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cloudboy -> RE: Rioting is the answer (8/14/2014 7:56:48 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
Yes indeed. But there is a need to identify why people reacted with such anger. Riots do not happen for the fun of it, they are not merely cover for other crimes such as theft and looting, they are usually the result of long standing grievances being ignored or left resolved by the authorities.
People who feel they have a stake in the system don't riot. People who feel their voices are being heard do not resort to violence to make their points. The trigger that sparked the riot is not a cause but a consequence, best seen as the straw that broke the camel's back.
Unless people take a longer deeper view of civilian unrest, they are running the risk of more of the same in the future.
--an 18-year-old black student from Ferguson, Mo., who was a few days from heading off to college, was shot by a police officer on Saturday. He was unarmed.
--St. Louis has long been one of the nation’s most segregated metropolitan areas, and there remains a high wall between black residents — who overwhelmingly have lower incomes — and the white power structure that dominates City Councils and police departments like the ones in Ferguson.
--Until the late 1940s, blacks weren’t allowed to live in most suburban St. Louis County towns, kept out by restrictive covenants that the Supreme Court prohibited in 1948.
--As whites began to flee the city for the county in the 1950s and ’60s, they used exclusionary zoning tactics — including large, single-family lot requirements that prohibited apartment buildings — to prevent blacks from moving in. Within the city, poverty and unrest grew.
--In 1980, the town was 85 percent white and 14 percent black; by 2010, it was 29 percent white and 69 percent black. But blacks did not gain political power as their numbers grew.
--The mayor and the police chief are white, as are five of the six City Council members. The school board consists of six white members and one Hispanic.
--black residents, lacking the wealth to buy property, move from apartment to apartment and have not put down political roots
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