I disagree that any responsibility should fall to the protesters.
The right to protest is baked into the first legal document the country as a political entity wrote. For the last 250 years politicians and cops have had the knowledge that Americans care a great deal about their right to stand in front of a statehouse and shout to their heart's content. They should create their own policies to deal with that fact. If that means ensuring no roads go near the statehouses, that there's ample space around popular protest spots, hell that there's guaranteed public restrooms in those areas, so be it. It also means that cops should have 250 years of collective knowledge in how to deescalate... But instead they've always gone the violent route (remember the 60s, when young black people were being shredded by police dogs?)
Now that being said, black lives matter in particular suffers from (in my opinion) a lack of leadership and organization. Over the weekend I wanted to attend protests. I have 100 surplus masks and shitloads of water bottles I wanted to give out. But after a straight hour of searching on every social media platform I could conceive of (as well as Google and just asking on Twitter) I found nothing but out of date websites, with articles from the beginning of the black lives matter movement.
If I want to donate money, I can choose between several different variations of the name "black lives matter," with no way to verify that these are representative organizations, or where the money goes.
During the protest (I just turned up at city hall and hoped for the best - it happened to work out), I didn't see any sort of leadership. Sure some local community leaders turned up, but nobody that represented any sort of modern iteration of a black rights movement.
Far be it from me to tell people how to best accomplish social goals - in my opinion raw, unfettered, and disorganized rage is a perfectly valid outlet for the people against the crimes of the American police system. I just feel like organization could only help.
Now that being said, black lives matter in particular suffers from (in my opinion) a lack of leadership and organization.
A universal problem with "leaderless movements" is that they quickly devolve to the lowest common denominator level. Anyone can put out their slate and call themselves an "activist" and it's inevitable that some dim person will come along and try to make a name for themselves by taking things farther. Put that person into a crisis situation with quickly gathering flash mobs, and what should we expect?
Then, on top of that, add on extremist opportunists who decide to exploit the situation, with the goal of destabilizing social order. A "leaderless movement" has all of the biomass of a huge national organization, but none of the immune system and command/control to counter such organized exploiters.
in my opinion raw, unfettered, and disorganized rage is a perfectly valid outlet for the people against the crimes of the American police system.
No. Outside of a protest, the worst actions we've seen would be crimes and qualify the perpetrator as a bad person. Just because they're in a protest doesn't change that. Would you feel that way if they came and burned your house or business down?
Evil is evil. Violence is violence. Another's evil is no excuse to perpetrate your own. Especially if it falls on innocent bystanders.
> Would you feel that way if they came and burned your house or business down?
Yup, and I have the receipts to prove it: my motorcycle was vandalized in Oakland during the protests. A small price to pay for unsung voices being heard.
You say violence is violence, yet I bet you have no problem with criminals being put in jail, i.e. their freedoms being violently removed from them.
You say violence is violence, yet I bet you have no problem with criminals being put in jail, i.e. their freedoms being violently removed from them.
The state should have the monopoly on violence. Then, instead of everyone doing violence, we have certain, appointed people given the responsibility who can then be trained and monitored. This is part and parcel of the Rule of Law. Certainly, this system isn't perfect. But you only have to live in a country or region without Rule of Law to know that it's much preferable to improve the system, than to abandon it.
Yup, and I have the receipts to prove it: my motorcycle was vandalized in Oakland during the protests. A small price to pay for unsung voices being heard
Are you going to speak for the elderly woman who was beaten by a 2x4, or her husband who was beaten when he came to protect her? Are you going to speak for the independent owner of the vintage clothing store in LA who was preparing to re-open and had his windows smashed and his inventory stolen?
Can you determine who will pay, and what "price" they will pay?
Have you ever criticized someone for their callous opinions on these matters, because it doesn't affect them so much? Well, perhaps the tenor of your opinion is connected to your not being affected so much.
Your circumstances just happen to afford you that privilege.
Well shit it isn't, it results every year in people being murdered in cold blood, nobody being arrested for it despite the perpetrators being known, and the majority of the population is apparently utterly fine with this - even you are merely saying that this situation "needs improvement", like you're marking homework. "The police only murdered one person in cold blood today rather than two, have a cookie!"
