The riots in Americam citys after Martin Luther King was shot was the final weight on the scales that brought about the passage of the civil rights act, a momenteous change for the better in American society.
Had there been no riots after his assasination, his cause might have died with him. It was the only way the poor of Urban America could express their rage and disenfranchisment at that point in history, it rattled White Americas cage like never before and made them afraid. Thus the act was passed.
Major civil disturbances in many citys at once like is going on in the UK during the last 72 hours have serious and deep rooted causes underlying them. The people of the UK should consider their cages rattled tonight and stop to think about what the problems really are behind this rather than resorting to the "jail the thugs" mentality that seems to be prevailing (not to say they dont need some reprimanding)..
If all those people out there willing to act this way are unified as they appear to be achieving, they cant be ignored if they dont want to be. Its a fact of life in an overcrowded country with a very unequal distribution of its wealth.
This element has been empowered in a big way by all this and whats making them do it may have to be taken more seriously than it has been. Maybe some good will actually come of this in time.
I do not claim to have an answer to what to do about this, I am just suggesting that it be given some thought from a few perspectives other than revenge and discipline which seems to be the consensus within the media and leadership
the youth just want democracy and a fair, level playing field. they have been exploited and unfairly treated for far to long and now the older oppressors have to accept the situation they created. if we can just equally distribute the wealth everyone would get along and live happy productive progressive lives. those elite few whom are so quick to judge need to stop making this worse as well as everything else in the world worse. a very sobering situation, indeed.
read this somewhere a year ago: Cuts in social welfare payments that will devastate the poor if they are already laboring under runaway inflation. The economically deprived will take to the streets with a mind set of nothing to lose if the government handouts they have become dependent on are drastically reduced.
As architects aren't we getting so routinely shafted?
And as middle class people, whose to say what it will take to get us riled up to the point of taking to the streets. If this recession is going to get worse, I see that happening, but I really hope Im wrong
i must say that since arriving in London from NYC over a year ago, I havent felt as safe here. There is an anger in the air, and its been showing full force across England
It's hard to riot in most cities of America. You could burn downtown Atlanta to the ground without 95% of city's population even noticing. How dies one even riot in low density cities? Do you drive to your local mall? Take the bus?
Rest of the world has it easy when it comes to such matters. Go outside the building, throw a brick. Run back inside. Throw a chair off your balcony. It's bound to hit someone.
"I was totally going to riot but got stuck on I-95."
In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a number of planning concepts pushed to decrease density to avoid the "unpleasantness" of crowding and to increase "civility." There was already a few series of riots in the U.S. pre-World-War-II in the major cities. And even then, low-density housing was already a recommendation during the Reconstruction to prevent the "darkies" from getting "uppity." A portion of American urban theory throughout the 20th-century whether directly or indirectly discourages "direct democracy" by decentralizing power.
Since the UK doesn't have a long and prevalent history of "uppity darkies" like the U.S., they've done more or less the same thing.
Just in U.S. literature where you see "being black and or poor" replace it with the more British correct phrase of "anti-social behavior."
one of the things irritated me and many others was people start to clean up the streets in south central los angeles the day after the 1992 rodney king riots. it was mainly people from well to do white westside communities who had no racial repression on them and had entire police department assigned to protect 'their' neighborhoods unnecessarily and depleting much needed intervention to save lives in poor neighborhoods where 4000 fires were going at once and dozens of people lost their lives.
mostly naive and selfish, these people rushed into sweeping all the social questions, reasons, intensity of resistance under the table. out of my sight out of my mind... do gooders at their best.
wombles.., stop being so oblivious to people's repression!
how can you be so happy go around when there is a major crisis going on? this isn't a street party damn it!
riots happen for a reason.. usually social injustice and unfair treatment of a racial group or a segment of a under privileged society. the reasons are usually accumulated over the years and they explode from some police act, beating, killing, you name it. please don't grab that mop and start to hide everything under the table without understanding what is really going on there.
that's all i have to say having survived one of the worst riots in los angeles.
I was a bit shocked when I saw the riot start last Saturday in London. Everything happened really fast. People running away and screaming and some even encountered some ACL injury. I just hope that everything's going to be okay.
