If the point of protesting by rioting, smashing police cars, and the like is to "effect broad change", then the protests are misguided. The public was already quite focused on the incident and unequivocal in its condemnation of the police officers involved, who were all quickly fired, and may yet face prosecution. You have mayors, Senators and Governors calling for investigations, giving press conferences... riots distract from that unerring and uncomfortable focus on the problem.
Now people can slip back into their normal comfort zone, decry the protests, and argue on the internet with the people who are saying things like "you love to see it" and "those cops deserve it" and calling anyone who opposes rioting in the streets a racist. Standard culture war BS.
Of course, this seemed inevitable, so no one is surprised, but similarly, no one should be suggesting that maybe rioting is the ticket to changing the way people feel about this issue. And really, the responses were starting to give me the impression that this incident - for whatever reason, because it's not like there haven't been terrible incidents caught on camera before - might actually result in some substantive policy measures, at least in Minnesota, which could then have a knock-on effect. Well, we'll see if that happens, because this stuff just creates a fresh news cycle.
__________________
"The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
|