I've had a friend in an EU country have the police break their bones and leave them locked up without medical treatment for weeks, because they were an Eastern European refugee. This is what "Rule of Law" looks like - it looks like entire populations being utterly terrorised by a sanctioned force that they have absolutely no power to stop.
Law is a bunch of words on a piece of paper, it has no power to rule. We leave that to organisations (the police, prosecutor's office, courts and prisons) with a history and present of institutionalised racism and no accountability to the communities they terrorise.
Well shit it isn't, it results every year in people being murdered in cold blood, nobody being arrested for it despite the perpetrators being known
After the George Floyd incident, everyone was in agreement that this should stop. What's happening with the violence and the vandalism is just muddying the waters. It's almost as if the purpose isn't to make things better, but to foment a race war to destabilize the USA.
> After the George Floyd incident, everyone was in agreement that this should stop.
No, they really weren't - or at least not in any way that might lead to actionable results, like building systems that do not give cops the power to murder people without accountability. The same as all the other times the police have murdered people. It's not like this is a new thing that people are just waking up to.
No, they really weren't - or at least not in any way that might lead to actionable results
Can you substantiate that, or is it just your opinion? You can justify the imposition of your opinion on everyone? (Through violent intimidation?)
like building systems that do not give cops the power to murder people without accountability
This has happened, incrementally. Can you design a system, ground-up that will work as well as the current one? I suspect that's far more likely than iterating on the current one. That's also an opinion.
Do you have statistics that show that? Are more cops charged and imprisoned after murdering unarmed people every year, or does the number of unarmed murdered people go down, at all? People who die mysteriously in custody?
It's getting off topic, but it's worth pointing out that all the examples you're about to drum up may not have rule of law, but they certainly have "law," in that they have someone holding a monopoly on violence and the willingness to use it to meet their ends.
I think that's an important distinction to make between such a place, and a place of anarchy or a commune, which aren't necessarily places that don't have "rule of law" and aren't necessarily hubs of raw violent chaos.
So your solution to "people are evil and violent" is to... give a bunch of people carte blanche to be evil and commit violence with no accountability or recourse available to their victims?
> what exactly is your counter proposal? the united communes of america?
That doesn't sound too bad to me.
> people are evil and violent
It seems that isn't the really the case, it seems only a small minority of people are, but unfortunately violence allows aggregation of power which allows more violence which allows...
> anarchist want to destroy the current system flaws and all for a vacuum of justice
Not aware of any anarchists that want whatever a "vacuum of justice" is.
You know as well as I do that there are alternatives to a contemporary legal system that are not a bunch of roving warlords. The current system is not the only system that can possibly work.
Theorising on alternatives to the contemporary Western legal system have been done for the last century by leftists, and a lot of that gets put into practice on a small scale where it can be. I've been involved in some of it myself. Part of the goal is to prevent creating permanent organisations, such as the police and the court and the prisons, that have a structural incentive to protect themselves against a community trying to hold them accountable.
In fact, note that the concept of a jury is intended to work this way (although is missing many elements, and exists under the permanent organisation of the court) - a temporary organisation gathering to find justice, then dispersing.
Unfortunately it's difficult to tell the exact outcome of implementing any of it on a wider scale, as the times leftism has actually been in power have largely been during times of war where a lot of theory was thrown out the window, or using leftist messaging to implement something closer to a dictatorship. All we know is that a lot of it works when implemented in our own communities.
why dont you think the dictatorship is the outcome of implementing at scale? e.g. if private property must be eliminated to have a commune, and most people wont give up their private property willingly, what other way is there to eliminate private property at scale except via dictatorship and martial law?
This is the consequence of corruption, loss of trust and loss of civil society. And I see no ethical or moral incentive for the second class to participate, because it's a lie that the rule of law applies equally. It's a farce. Just admit what it really is, rather than keep lying about it.
The notion that peaceful protest will be respected? The president and vice president have asserted it. Yet both of them castigated Colin Kaepernick's peaceful protests. They don't have any respect for peaceful protest. Kaepernick was subject to ridicule, his livelihood destroyed, and threatened with ejection from his own country, for his peaceful protest, by the sitting POTUS.