On this news here it says the riot is about an unfair shooting. I didn't think it was related to some sort of social unrest, unless the people there feel their police are out of control.
this is no riot for a cause, its just selfish looting by people who have nothing better to do and feel entitled to "free stuff because others were getting it too". they capitalized on a mans shooting in tottenham (which should be the real focus)...
the fact is theyve gone around destroying local businesses and setting alight peoples houses and cars...for what? to show the "man"...? its not a protest, its just thievery, arson and property destruction with no point, other than to prove they can get away with it.
im glad people are coming to help clean up, it shows the true spirit of the city, one which has been attacked by a small group of miscreants, who due to already lacking civic responsibilities, decided to join in on the "fun" and smash things up. there are some really good comments on a lot of the bbc articles...take some time to read them.
I'm sure if you actually paid attention in your fancy architecture classes about swarm intelligence / crowd theory... you'd have learned that there's little rhyme or reason behind riots. Like any animal that enters a swarming (or gregarious phase if you're a locust) phase, the paths actions of a crowd are not controlled by any specific person or cause.
Instead, they respond to stimuli and subconsciously aggrandize based on instinctual or perceived inputs. Does this excuse the crime? Not really. But any group of animals is inherently dangerous and any good animal trainer knows that positive reinforcement and ignoring bad behavior ultimately prevents situations that end in violence.
It completely is a case of swarm intelligence. But the conditions that have contributed to its emergence are a combination of factors beyond just criminality. Crime is only the effect.
Not enough cops on the street, and the ones that were on the street, just stared at the whole thing unfold.
People have had enough of diminishing privileges.
With massive cuts to the public sector, over 500,000 jobs being cut,and VAT increases
people are being made unemployed for a tory ideology to stuff their own pockets, Its no wonder that people are responding, defending their own neighborhoods. And that youths are expressing a nationwide anger of the tory cuts, and destruction of society.
If the world economy is going to get worse, many are saying this is only the beginning.
While Cameron announces in Parliament he may hit social networking systems to curtail riots; Caroline Lucas, the UK's only green MP put out this:
"If we stop at denunciations and crackdowns, nothing will be learned about why sections of our own population feel they can riot, loot and treat their neighbours and communities so appallingly.
"The bigger picture has to be considered. Britain is deeply unequal.
"Last year, London's richest people were worth 273 times more than its poorest.
"Given the growing evidence … that increasing inequality had a role to play in at least some of the rioting, the government must commit to an impact assessment of any further policies to establish if they will increase inequality …
"The prime minister has said this is 'not about poverty but about culture'. But it is about both. It is about inequality and culture and how dangerous it is when you mix growing inequality with a culture which puts consumerism above citizenship."
Britain’s youth unemployment rate is currently over 20 percent. During the economic boom a decade ago, though, nearly as many were out of work, and they did not all turn to crime.
To counter the risk that they might, there were storefront drop-in centers for young people in the neighborhood; these places are now shutting down, as are other community services, like health centers for the elderly and libraries. Local police forces have also been shrinking.
All are victims of what people in Britain call “the cuts” — the government’s defunding of civil-society institutions in order to balance the nation’s books.
from Richard Sennett and Saskia Sassen Op-Ed Cameron’s Broken Windows: in today's NYT http://nyti.ms/nLeTwY
I'm pretty sure about it...this NYTimes piece misses the point. I used to live just off Kingsland Road, and I never had any issue, day or night with feeling unsafe, regardless of the people hanging around...you just dont get yourself into stupid situations (goes without saying). Frankly, if anything...in areas like Hackney the issue is gentrification, the sort where young professionals move into flats costing over £700 per month per person...and then the local hangouts of the long term residents, are slowly replaced by bars, clubs, restaurants, vintage shops, etc that cater to only the new (and relatively mobile) population thats taken over. Areas like Islington and Hackney are filled with council flats, the now-rundown estates built to cover the housing shortages after the war...and which are filled with exactly these "unemployed young people". The divide grows larger...
So, blame the cuts if you want, but theres another side of the story...and honestly, all these "unemployed young people" dont do anything to improve their neighborhoods anyway. They take things for granted, and now have gone and taken it to the next level, actually destroying the places they live and the businesses of their neighbors.
Read into it as much as you want, but intellectualizing this is only post rationalization. The people active in the looting just wanted free stuff and to cause destruction on the streets. I guess, the criticism of the government is a useful side effect, but frankly...they're not the ones doing any of the criticizing. We are.
and further to that, as the poor get poorer, there are less and less people to pay into the so called social services that they (increasingly) rely on. At least the UK still has the NHS, and their university system is still cheaper than the USA...and they get their 25 days a year off.
