once that point is reached, they seize power and direct that newly discovered power in odd directions, when seen from outside.

They may take their years of frustration out on establishments that have refused to serve them or which price them out of the ability to patronize those establishment. They may also attack establishments they do patronize. As you say, none of it makes any sense to most of us, but there is a sense to it, nevertheless.

We might not see the sense in it, but it does exist. It's just that things take their own course when reason and logic are replace by sheer emotion and power to do things not usually possible.

This will all end as spontaneously as it began. All we can really do is just wait it out and try to understand it and do things to correct the original reasons those people were powerless and voiceless.

Thank you, EarlG.

Have racial tensions gotten better because of riots, arson and looting? I doubt it.
Only a serious dialog by cooler heads will achieve any chance of racial harmony.

Actually violence in the past has improved some things over time. However, I'm not advocating for violence in any way. I am simply offering an explanation for why it occurs, as was EarlG.

Your "cooler heads" must come up with ways to solve the underlying problems that lead to such explosions of anger. As we saw, this particular round of it was caused by one police officer who caused the death of one black man. Had that not occurred, the rest would not have occurred.

So, what was the cause of that police officer killing that black man? Answer that question, and you will have the answer to prevention of such horrors in the future.

The question you do ask does not have an answer that will help in the future. The answer that will help is equality and fair treatment for all on a society-wide basis. Until that is the norm, we will have incidents like the ones we are witnessing now.

How will you help with that? That is the pertinent question. How will I?

that police officer killing that black man?"

I do not have a confirmed, definitive answer to that question, but I do have a very strong suspicion about the answer. Both PBS and The Guardian have documented the infiltration of US law enforcement by racial supremacy groups. After watching the face and body language of Chauvin in the video while he murdered Mr. Floyd, I would look to supremacy groups for the answer to why. If Chauvin is not a member of such a group, for sure he is a sympathizer.

The goal of democracy, supposedly, is to create a just and decent society. If we the people fail at this, eventually people break. They erupt.

I don't know anybody who thinks riots are a good thing. They're a sign that our society is failing. We can work together to fix things and make a more equitable and decent society. Or we can continue to blame the victims of oppression and feel superior to them.

Hell, I think that *even the people doing the rioting* don’t think that riots are a good thing.

I think they’d rather simply have justice, opportunity and security in their lives.

If they weren’t consistently denied those things — things that are supposed to make America exceptional, by the way — they wouldn’t be rioting.

The places attacked were banks, retail stores selling upscale goods, and the Department of Justice. Sadly, some small locally owned businesses were also attacked, so your analogy of strong forces of nature is correct. In my town, a central image of the riot was several huge dumpsters which were set in fire. I made an immediate connection to the Dumpster, squatting in Washington D.C. It feels to me like the anger and frustration from injustice has been suppressed and held down for so long that the pressure has built up to the level of an explosion. The energy had nowhere else to go. I have never seen a 'peaceful, nonviolent ' explosion.

Symbolize money and power? Ok.

Banks were targeted: Chase Manhattan and Wells Fargo. Also a Louis Vuitton store, and other stores in a mall. Also chain type businesses: a Starbucks and a Burgerville. Not huge monetary titans, but part of the Establishment generally. There were also locally owned businesses that were hit. Some of the rioters looked more like they would belong to white supremacy groups like the Proud Boys. The rioting and vandalism looked very coordinated. It will be interesting to see how what the police investigations turn up.

People are a month away from starvation, homelessness...etc while the GOP squats in Washington doing nothing to help. We have months before Biden can take office and then hopefully we get the Senate and can send help ASAP. It reminds me of the stories my Grandmother told me about the Hoover administration- a time when millions of people actually starved to death. The figures have never been released.

Riots, the army shooting down protesters, people starving. This country very nearly went red.

to fascism than to communism at that time, with prominent people endorsing it. Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh.

Get rid of Roosevelt and the Republic.

It is your body's warning sign

As if they are planned political tactics. No one has organized a mass riot or looting spree. There are, however, people who get swept up in the chaos of a mass demonstration gone wrong and then there are also those opportunistic bottom-feeders and agent provacateurs who use the chaos to their advantage.

I’m not saying agent provocateurs don’t exist, but agent provocateurs alone are not capable of generating mass civil unrest across the entire country. There have to be significant numbers of desperate, abused people for rioting like this to occur.