Amy Cooper insists she's not a racist. But used her whiteness as a weapon, and a black man's blackness as a deficit, knowing full well with her threat against him that this same racial animus would be applied by the police. That's why she made the threat. What's more striking about the story? Her lie about the events that were to have transpired? Or her truth? White power. White power. White power.
There is no good reason for thinking people to respect American rule of law from an ethical or moral standpoint. Only respect it the same way black Americans, minorities, poor have come to: fear of its power.
The system isn't just imperfect. It isn't what it purports to be. And it isn't accountable. Why defend it? Where's even the pride in defending it? Where could legitimacy even come from?
> Are you going to speak for the elderly woman who was beaten by a 2x4, or her husband who was beaten when he came to protect her? Are you going to speak for the independent owner of the vintage clothing store in LA who was preparing to re-open and had his windows smashed and his inventory stolen?
Sure, I will - it's a shame that the cops refused to follow the science on the subject and deescelate protests. Instead they chose to fire on peaceful protesters and kick off a riot.
It's not like this kind of shit isn't studied. What article are we commenting on right now? This information has been available for a very, very long time.
So, to everyone that has been harmed by the police, directly (having their eyes shot out, being choked to death), or indirectly (property damage due to an avoidable riot), I think the police should be held responsible.
> > Are you going to speak for the elderly woman who was beaten by a 2x4, or her husband who was beaten when he came to protect her? Are you going to speak for the independent owner of the vintage clothing store in LA who was preparing to re-open and had his windows smashed and his inventory stolen?
> Sure, I will
Easy for you to say. You are in the privileged position of only having lost some body work on your motorcycle. Do you really think they'd consent to your "speaking for them?"
it's a shame that the cops refused to follow the science on the subject and deescelate protests. Instead they chose to fire on peaceful protesters and kick off a riot.
The bad people here are the extremists who are egging on the violence, while creating the devious tactical position of making it very hard for the police to distinguish who is who.
So, to everyone that has been harmed by the police, directly (having their eyes shot out, being choked to death), or indirectly (property damage due to an avoidable riot), I think the police should be held responsible.
Yes. And how about someone speaks for you, as you say you would for others? You are going to pay for the inventory of the shop. You are going to pay for the medical bills of the shop owner and his wife, plus pain and suffering. How about that?
> Then, instead of everyone doing violence, we have certain, appointed people given the responsibility who can then be trained and monitored
What if those people don't do it according to the law or in a just manner? We just all say: "oh well, they have a monopoly on force, so nothing to be done"?
You probably think it was quite rude to separate from the British at all. Perhaps we should go back to being a colony, since the separation was actually a complete violation of the crown's monopoly on violence!
> You say violence is violence, yet I bet you have no problem with criminals being put in jail, i.e. their freedoms being violently removed from them.
When you commit a crime and violate someone's freemdoms (the primary being right to life, liberty, property), you forfeit your own. When you kill someone and take their life, you steal or destroy property, you are now in debt to society. By living in a society you agree to its rules and when the rules are broken a price must be paid to deter others from breaking them.
Just because someone broke the rules, doesn't mean that everyone else gets to. The police officer was in the wrong. He was arrested, and charged. He will pay for what he did.
Be the change you want to see. Protest in a way that doesn't harm others. Many lost business and their livelihoods due to the destruction. What did they do to deserve that?
Police brutality is a systemic issue. Peaceful protest over the years haven't changed the system. Charging that one officer doesn't solve it either.
The Police reaction to these protests clearly shows systemic reform is needed. Peaceful protesters and reporters have been tear gassed, shot, and arrested. They don't deserve to be tret like that just because others decided to vandalize and loot.
That's a pretty bold claim. Do you have any statistics to show police are by and large using disproportionate force?
> Peaceful protest over the years haven't changed the system. Charging that one officer doesn't solve it either.
There are bad people in society. That doesn't mean the whole system is bad. Of course there is room for improvement, and action should be taken to remove those who are not fit to serve.
> The Police reaction to these protests clearly shows systemic reform is needed. Peaceful protesters and reporters have been tear gassed, shot, and arrested. They don't deserve to be tret like that just because others decided to vandalize and loot.
