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<div class="feature-art-caption"><b><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.maskmagazine.com/the-substance-issue/struggle/step-back-with-the-riot-shamin">http://www.maskmagazine.com/the-substance-issue/struggle/step-back-with-the-riot-shamin</a></small></b>
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<p>As you may have heard, a young black man named Michael Brown
from Ferguson, Missouri was shot many times and killed by a
police officer on August 9 of this year. A bit of a caveat
before my rant: I'm angry and it comes out a bit here. Sorry
not sorry.</p>
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<h2>Processing my anger in the wake of Michael Brown’s murder.</h2>
<p>On August 11, 1965, the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles
exploded after a confrontation with police grew to a critical
mass. The neighborhood <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Riots" rel="nofollow"
target="_blank">smoldered for six days</a>. Almost a thousand
buildings were looted and burned to the ground. The unrest
marked an important turn in the struggle against an overtly
racist America. That was forty-nine years ago today.</p>
<p>Listen: police in this country attack poor people of color. <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_brutality_%28United_States%29"
rel="nofollow" target="_blank">It’s happening</a>. Like, it’s
<em>still</em> happening. Every day. All across the country.
It’s been happening. The story of America is an <em>uninterrupted</em>
chapter book of brutality and horrific violence. Racist violence
in America is a story with no interludes.</p>
<p>The narrative of “progress” steadily advances divorced from the
reality on the streets. For all the online discourse about
oppression, identity, and ‘shaming’, there is a disturbing lack
of insight and nuance when it comes to riots, vandalism, and
looting in the wake of these unsettling acts of violence against
people of color. So I thought I’d put together my responses to
the phenomenon of “riot shaming” – the policing of young black
and brown bodies in the aftermath of police murder.</p>
<h2>Five Rebuttals for the Riot Shamers</h2>
<h3>1. “This distracts from the message.”</h3>
<p>No it doesn’t. If you think this is a distraction, take a deep
breath and focus. It’s not “about one person”. It’s about
fearing the loss of your family and friends at the hands of
police. It could happen at any moment, and Michael Brown’s
murder reminds us of this. He was quite literally supposed to
start college <em>today</em>. It’s possible to have compassion
and sympathy for the bereaved and still act out against the
systematic exploitation of communities of color. If you can’t do
these two things at once, it’s time to examine your commitment
to a world without this terrifying syncopation of police
violence and economic starvation.</p>
<p>As for distracting the media, well ... Attempting to appeal for
mainstream media visibility in this age of instant information
is a pathetic neutralization of our capacity. Let them cover the
sensation if that’s what they’ll do. Our resentment should not
be engineered by their attention span.</p>
<h3>2. “Destroying ‘your own neighborhood’ won’t help.”</h3>
<p>I’m not sure how people who make this argument imagine ‘owning’
a neighborhood works, but I’ll try to break it down: we don’t
own neighborhoods. Black businesses exist, it’s true. But the
emancipation of impoverished communities is not measured in
corner-store revenue. It’s not measured in minimum-wage jobs.
And no, it’s especially not measured in how many black people
are allowed to become police officers. Here is a local
discussing <a
href="http://fox2now.com/2014/08/11/video-protester-justifies-the-looting-in-ferguson/"
rel="nofollow" target="_blank">why area businesses might have
been targeted</a>.</p>
<p>White flight really happened. Go <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight"
rel="nofollow" target="_blank">look it up</a>. And insinuating
that simply because all the white people left certain
neighborhoods following desegregation doesn’t mean they are
suddenly ‘ours’. This kind of de facto ‘self-determination’ is
so short-sighted it makes me wonder how we can even talk about
gentrification and segregation usefully if we think black people
somehow ‘have all these neighborhoods’. We don’t have ghettos.
Ghettos have us. Prisons have us. Sports teams own us. Record
labels own us. We don’t have shit.</p>
<h3>3. “Looters and vandals are criminals.”</h3>
<p>I grew up afraid to put my hands in my pockets at the store.
For us “can I help you find something?” means something <em>very
specific</em>. Young people of color are presumed guilty.
Police cars slow down when they pass us on the street. They
search our pockets and dump out our bags. On our way to and from
school. To and from work. If we walk through a wealthy
neighborhood, we might get shot. A third of us have been to
jail. The law protects this kind of targeting, so yeah, we’re
criminals. We are criminals because we are <em>seen as
criminals</em>. We were criminals long before we climbed
through broken windows. We were criminals long before we
‘refused to disperse’. </p>
<h3>4. “Black community leaders oppose violence.”</h3>
<p>First of all, this is kind of a baseless generalization. One of
Martin Luther King Jr.’s lesser known quotes ‘riot is the
language of the unheard’ keeps me grounded here. In fact, did
you know that <a
href="http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/journal_for_the_study_of_radicalism/v001/1.1dirks.html"
rel="nofollow" target="_blank">MLK and many other non-violent
black activists employed armed guards</a> in the 60s? </p>
<p>Besides, all of this talk about ‘violence’ this and stereotypes
that is just so unhelpful. Let’s maybe talk about the fact that
in cases like this police deliberately censor footage gathered,
in some cases <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/04/nyregion/after-recording-eric-garner-chokehold-ramsey-orta-gets-charged-with-gun-possession.html"
rel="nofollow" target="_blank">arresting photographers</a> for
fear of sparking unrest. You know why that is? Because they
understand what most riot shamers don’t: if you corner injured
people, there is no where to go but <em>against</em>. Judging
people’s commitment to ‘the cause’ based on whether they can
bottle up their reasonable frustrations, and finding selective
affinity with only those who can say from safe distance to ‘turn
the other cheek’ is part of what sparks these riots in the first
place.</p>
<h3>5. “Reform the justice system, don’t riot.”</h3>
<p>Something tells me people who make this argument haven’t really
looked into the prospects of this task. Let’s be real, this
‘justice system’ people suppose is possible has been the subject
of political and economic philosophy for hundreds of years. I
got news for you: it’s not looking up. The ‘fair’ economic
system that a reformed justice system would require is a myth. </p>
<p>“So are you saying we should just give up?” That’s what people
ask me when I say things like this. My response: “eh, how about
just not reducing everything to patience and progress?” Don’t
ask kids to wait around and dodge bullets until the system
treats us fairly. Just stop putting that on them. Believe it or
not, you don’t have to save the world. And you sure as hell
ain’t going to do it on Twitter. Just step back with the riot
shaming, and work on your perspective.</p>
<hr>
<p>In closing, I’d like to offer a message to the youth: with
murderous cops on the loose, the safest place to be a young
black or brown person in America is in the streets with all of
your friends. Stay tight.</p>
<p>Police apologists: if you still think a few looted shops
‘distract from the message’, wait until you see the guillotines.</p>
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<small class="legend"><br>
Authors</small>
<div class="authorship">
<div class="author-summary">
<a class="author-link"
href="http://www.maskmagazine.com/writers/tyler-reinhard">Tyler
Reinhard</a> [ <a href="https://twitter.com/abolishme">@abolishme</a>
] builds Mask Magazine, and studies the historical intersection
of design systems and social upheaval. He is the author of the <a
href="http://semanot.es" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Semantic
Notes</a> methodology, designer of numerous stupid anarchist
zines and posters, and a contributor to <a
href="https://whispersystems.org/" rel="nofollow"
target="_blank">Open Whisper Systems</a>
cryptography-usability project.
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