My overall point is that if leaders make good choices early enough, agent provocateurs can’t carry out their dirty deeds because the desperation and rage that they feed on simply won’t be there. The fact that it *is* there indicates a much bigger systemic failure. But hey, it’s not as if black people haven’t been telling us about this systemic failure — peacefully! — for years. Society has just chosen to ignore them.

These are the inevitable consequences.

Which is why all of these "riots don't solve anything" comments are so maddening.

suggesting that 80% of the protesters last night weren’t from Minnesota. So if 80% of the Minnesota protesters weren’t from Minnesota, does that mean 80% of the Georgia protesters weren’t from Georgia, and 80% of the DC protesters weren’t from DC, and 80% of the California protesters weren’t from California, and 80% of the Arizona protesters weren’t from Arizona, and 80% of the New York protesters weren’t from New York? And if so, where the fuck do they think all these people are coming from?

This seems like a real failure of imagination to me.

If my natural disaster comparison holds up, the next step — as in all disasters — will be a massive government response, including the use of the National Guard, to restore order and clean up.

But the really important part is what happens after this is all over. Do we make good choices intended to address the real root causes of these riots, or do we treat them as a one-off and just assume that it won’t happen again? (“Like a miracle, it will go away on its own.”)

Wish I could be more optimistic.

We can certainly hope that things might be different this time

About rioting and looting not being planned political tactics. They were meant in the context of a large scale display to show outrage over police abuse and create public sympathy for the need for reform.
Rioting and looting are VERY MUCH planned political tactics if you are a few well-placed individuals throwing grenades into an angry herd to incite violence and turn public opinion against a protest.
Those things can certainly happen organically in a crowd situation but there are definitely people with evil agendas planting seeds deliberately.

Link to tweet

I don't agree with his opportunistic statement that the 'protests are no longer about George Floyd.'

I must have misheard his comment as I was typing. Thanks for the correction.

I do still wonder though if by focusing on agitators, the powers that be are minimizing the anger of the thousands of regular people who were out on the streets last night. As if all we need to do is stop some agitators and these problems will all go away. It certainly wouldn’t hurt, but it wouldn’t solve anything in the long run.

...maybe, though, we tend to highlight the destructive actions to the obscuring of the heart of demonstrations, at least what should be the heart of them which emphasizes peaceful protest juxtaposed against the police or state-sponsored violence.

It makes sense to clarify why people are gathered there, to promote a change in attitude and practice, not just some kind of warring between factions. I was just a kid when folks burned Georgia Ave. shops in D.C. right down the street, to the ground after MLK was shot and killed, and I know what built-up frustration can create in a community under siege.

In later years I saw in every anti-war event I attended some conflict between those who came to break shit, and tear the house down, and organizers and others trying desperately to keep a lid on it. We know some of the agitating groups, no need to list them, and the conflict between direct action and peaceful confrontation is always a present and confounding one.

But demonstrations need to be focused and peaceful, I believe, for any productive effect, and even the organic expressions of dangerousness need to be confronted and discredited right from the start, no tolerance. That's actually an attitude/stance which has been a staple of most of the BLM actions I've seen, and there shouldn't, imo, be any quarter given to those who place peaceful gatherers at risk with their abberant behavior.

I think you're right in that peaceful protests are ultimately more productive. I engaged in a number of them during the Bush years. I don't know that I personally felt like I accomplished much at the time -- it wasn't like we suddenly flipped a switch and changed the world -- but in retrospect those massive anti-war demonstrations probably did contribute to the way the country viewed the war in Iraq and ultimately the rejection of the policies that got us there.

I want to be clear that I'm not advocating for people to commit violent acts, merely making an observation -- that regardless of where it may lead them, when people are pushed right to the edge, they'll eventually push back. When a population is abused and oppressed for long enough, violent protests are simply inevitable, and that appears to be where we are now. Systemic oppression. An unprecedented-in-our-lifetimes pandemic. 40 million out of work. Crushing financial distress. A president who hurls verbal abuse at half the country on a daily basis. Agitators or not, people are mad as hell, and they're showing it.

It's a complex situation.

have been pulling this stuff for decades - since the 1971 Powell Manifesto. Or we could go even further back, to the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which was the death knell for unions. That happened back in 1947 or 48. Or we could go back to the Espionage Act of 1917, which imprisoned Eugene Debs. We could even go back to the Haymarket riots, and the beginning of the Jim Crow era after US Grant stepped out of office way back in 1877.