I agree that peaceful protesters don't deserve that. But let's get this clear, it was violent rioting that was occurring. In that situation, how are you to quickly separate the two groups?
> In that situation, how are you to quickly separate the two groups?
You're not to quickly do anything. Most countries claim to have the right an assumption of innocence for a reason - they believe, very strongly, that committing violence towards an innocent person is worse than letting a guilty person get away with whatever they were doing. Property can be rebuilt, for the most part; people's lives, not so much.
To put it bluntly - if a group of people robs a bank in the middle of the business day, you don't tear gas and shoot at everyone inside it.
That's what the government says, but not what they actually do. Here in Hong Kong, police fires tear gas directly into people's (tiny) apartment just for opening the window to take a peek outside.
I could be completely wrong, but the number of potential rioters (actual rioters + protestors) likely outnumbered police. The scale is so much larger and potential for damage and destruction is huge (over 200 businesses looted/destroyed in Minneapolis) that it is I believe of the highest priority to disperse the crowds as quickly as they can.
It is citizens job to be compliant. It is the government's job to enforce compliance.
I'm sure there was things the police could do better, but no one died at the hands of the police (after protesting started). The same can't be said for the protestors/rioters.
> It is citizens job to be compliant. It is the government's job to enforce compliance.
That sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship, not democracy. In a democracy, it's the citizens' job to keep their Government accountable - when the population says that the right to a presumption of innocence is paramount, they create a Government to ensure that right.
What you are suggesting is that the population does not believe that the right to a presumption of innocence is paramount - that it is ok to risk life, liberty and limb of innocent people to go after a criminal. That's maybe fine (although I'd argue ethically wrong), but stop teaching the opposite to your children. If you taught your children that the police and courts were out to kill them or lock them up indefinitely for nothing they have any control over, maybe they'd correctly be a little more terrified from an early age - and maybe they'd campaign to change that. Funnily enough, one demographic does get taught that, and others the opposite - because that's how it works out in practice.
The police have literally blinded people, including journalists, permanently, by the way. And potentially have killed people - "In Louisville, David McAtee, 53, the owner of a well-known barbecue business, was shot and killed early Monday. The authorities said that officers from the Louisville Metro Police Department and National Guard soldiers opened fire in response to a gunshot as they tried to disperse a large crowd after a curfew had gone into effect. It was not immediately clear if Mr. McAtee had been killed by the police or someone in the crowd, the authorities said." Of course, as always when the police kill people, body cameras were not on.
Maybe I misunderstood what you meant when you wrote "Government says one thing so we're compliant, and then does another when it suits it". I never said people don't have the ability to change how the government enforces compliance, simply that they are the ones who do.
Many people have died at the hands of other rioters as a result of the protests.
I'm not saying that people needed to loose their eyes, but they were out after curfew which was enacted because they wanted people to go home due to the violence.
Who exactly are these "many people"? I haven't been able to find a source on this. When I checked yesterday, three protesters had been killed by people unrelated to the protest, and two people had been shot by some people driving around in a car (cannot work out how/whether that is related to the riots).
There's a lot of energy being put into making this sound like it's more violent than it is, again, so that you agree with it and stay compliant. When the Government does something violent that goes against the reasons it was created, you should not be compliant. I'd hope that you would agree that the Government cannot unilaterally execute people, and that just sitting there while it does so is... completely immoral.
According to this article [0], more than 20 were killed over the weekend in Chicago, when the previous max in one day was 10. Average people killed per day is about 2. I think it's safe to say the majority of those were due to the riots. That doesn't count numerous other cities where deaths occured.
> I'd hope that you would agree that the Government cannot unilaterally execute people, and that just sitting there while it does so is... completely immoral.
No of course I don't want the government executing people. But the death of George Floyd was the result of actions from one man, not of the entire government. I think you would be hard-pressed to find any member of the government that didn't see an issue with what happened.
Regardless, it doesn't make sense to brutalize looters. They did this shit during hurricane katrina too - people stuffed into a stadium desperate for aid, people trapped on roofs, and the national guard comes in guns ablaze against looters. It's madness to put "property rights" over human lives.