We couldnt even attempt to reach the level (theyre hanging on to) here in the US.
justavisual, you make no sense as your posts contradict themselves from one sentence to other. Very hard to follow. Try to think more intelligently before posting childish bylines you hear from others. Your povs are embarrassingly cliche.
morality degree zero, I'm not giving you bylines...I'm giving you my opinion as a resident of these neighborhoods. My point is that there are segments of society that have been increasingly marginalized and their dependence on benefits from the councils leaves them without any pressure to actually progress in their lives. They don't care for education, they don't see a future for themselves, and they lack the morals to stop them lashing out violently. They simply subsist on the welfare state, and when they saw the looting start in one neighborhood they capitalized on it elsewhere, because it was easy. This capitalization spread to all sorts of people including young children, children of businessmen, students and the employed, proving that this isn't about anything except opportunistic crime. Society wont change just because the government suddenly wakes up and changes its view, it has to change from within, and people need to be held accountable for their actions by the people surrounding them, ie parents, peers and community leaders.
This is the UK so...we're talking about Chavs here aren't we?
I studied there for a while, and I stand by the fact that Chavs, and related subgroups, have absolutely no desire to improve themselves. One or two might, but that's about as unlikely as, say, my waking up tomorrow and discovering an oil well blocked by Nazi gold in my backyard.
And if we're talking about Chavs and skinheads, well, they'd riot over over just about anything for the sheer hell of it. They'd riot about football, cider, or the way grass is an annoying shade of green. Looking at them, I don't so much think of deep seated economic problems. I'm thinking something along the lines of "How did those Orcs climb out of that fantasy novel?"
I'd say yeah, it's them. The prevailing social conditions give them a nice excuse, but these guys could be living in a mansion and they'd still take a day off every week to trash the local supermarket.
justavisual this seems like a contradictory sentence
"My point is that there are segments of society that have been increasingly marginalized and their dependence on benefits from the councils leaves them without any pressure to actually progress in their lives."
on the one hand you are saying they have been marginalized which implies an active ex-clusion from society (by who/how etc? one assumes social policies, under-investment in social housing/education etc?) on the other hand you are saying
"They simply subsist on the welfare state, ..because it was easy."
Do they have agency or not? Can't they be both marginalized/excluded and also taking advantage/using riots as a outlet for their frustrations.
Isn't rioting another form of political action/expression?
They've been marginalized by both government policies and modern consumerist culture, they are dependent on the state for their welfare, and they are slaves to the pressures of material consumption. So I guess maybe the conclusion is in these times violence seems to be about the only way to drum up enough media under global scrutiny, sad as that is. But the kind of nonsensical rioting that has happened in London, like in Paris, just goes to show that its not targeted, its not efficient, its not with any purpose. If people want to demand things, there are ways to organize and protest and work for the things you want. The government has failed to give them a voice...but then maybe that's part of the issue here...how to fix that? Now we've got 50% saying, strip their benefits, treat them as criminals, take away their liberty and put them in a cell...and keep paying for them behind bars. The other half says: figure out how to help them help themselves??
on the Parisian riots – extract from ‘Violence’ by Zizek
In a weird self-referential short circuit, they were protesting against the very reaction to their protests. “Populist reason” here encounters its irrational limits: what we have is a zero-level protest, a violent protest act which demands nothing. There was an irony in watching the sociologists, intellectuals and commentators trying to understand and help. Desperately they tried to discern the meaning of the protesters’ actions “We must do something about the integration of immigrants, about their welfare their, job opportunities,” they proclaimed – in the process they obfuscated the key enigma the riots presented.
The protesters, although effectively underprivileged and de facto excluded, were in no way living on the edge of bare survival. People in much worse physical and ideological oppression, had been able to organize themselves into political agencies with clear or even fuzzy agendas. The fact that there was no programme behind the burning Paris suburbs is thus itself a fact to be interpreted. It tells us a great deal about our idealogico-political predicament.
What kind of universe is it that we inhabit, which can celebrate itself as a society of choice, but in which the only option available to enforce democratic consensus is a blind acting out? The sad fact that opposition to the system cannot articulate itself in the guise of a realistic alternative, or at least a meaningful utopian project, is a grave illustration of our predicament. What does our celebrated freedom of choice serve, when the only choice is between playing the rules and (self-)destructive violence. The protesters’ violence was almost exclusively directed against their own. The cars burned and the schools torched were not those of the richer neighborhoods. They were part of the hard-won acquisitions of the very strata from which the protesters originated.