This shit has been going on a long time. Trump has brought it to a head, though. Right now, our whole society is a throbbing pustule ready to pop. Problem is, after all the corporate pus drains, what will we be left with?

Well...here's hoping that when the smoke clears we are left with our republic.

white supremacist infiltrators involved for a variety of reasons.

about this. I can understand if the frustration and anger of demonstrators turns to rioting. But I am concerned about the infiltraters. What is their agenda and with whom do they coordinate their actions and agenda? I think the answer to that is essential in dealing with the situation and protecting the demonstrators.

I haven't personally been affected by any of this so far. Yet I am so angry that I'm ready to throw something! And that our so-called president is doing everything he can to stoke the flames makes me even more angry! I can't even express how angry I am and I'm a white old lady with a comfortable life and no fear that any of my loved ones will be killed by cops. Ever! I can't even imagine!

There is something that happens to us when we are so angry. Psychologists have a word for it and I can't put my finger on that word right now (because anger sort of shuts down the brain). Basically, emotion takes over and things escalate. Seems like this is what is happening. And because we have a president who likes to encourage confrontation, he is making it much worse, IMO.

...but we've witnessed outside agitators LEADING with acts of vandalism, both black and white.

These events are certainly volatile, and many of the participants emotionally swept up in the chaos, many experiencing active protests for the first time. These are the people who may well be influenced into counterproductive behavior. It's commonplace, and I've watched it happen in numerous gatherings, watched organizers and peaceful folks alike try desperately to restrain individuals from destructive or violent acts. It's a drama which seems to unfold in every large event. And, as you imply, these communities are often under siege by these forces, frustration builds and is released in dramatic ways; and there's actual hunger in the impoverished neighborhoods, as well as abject poverty which compels some to loot.

It's hard, though, to not reason that these agitators are organized by some malevolent interest in a deliberate attempt to discredit the gatherings. I believe this is the case in most of the ones I've witnessed, including some openly Russian agitators in BLM demonstrations aggressively moving through the crowd trying to spark a fight. Watched well-dressed muscular men looking every bit the policemen they likely were throwing bottles, breaking windows and stepping back as others follow their lead. Whatever it is, it doesn't appear as organic as you describe, and I don't believe the vast majority of these protest groups have any intention of causing any harm, especially folks anguished by senseless acts of violence and mourning deaths.

but I also don’t think that something like this can be entirely ginned up by outside agitators. I’m 46 years old — not old enough to remember the protests of the 1960s — so never in my lifetime have I seen social unrest on this scale in this country. I don’t think you can create it out of nothing. You need significant numbers of angry, pissed-off, regular people who have been failed over and over again, and who have no other way to express their rage.

amount of angry people with a history of being abused and no outlet for riots to occur. I am 70, so I do remember the riots of the 60's. Genuine anger in peaceful protests can be stoked by infiltrators to rioting by people who know how to manipulate the mood of large crowds.

The anger and frustration are real. They cannot be created by outside agitators. But those feelings can explode when agitated by infiltrators.

Eloquently said.

Good things grow from wildfires.

most empirical research on riots and protests since the 1960's.

That research showed that most people in riots are making rational decisions based on a variety of motives; most operate in smaller sub-groups of six-to-eight people, even when they're in big crowds of several thousands. The natural phenomenon/ irrational crowd thesis has mostly been abandoned by sociologists, primarily because careful observation of crowd behavior has invalidated it.

I'm not a sociologist, which you probably gleaned from my OP

I've also never witnessed social unrest on this scale in this country in my lifetime (I'm not old enough to remember the 60s). It certainly appears that people have been pushed right to the very edge this time, and they're reacting as one might expect under the circumstances.

I accept your point that once it is happening, the dynamics of a riot are not the same as the dynamics of a natural disaster, however I am suggesting that the underlying cause of a riot can be addressed in the same way that a society can prepare for a natural disaster.

That is to say, by making smart choices that take the well-being of their citizens into consideration, leaders can prevent riots in the first place. By failing to act -- or by taking actions that make the situation worse -- leaders increase the likelihood of an event occurring and causing massive damage. Just like failing to prepare for a pandemic, or a hurricane.

I do think it puts people at a disadvantage to assume that people in riots are acting irrationally.