Oh well, the liquor store is getting looted. Sucks that you can't deal with that because there are protests because you are murdering black people. Fix the bigger problem before worrying about property.
Showing an avg. 50% fatality rate on police shootings. You can compared this to other countries, which have the same statistic at something like 5-10% and it's not like these countries are overrun by mass shootings or terrorists. Some might actually says its the reverse :D
All of the videos from the last few days is still being sorted, but from what I've seen the violence from police against protesters far outstrips that of protesters against random people or cops. I'm in fact only aware of several incidents, and all of which were easily justifiable - a man firing a bow at protesters, an idiot screaming the n-word at protesters, and a man charging at protesters with a sword.
So whenever people say "but riots!" I can't help but question the priorities - can't that wait until after we figure out the police brutality thing? You're only hurting our efforts here, and helping the cops justify the unjustifiable.
> from what I've seen the violence from police against protesters far outstrips that of protesters against random people or cops.
How? As far as I can tell no one was killed at the hands of the police (after protests started). Just in Chicago at least 17 people were killed during the protests.
Note that shooting someone isn't the only form of violence possible. Escalating by firing rubber bullets or tear gassing or driving your car into peaceful protestors are all violence, and I've seen tens, maybe a hundred examples of that at this point.
From your article: "the police and National Guard were shot at first and that the shots that killed McAtee were fired in response", and that they weren't part of the protests.
It seems rioters exhibited a disproportionate amount of violence compared to police though.
Peaceful protesters and reporters have been tear gassed, shot, and arrested. They don't deserve to be tret like that just because others decided to vandalize and loot.
This is exactly what extremist groups exploiting the protests want. The extremists want to foment violence between the protesters and the police. The situation plays into their hands, because the police have no way of distinguishing who is who.
The circumstances are not normal. Rule of Law has broken down. By continuing the protests, peaceful protesters are creating cover for looters and violent perpetrators. Those protesters who are willfully exploiting this situation to "pressure" the authorities are having evil done for their goals.
There needs to be another kind of lockdown to prevent the spread of the contagion of violence, the contagion of chaos, and the contagion of injustice.
It's been the clear pattern of Antifa and other far left groups. Sowing chaos and preventing discourse is what they've been doing more and more for several years now.
>> The police officer was in the wrong. He was arrested, and charged. He will pay for what he did.
"He will pay for what he did." You seem to have certain knowledge of the future. Dismissively saying everything will be OK does not actually make it happen.
I'm only going from past experience: If anything is learned from the many times this story has played out in the past, the cops wont wont pay. In fact, until an independent investigation: the cops were well on their way to freedom:
"The criminal complaint said that the autopsy “revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.” Mr. Floyd, the complaint said, had underlying health conditions, including coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease."
Literally that just happened with the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, right before George Floyd's murder. Extreme conflicts of interest. These events back-to-back really set the bonfire alight. The immediate outrage over George Floyd's murder, ensuing demonstrations, and demands for charges to be filed probably helped motivate charges actually getting filed promptly. That's definitely not a guarantee however!
Not seen news come out of people's homes destroyed. If we're going to participate in a damages competition, though, let's do that - the cops shot out a couple people's eyeballs, but only after of course kicking off this whole thing by murdering black people with no consequences. There, that settles that.
If we're going to participate in a damages competition, though, let's do that
No. The Gandhi movie termed that, "An eye for an eye, making the whole world blind."
How about we condemn evil, and try to make sure there's less evil in the world? Just because you say you're fighting evil, that doesn't nominate you to commit evil, especially if it's in the name of others without their consent. Especially if it's so you can coerce others into seeing things your particular way.
Isn't that what sparked the protests in the first place? Someone who committed evil, in the name of fighting evil?
Can you elaborate? All four of the police officers were immediately fired. The primary officer that was kneeling on him was charged with murder and manslaughter and will go to prison. Likely charges will be brought on the other three.
Lord forbid nobody caught the murder on video. This happens all over America, all the time. Thread is full of links or a quick hop on google will serve you in this regard.