I remeber an episode of the Sopranos, where a troubled kid that was being picked on decided to take a dump in the boys locker room, in front of all his classmates. He was expelled.
He could have dealt with his problems in another way but...
"What kind of universe is it that we inhabit, which can celebrate itself as a society of choice, but in which the only option available to enforce democratic consensus is a blind acting out? The sad fact that opposition to the system cannot articulate itself in the guise of a realistic alternative, or at least a meaningful utopian project, is a grave illustration of our predicament."
I am a member of the University Academics Union in the UK [UCU] and received this well written letter spelling out the issues: Anyone Interested 'necters please go to the petition and sign!
From: Sean Vernell and Tom Hickey (National Executive of the University and Colleges Union), and Jeremy Corbyn, M.P., and John McDonnell, M.P.
Prime Minister,
We have heard much from yourself and members of your Government about the reasons for the rioting that has spread across Britain. You put it down to “criminality”, “greed” and lack of “parental control”. You treat it as a moral failing of the individuals and their families, as a ‘loss of values’. It is as if there did not exist a political and social context.
Anyone attempting to understand why thousands of young people have taken to the streets and rioted needs to begin by locating young people’s anger in the conditions of austerity in which the young – and working people in general - are being made to pay for a crisis that is not of their making. Yet anyone who does attempt to explain the rioting in these terms is accused of justifying looting as if it were a solution to a social crisis that is the consequence of your policies. There is a difference, Prime Minister, between explanation and justification.
Government ministers have been wheeled out to denounce young people and any parallel to the riots of the 1980s has been denied. It is clear, however, that many of the issues, which are now acknowledged about the 1980s riots by these same Government ministers, are the same issues that have fuelled today’s riots. Issues such as unemployment, lack of educational opportunities, police harassment, racism and public spending cuts are at the root of the problem.
In many cases young people feel even more alienated from society than they did 30 years ago. Unemployment for 16-25 year olds has become institutionalised throughout the subsequent period, reaching 1 million today. No less than 75,000 young people are statutorily homeless. No less than 600,000 live in overcrowded homes. There are more black people in our prisons today than are in our universities. Young black people are still disproportionately represented amongst the unemployed, the homeless, the criminalized, and the marginalized and disconnected. Yet you and your ministers speak as if racism is no longer a feature of our society.
There are only 11,000 youth clubs left after the closure programme of the 1980s, and three quarters of 11-16 year olds do not have an access to a youth club. Why do young employees not have a statutory right to paid educational leave, and why do they not have the right of representation on workplace training committees so that they have some sense of control of their destiny? Why is our society driving up the hours that we work instead of having a maximum of a 30-hour week that would allow employment to be spread, offering employment to a larger number of young people. Why are there so few decision-making forums in which young people can be involved?
What has been your government’s response to this? Universities have been allowed to triple tuition fees making it almost impossible for working class people to attend. The Educational Maintenance Allowance, which previously ensured that many were able to attend college, has been abolished. Police powers have been increased leading to more young people being harassed and imprisoned. Unemployment rises inexorably. Now you make the risible suggestion that the consequent disaffection can be overcome through the use of water cannon, plastic bullets, and more draconian sentencing by the courts.
These riots have revealed the issues that need to be addressed urgently if our young people are to feel they have a future. As educationalists and trade unionists we call upon your Government to put significant resources into ensuring that young people have real hope, a hope that matches the opportunities that one of the richest countries in the world should be providing for all its young, and not just for the children of the wealthiest.
We demand that you address this problem seriously, and implement the following policies:
• the restoration of the EMA and the 80% HE funding cut, and scrapping of tuition fees;
• the ending of public spending cuts in general;
• repeal of the stop and search laws;
• that Job Seekers Allowance to be raised to a minimum of £110 per week;
• that an urgent building programme for properly-stafffed Youth Clubs be put in place;
• a reversal of the cuts in schools, Further and Adult Education.
"A recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reveals another piece of the puzzle: Of all the European Union countries, only Portugal is home to greater wealth disparity than Great Britain. These riots are a specifically English problem -- at least for now. But the divide between rich and poor is growing all across Europe, helped along by austerity measures, especially those implemented by the countries worst stricken in the debt crisis, including Greece, Spain and Italy. Not only are social services being slashed, but school budgets and health care services as well."