So you probably didn't see the bit that I added on.

is right, but you are missing one factor. There are sometimes people who, for political reasons, actually want protests to escalate to riots. It occurred in the 60's (yes, I'm that old) and it occurs today. Sometimes they are political leaders and sometimes they are protest infiltrators. Sometimes the two are allies.

There are instigators at work here — however, they can’t do their work if they don’t already have large crowds of angry people to instigate.

There’s a huge difference between what I’m watching on tv right now and the protests I took part in during the Bush years. Those were peaceful affairs, planned in advance and well organized. They attracted tens of thousands of passionate people, but I recall the atmosphere being one of solidarity over a political cause, not so much an expression of overwhelming pain and anger.

What’s going on right now seems more like a spontaneous outburst of rage. Instigators are certainly at work, but if this was intended to simply be a “peaceful protest” then thousands of people would go home when the curfews start, and the only people left would be the black bloc types chucking bricks. That really doesn’t seem to be what’s going on here. It looks more like tens of thousands of pissed off citizens who want to confront and defy the police.

George Floyd was the spark that started this but there’s a lot more going on here. Look at all those people out in the streets. They can’t all be professional instigators. They’re mad as hell, and apparently they’re not going to take it any more...

isn't real, unchoreographed anger and rage. There certainly is. It's been building up for a long time. Too many killings of black people, and this coming on the heels of Ahmaud Arbery. I'm only saying that there are people who are trying to hijack the genuine anger to use for their own agenda.

There was also spontaneous outrage and anger across the entire country when King was murdered that lasted for days. That was in April of 1968. In July, some friends and I drove from Erie, PA through Cleveland on our way to MI. In Cleveland we passed by block after block of boarded up and barred windows.

I was in a few protests in the Bush years, too, in nearby cities and in DC. As you said, the atmosphere was different. People were passionate and enthusiastic, but there was no hint of getting out of control. In DC, I had a friendly chat with a DC cop assigned to monitor us. Jesse Jackson was one of the speakers that day.

The differences were that no one was being drafted and it was a pre war, anti war protest. The fighting had not started yet. It was not as personal as Vietnam had been. And younger generations were less politically oriented. There was also not the personal factor for us that POC are facing in the country with killings by cops and vigilante civilians.

These past few days and weeks have been like a deja vu experience for me and others who lived through the civil rights era led by MLK. Except that there is no single strong leader like him today.

If hear what you’re saying and I agree

That makes this situation infinitely more complicated.

Last edited Sat May 30, 2020, 04:23 PM - Edit history (1)

the night before the riots began I was on Hollywood Blvd and witnessed a very peaceful protest march that was organized after it was announced that the officers who had beaten Rodney King were acquitted. I was struck by how diverse the protest group was and how civilized was their behavior. I was then stunned by something I had never seen before (and I had participated in plenty of gay rights marches prior to that): a large number of riot police showed up and confronted the group dressed in full riot gear with shields and batons, causing the crowd to quickly disperse. They were ready for combat.

The next day, of course, the actual riots occurred. It appeared, at one point, that the whole city was burning with plumes of smoke stretching across the entire horizon. The violence, as horrible as it was, obviously got peoples' attention.

It seems as if a number of forces are at work. 1. Social injustice and oppression, which results in deep anger and resentment. And the groups who benefit increase the pressure by not allowing any change or progress which would relieve some of the pressure. When events occur which crank the pressure to unbearable levels, then an explosion happens. Also, when situations get that dire, it is easy for opportunistic groups to come in and twist the forces in directions that the original organisers never intended. I am old enough to remember the movements of the sixties, and to remember Cointelpro, the deliberate efforts to discredit and stop the many movements of the times.

not made ending police brutality a top priority.

There definitely are outsider provocateurs, undercover cops, undercover racists etc inciting violence and property attacks, and at first that really bothered me.

But you know what? Fine, let them do it, because it's time for trump, Congress and all Americans to be embarrassed on a daily basis. The entire world needs to see the hypocrisy and failures of the USA on full display. We don't practice the shit we preach. It is 20 fucking 20 and cops in this country still feel empowered to lynch black men for thrills. Clearly, peaceful protests have not worked. Complaining on Twitter has not worked. Strongly worded interviews have not worked. Presidential speeches have not worked.

As far as the mom and pop shops? Liability insurance will handle it and hopefully they'll be better off than they were previously (considering the shitty PPP provisions which mainly benefited companies who didn't need the help).

We just have to make it out the other end.