What would have happened if it was citizens? All four would be in jail immediately, if they even get that far without being shot for "resisting arrest" first. At the very least they'd get a beating somewhere between having cuffs put on them and getting into a squad car. We know this from all the recorded instances of police brutality looking exactly as I've just described.
Lost their jobs. Come on. Would you merely "lose your job" if you watched your buddy murder a guy and stood there throughout the whole thing?
> This happens all over America, all the time. Thread is full of links or a quick hop on google will serve you in this regard
I bet there is tons of anecdotal data to support any claim. There needs to be aggregated data that shows it's happening in high enough rates to be a "systemic" issue.
> Would you merely "lose your job" if you watched your buddy murder a guy and stood there throughout the whole thing?
In most countries bystanders are not obligated to assist. So nothing would happen to you?
ah, yes, we’ll use the data collected by the same institutions doing the extra judicial murders. surely they’ve been keeping great notes. and then finally we’ll be able to prove that racism is real to some commenter on hacker news.
I'm not saying there can't be police that are racist or even that racism isn't real. But if anyone claims systemic racism exists, they will have to provide more than anecdotal data to support that.
Floyd used a $20 note that the store owner thought was counterfeit, called the cops, the cops didn't even check to see that if it was a real $20 note before killing him. It was real...
Quick note: according to the owner, it was a 17 y/o employee that called the cops, and the store's policy is to only call the cops in response to violence. The employee was fired, and the other employees received additional training.
> the cops didn't even check to see that if it was a real $20 note before killing him. It was real...
Do you have any sources for that? I can't seem to find any references for that. According to some reports on the incident, the police at one point went into the store not sure what they did there though.
>> I believe the other three will be charged and convicted. At least that what I hope will happen.
Sadly, "belief and hope" hasn't worked for entire swaths of the population. If "belief and hope" worked, we could just "hope" there wont be riots and everything would be merry.
In reality, every two months something horrible happens happens and gets on the news. It probably happens much more than that and isn't on the news. And if it wasn't on video -- it is like it didn't happen.
It is rare to have video. It is even more rare for a charge. Even more for a conviction. I dont think looting is the answer here, but i seriously question the judgement of people who actually think there is no problem of police violence.
Given the total number of interactions with police every year (tens of millions), the number resulting in death is low (roughly 1000 a year). The number of deaths as an accident or unjust is a fraction of that.
Any time a person is killed or treated wrongly is terrible and police should be held accountable. But I believe it is more to do with rotten people than it is a rotten system.
I admire your optimism. As evidence against it: the doctor that performed the autopsy claims there's no evidence that Floyd died of choking, instead blaming "possible narcotics" in his blood stream. No explanation for how the doc knew there were possibly narcotics in his blood stream without knowing exactly what those narcotics were.
>> Can you elaborate? All four of the police officers were immediately fired. The primary officer that was kneeling on him was charged with murder and manslaughter and will go to prison. Likely charges will be brought on the other three.
How is it sustainable that nationwide protests need to happen before an officer is charged for murder? Does that not seem like a broken system?
> A universal problem with "leaderless movements" is that they quickly devolve to the lowest common denominator level. Anyone can put out their slate and call themselves an "activist"...
I appreciate this part a lot. It helps me realize that movements also have brands they need to manage and have similar struggles to companies that are trying to manage brands at various levels of centralization—e.g., the challenge of maintaining brand alignment among distributed franchisees.
> A "leaderless movement" has all of the biomass of a huge national organization, but none of the immune system and command/control to counter such organized exploiters.
I wonder how well leaderless movements can create things. It seems as organizations and movements become less coordinated, less structured in how to resolve internal conflicts and align, that they would be more suited to attacking things or ideas, rather than building them.
This is definitely a known problem, and one which lots of people have spent lots of time thinking about.
As you say, social change movements face many of the same struggles as companies, including maintaining brand alignment and quality control across a network of distributed actors. For this reason, social change movements often adopt (and adapt) the same management tools and techniques that large companies have developed for their operations.
>It seems as organizations and movements become less coordinated, less structured in how to resolve internal conflicts and align, that they would be more suited to attacking things or ideas, rather than building them.
I'm not sure this is true. Leaderless movements can be well coordinated and structured (it's just hard). And poorly coordinated and structured movements aren't really suited to doing anything well, even just attacking things and ideas.