Nam, the clickable map at the bottom of that article gives a very good outline of what ails youth in Europe. The best one is the one on Italy, which points out the massive violence among soccer fans. I'm amazed that the London riots took everyone by surprise: that level of violence and sociopathy has always been the hallmark of a certain type of British soccer fan (and not just British). In Italy little is done to address the problem because the "ultras", as they're called, are serious season-ticket-holders and pad the clubs with much money. So you have explosives and bonfires, racist chants, stabbings, beatings and killings....you know, all the things sports should be associated with, and mostly lip service to any solutions to all this. England has had the same thing for years, but now everyone is "shocked" at this violence among the young.
Someone look up the Labour Party in the UK. One explanation is the Party's ideological belief in multi-culturalism without limitations, which in effect due to bad policies in the last decade, led to the erosion of British values and social mores. These policies have a trickle-down effect; riot police severely limited by laws, and therefore inaction to protect businesses and families for fear of playing into the "racism" trap.
"We are told again and again that we are living through a debt crisis, and that we all have to share the burden and tighten our belts. All, that is, except the (very) rich. The idea of taxing them more is taboo: if we did, the argument runs, the rich would have no incentive to invest, fewer jobs would be created and we would all suffer. The only way to save ourselves from hard times is for the poor to get poorer and the rich to get richer. What should the poor do? What can they do?
Although the riots in the UK were triggered by the suspicious shooting of Mark Duggan, everyone agrees that they express a deeper unease – but of what kind? As with the car burnings in the Paris banlieues in 2005, the UK rioters had no message to deliver. (There is a clear contrast with the massive student demonstrations in November 2010, which also turned to violence. The students were making clear that they rejected the proposed reforms to higher education.) This is why it is difficult to conceive of the UK rioters in Marxist terms, as an instance of the emergence of the revolutionary subject; they fit much better the Hegelian notion of the ‘rabble’, those outside organised social space, who can express their discontent only through ‘irrational’ outbursts of destructive violence – what Hegel called ‘abstract negativity’."
UK riots
Some thought on the UK riots:
The riots in Americam citys after Martin Luther King was shot was the final weight on the scales that brought about the passage of the civil rights act, a momenteous change for the better in American society.
Had there been no riots after his assasination, his cause might have died with him. It was the only way the poor of Urban America could express their rage and disenfranchisment at that point in history, it rattled White Americas cage like never before and made them afraid. Thus the act was passed.
Major civil disturbances in many citys at once like is going on in the UK during the last 72 hours have serious and deep rooted causes underlying them. The people of the UK should consider their cages rattled tonight and stop to think about what the problems really are behind this rather than resorting to the "jail the thugs" mentality that seems to be prevailing (not to say they dont need some reprimanding)..
If all those people out there willing to act this way are unified as they appear to be achieving, they cant be ignored if they dont want to be. Its a fact of life in an overcrowded country with a very unequal distribution of its wealth.
This element has been empowered in a big way by all this and whats making them do it may have to be taken more seriously than it has been. Maybe some good will actually come of this in time.
I do not claim to have an answer to what to do about this, I am just suggesting that it be given some thought from a few perspectives other than revenge and discipline which seems to be the consensus within the media and leadership
nah. it's a British thing. Inbreeding and all.
french revolution anybody?
Revolt against who?
the youth just want democracy and a fair, level playing field. they have been exploited and unfairly treated for far to long and now the older oppressors have to accept the situation they created. if we can just equally distribute the wealth everyone would get along and live happy productive progressive lives. those elite few whom are so quick to judge need to stop making this worse as well as everything else in the world worse. a very sobering situation, indeed.
Someone hacked FRaC's account. Or he's taking sarcasm to hipster levels of obscurity.
read this somewhere a year ago: Cuts in social welfare payments that will devastate the poor if they are already laboring under runaway inflation. The economically deprived will take to the streets with a mind set of nothing to lose if the government handouts they have become dependent on are drastically reduced.
As architects aren't we getting so routinely shafted?
And as middle class people, whose to say what it will take to get us riled up to the point of taking to the streets. If this recession is going to get worse, I see that happening, but I really hope Im wrong
prices will go up, and taxes will get higher
i must say that since arriving in London from NYC over a year ago, I havent felt as safe here. There is an anger in the air, and its been showing full force across England
It's hard to riot in most cities of America. You could burn downtown Atlanta to the ground without 95% of city's population even noticing. How dies one even riot in low density cities? Do you drive to your local mall? Take the bus?
