Bad Boys II

[Dill]

(05-30-2020, 08:48 PM)hollodero Wrote: Dill Wrote: Also, I don't understand why it would be "weird" to blame white agitators. Local authorities in Minneapolis are doing that, alongside community and civil rights leaders based upon testimony of ground-level eyewitnesses and photographs. One of the problems with recent (since Ferguson) civil rights protests centered on police overreach has been their draw for various groups with broader or other agendas than addressing police violence.

I believe there are agitators, I can very well imagine that they escalate things here and there. I do not believe they are the sole culprits and think that shifting all responsibility away from protesters to agitators is not the honest approach.

Well, there is an empirical question here--to what degree ARE the protestors "responsible" for the violence, especially burning and looting of stores?  Is the person who made a sign protesting police violence and marched to a gathering spot with others chanting "I can't breathe" the same person we later see using a hammer to open a cash register in a looted store or throwing molotov cocktails on police cars?

Hard to answer that without looking at all actors over the time of the rioting.  And recognizing other actors than those legitimately protesting is not automatically "shifting all responsibility away from protestors."

I haven't heard any talk of making agitators the "sole culprits."  Black and Native American leaders in Minnesota addressed the protestors after the first night of rioting, urging THEM not to resort to violence, outside agitators or no. The assumption there was not that outside agitators were "sole culprits." https://www.fox9.com/news/minneapolis-activists-call-for-calm-end-to-violence-during-george-floyd-protests

In my post above, Sharpton is not addressing "outside agitators" when he empathizes with the "real" protestors and urges them to stop the violence. Older civil rights leaders like Jesse Jackson and Andrew Young have similarly weighed in. Looks to me like civil rights leaders in many communities are on message about how the violence diminishes chances of reform. I don't think they are addressing looters.