For this reason, social change movements often adopt (and adapt) the same management tools and techniques that large companies have developed for their operations.
Going by the praise he had for his organization and the people helping him, MLK had something like this.
And poorly coordinated and structured movements aren't really suited to doing anything well, even just attacking things and ideas.
When exploited by organized outside forces, they do one thing really well: Create disorder, chaos, and disdain.
I believe it was Thomas Carlysle who said something like, "Revolutions are started by idealists, prosecuted by fanatics, and co-opted by scoundrels."
Tim Pool recently quipped in one of his videos that some copies of the Antifa handbook have explicit instructions to "pretend to be BLM" for cover.
> Would you feel that way if they came and burned your house or business down?
Yeah. My house and business would be insured. No amount of insurance can revive a man, woman or child murdered by police. I'm OK with personal sacrifices in service of justice.
I would happily burn all of my earthly possessions if it meant babies like Bou Bou Phonesavanh were no longer at risk of being critically injured by flashbangs or murdered by stray gunfire.
The tradeoffs between traditional and leaderless movements are a lot like the tradeoffs between centralised and decentralised systems in tech to be honest.
On the one hand, the latter avoid the weaknesses of the former, in that they can neither easily be 'taken over' by outside forces nor provide a single point of weakness for their enemies to target.
And that's useful for both software and protest movements, since it leave a single target for the opposition to go after, whether that's through legal threats, harassment, arrest or assault/murder.
At the same time, it also makes the system prone to abuse by bad actors, since there's no one able to either get rid of them or distance the group from them in general.
Hence the extremists taking over political movements and protests, and the trolls/extremists/criminals becoming an increasingly prominent part of any decentralised community or social network setup online.
This in turn leaves both open to attack from their opponents and the media, who can point at the worst elements and say "See? These people are all evil/sociopathic/crazy/whatever' based on it.
It's like to some degree, avoiding bad actors and running a robust and uncensorable system are fundamentally incompatible with one another, in the same way as usability and security are.
On the one hand, the latter avoid the weaknesses of the former, in that they can neither easily be 'taken over' by outside forces nor provide a single point of weakness for their enemies to target.
In situations where mob mentality can take over and chaos can create a "fog of war" this is not true! Even though most of the protesters want to remain peaceful, the amplitude of sowing chaos, and its potential to spark additional chaos within mass rally situations, are providing extremists that "single point of weakness."
Basically, against an organized opponent that wants to create chaos, mass rallies are kind of like packing together certain isotopes of uranium atoms. Even if most of the units are "inert" (in that most of the people want peace,) if enough individuals with activation potential are densely packed enough, you can still get the chain reaction.
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The right to protest is baked into the first legal document the country as a political entity wrote. For the last 250 years politicians and cops have had the knowledge that Americans care a great deal about their right to stand in front of a statehouse and shout to their heart's content. They should create their own policies to deal with that fact. If that means ensuring no roads go near the statehouses, that there's ample space around popular protest spots, hell that there's guaranteed public restrooms in those areas, so be it. It also means that cops should have 250 years of collective knowledge in how to deescalate... But instead they've always gone the violent route (remember the 60s, when young black people were being shredded by police dogs?)
Now that being said, black lives matter in particular suffers from (in my opinion) a lack of leadership and organization. Over the weekend I wanted to attend protests. I have 100 surplus masks and shitloads of water bottles I wanted to give out. But after a straight hour of searching on every social media platform I could conceive of (as well as Google and just asking on Twitter) I found nothing but out of date websites, with articles from the beginning of the black lives matter movement.
If I want to donate money, I can choose between several different variations of the name "black lives matter," with no way to verify that these are representative organizations, or where the money goes.
During the protest (I just turned up at city hall and hoped for the best - it happened to work out), I didn't see any sort of leadership. Sure some local community leaders turned up, but nobody that represented any sort of modern iteration of a black rights movement.
Far be it from me to tell people how to best accomplish social goals - in my opinion raw, unfettered, and disorganized rage is a perfectly valid outlet for the people against the crimes of the American police system. I just feel like organization could only help.