Rest of the world has it easy when it comes to such matters. Go outside the building, throw a brick. Run back inside. Throw a chair off your balcony. It's bound to hit someone.
"I was totally going to riot but got stuck on I-95."
it would probably happen in the real cities where people can walk. but again i really hope it doesnt come to that.
In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a number of planning concepts pushed to decrease density to avoid the "unpleasantness" of crowding and to increase "civility." There was already a few series of riots in the U.S. pre-World-War-II in the major cities. And even then, low-density housing was already a recommendation during the Reconstruction to prevent the "darkies" from getting "uppity." A portion of American urban theory throughout the 20th-century whether directly or indirectly discourages "direct democracy" by decentralizing power.
Since the UK doesn't have a long and prevalent history of "uppity darkies" like the U.S., they've done more or less the same thing.
Just in U.S. literature where you see "being black and or poor" replace it with the more British correct phrase of "anti-social behavior."
one of the things irritated me and many others was people start to clean up the streets in south central los angeles the day after the 1992 rodney king riots. it was mainly people from well to do white westside communities who had no racial repression on them and had entire police department assigned to protect 'their' neighborhoods unnecessarily and depleting much needed intervention to save lives in poor neighborhoods where 4000 fires were going at once and dozens of people lost their lives.
mostly naive and selfish, these people rushed into sweeping all the social questions, reasons, intensity of resistance under the table. out of my sight out of my mind... do gooders at their best.
wombles.., stop being so oblivious to people's repression!
how can you be so happy go around when there is a major crisis going on? this isn't a street party damn it!
riots happen for a reason.. usually social injustice and unfair treatment of a racial group or a segment of a under privileged society. the reasons are usually accumulated over the years and they explode from some police act, beating, killing, you name it. please don't grab that mop and start to hide everything under the table without understanding what is really going on there.
that's all i have to say having survived one of the worst riots in los angeles.
I was a bit shocked when I saw the riot start last Saturday in London. Everything happened really fast. People running away and screaming and some even encountered some ACL injury. I just hope that everything's going to be okay.
On this news here it says the riot is about an unfair shooting. I didn't think it was related to some sort of social unrest, unless the people there feel their police are out of control.
this is no riot for a cause, its just selfish looting by people who have nothing better to do and feel entitled to "free stuff because others were getting it too". they capitalized on a mans shooting in tottenham (which should be the real focus)...
the fact is theyve gone around destroying local businesses and setting alight peoples houses and cars...for what? to show the "man"...? its not a protest, its just thievery, arson and property destruction with no point, other than to prove they can get away with it.
im glad people are coming to help clean up, it shows the true spirit of the city, one which has been attacked by a small group of miscreants, who due to already lacking civic responsibilities, decided to join in on the "fun" and smash things up. there are some really good comments on a lot of the bbc articles...take some time to read them.
I'm sure if you actually paid attention in your fancy architecture classes about swarm intelligence / crowd theory... you'd have learned that there's little rhyme or reason behind riots. Like any animal that enters a swarming (or gregarious phase if you're a locust) phase, the paths actions of a crowd are not controlled by any specific person or cause.
Instead, they respond to stimuli and subconsciously aggrandize based on instinctual or perceived inputs. Does this excuse the crime? Not really. But any group of animals is inherently dangerous and any good animal trainer knows that positive reinforcement and ignoring bad behavior ultimately prevents situations that end in violence.
It completely is a case of swarm intelligence. But the conditions that have contributed to its emergence are a combination of factors beyond just criminality.
Crime is only the effect.
Not enough cops on the street, and the ones that were on the street, just stared at the whole thing unfold.
People have had enough of diminishing privileges.
With massive cuts to the public sector, over 500,000 jobs being cut,and VAT increases
people are being made unemployed for a tory ideology to stuff their own pockets, Its no wonder that people are responding, defending their own neighborhoods. And that youths are expressing a nationwide anger of the tory cuts, and destruction of society.
If the world economy is going to get worse, many are saying this is only the beginning.
don’t moralise, don’t judge, don’t take pictures – it’s time for the riot to get some radical politics Daniel Harvey gives a short personal reflection on the riots.
While Cameron announces in Parliament he may hit social networking systems to curtail riots; Caroline Lucas, the UK's only green MP put out this:
"If we stop at denunciations and crackdowns, nothing will be learned about why sections of our own population feel they can riot, loot and treat their neighbours and communities so appallingly.
"The bigger picture has to be considered. Britain is deeply unequal.
"Last year, London's richest people were worth 273 times more than its poorest.
"Given the growing evidence … that increasing inequality had a role to play in at least some of the rioting, the government must commit to an impact assessment of any further policies to establish if they will increase inequality …
"The prime minister has said this is 'not about poverty but about culture'. But it is about both. It is about inequality and culture and how dangerous it is when you mix growing inequality with a culture which puts consumerism above citizenship."
justavisual you so sure about that?
besides the unwarranted killing of Mark Duggan (similar to the cause of riots in Parisian baliues a few years ago) there is also this
Britain’s youth unemployment rate is currently over 20 percent. During the economic boom a decade ago, though, nearly as many were out of work, and they did not all turn to crime.
To counter the risk that they might, there were storefront drop-in centers for young people in the neighborhood; these places are now shutting down, as are other community services, like health centers for the elderly and libraries. Local police forces have also been shrinking.
All are victims of what people in Britain call “the cuts” — the government’s defunding of civil-society institutions in order to balance the nation’s books.
from Richard Sennett and Saskia Sassen Op-Ed Cameron’s Broken Windows: in today's NYT http://nyti.ms/nLeTwY
I'm pretty sure about it...this NYTimes piece misses the point. I used to live just off Kingsland Road, and I never had any issue, day or night with feeling unsafe, regardless of the people hanging around...you just dont get yourself into stupid situations (goes without saying). Frankly, if anything...in areas like Hackney the issue is gentrification, the sort where young professionals move into flats costing over £700 per month per person...and then the local hangouts of the long term residents, are slowly replaced by bars, clubs, restaurants, vintage shops, etc that cater to only the new (and relatively mobile) population thats taken over. Areas like Islington and Hackney are filled with council flats, the now-rundown estates built to cover the housing shortages after the war...and which are filled with exactly these "unemployed young people". The divide grows larger...
So, blame the cuts if you want, but theres another side of the story...and honestly, all these "unemployed young people" dont do anything to improve their neighborhoods anyway. They take things for granted, and now have gone and taken it to the next level, actually destroying the places they live and the businesses of their neighbors.
Read into it as much as you want, but intellectualizing this is only post rationalization. The people active in the looting just wanted free stuff and to cause destruction on the streets. I guess, the criticism of the government is a useful side effect, but frankly...they're not the ones doing any of the criticizing. We are.
and further to that, as the poor get poorer, there are less and less people to pay into the so called social services that they (increasingly) rely on. At least the UK still has the NHS, and their university system is still cheaper than the USA...and they get their 25 days a year off.
We couldnt even attempt to reach the level (theyre hanging on to) here in the US.
per the folks at demilit
Readings to accompany #LondonRiots
Some literature, audio and video, rounded-up.
justavisual, you make no sense as your posts contradict themselves from one sentence to other. Very hard to follow. Try to think more intelligently before posting childish bylines you hear from others. Your povs are embarrassingly cliche.
HIstorically, elites set conditions that play off of the welfare class against the middle class.
There were not enough resources to deal with growing problems. If only there was an economy to give the bums a job in the first place
morality degree zero, I'm not giving you bylines...I'm giving you my opinion as a resident of these neighborhoods. My point is that there are segments of society that have been increasingly marginalized and their dependence on benefits from the councils leaves them without any pressure to actually progress in their lives. They don't care for education, they don't see a future for themselves, and they lack the morals to stop them lashing out violently. They simply subsist on the welfare state, and when they saw the looting start in one neighborhood they capitalized on it elsewhere, because it was easy. This capitalization spread to all sorts of people including young children, children of businessmen, students and the employed, proving that this isn't about anything except opportunistic crime. Society wont change just because the government suddenly wakes up and changes its view, it has to change from within, and people need to be held accountable for their actions by the people surrounding them, ie parents, peers and community leaders.
This is the UK so...we're talking about Chavs here aren't we?
I studied there for a while, and I stand by the fact that Chavs, and related subgroups, have absolutely no desire to improve themselves. One or two might, but that's about as unlikely as, say, my waking up tomorrow and discovering an oil well blocked by Nazi gold in my backyard.
And if we're talking about Chavs and skinheads, well, they'd riot over over just about anything for the sheer hell of it. They'd riot about football, cider, or the way grass is an annoying shade of green. Looking at them, I don't so much think of deep seated economic problems. I'm thinking something along the lines of "How did those Orcs climb out of that fantasy novel?"
I'd say yeah, it's them. The prevailing social conditions give them a nice excuse, but these guys could be living in a mansion and they'd still take a day off every week to trash the local supermarket.
justavisual this seems like a contradictory sentence
"My point is that there are segments of society that have been increasingly marginalized and their dependence on benefits from the councils leaves them without any pressure to actually progress in their lives."
on the one hand you are saying they have been marginalized which implies an active ex-clusion from society (by who/how etc? one assumes social policies, under-investment in social housing/education etc?) on the other hand you are saying
"They simply subsist on the welfare state, ..because it was easy."
Do they have agency or not? Can't they be both marginalized/excluded and also taking advantage/using riots as a outlet for their frustrations.
Isn't rioting another form of political action/expression?
I guess the UK government should just cut Chav benefits and give it to the cops.
that doesnt solve anything
Most of the public is arguing over the scraps, while fat pigs stuff their pockets.
They've been marginalized by both government policies and modern consumerist culture, they are dependent on the state for their welfare, and they are slaves to the pressures of material consumption. So I guess maybe the conclusion is in these times violence seems to be about the only way to drum up enough media under global scrutiny, sad as that is. But the kind of nonsensical rioting that has happened in London, like in Paris, just goes to show that its not targeted, its not efficient, its not with any purpose. If people want to demand things, there are ways to organize and protest and work for the things you want. The government has failed to give them a voice...but then maybe that's part of the issue here...how to fix that? Now we've got 50% saying, strip their benefits, treat them as criminals, take away their liberty and put them in a cell...and keep paying for them behind bars. The other half says: figure out how to help them help themselves??
on the Parisian riots – extract from ‘Violence’ by Zizek
In a weird self-referential short circuit, they were protesting against the very reaction to their protests. “Populist reason” here encounters its irrational limits: what we have is a zero-level protest, a violent protest act which demands nothing. There was an irony in watching the sociologists, intellectuals and commentators trying to understand and help. Desperately they tried to discern the meaning of the protesters’ actions “We must do something about the integration of immigrants, about their welfare their, job opportunities,” they proclaimed – in the process they obfuscated the key enigma the riots presented.
The protesters, although effectively underprivileged and de facto excluded, were in no way living on the edge of bare survival. People in much worse physical and ideological oppression, had been able to organize themselves into political agencies with clear or even fuzzy agendas. The fact that there was no programme behind the burning Paris suburbs is thus itself a fact to be interpreted. It tells us a great deal about our idealogico-political predicament.
What kind of universe is it that we inhabit, which can celebrate itself as a society of choice, but in which the only option available to enforce democratic consensus is a blind acting out? The sad fact that opposition to the system cannot articulate itself in the guise of a realistic alternative, or at least a meaningful utopian project, is a grave illustration of our predicament. What does our celebrated freedom of choice serve, when the only choice is between playing the rules and (self-)destructive violence. The protesters’ violence was almost exclusively directed against their own. The cars burned and the schools torched were not those of the richer neighborhoods. They were part of the hard-won acquisitions of the very strata from which the protesters originated.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14464531
I remeber an episode of the Sopranos, where a troubled kid that was being picked on decided to take a dump in the boys locker room, in front of all his classmates. He was expelled.
He could have dealt with his problems in another way but...
sounds like thats what happened in the UK
justavisual great excerpt I particularly liked
"What kind of universe is it that we inhabit, which can celebrate itself as a society of choice, but in which the only option available to enforce democratic consensus is a blind acting out? The sad fact that opposition to the system cannot articulate itself in the guise of a realistic alternative, or at least a meaningful utopian project, is a grave illustration of our predicament."
I am a member of the University Academics Union in the UK [UCU] and received this well written letter spelling out the issues: Anyone Interested 'necters please go to the petition and sign!
___________________________________________________
From: Sean Vernell and Tom Hickey (National Executive of the University and Colleges Union), and Jeremy Corbyn, M.P., and John McDonnell, M.P.
Prime Minister,
We have heard much from yourself and members of your Government about the reasons for the rioting that has spread across Britain. You put it down to “criminality”, “greed” and lack of “parental control”. You treat it as a moral failing of the individuals and their families, as a ‘loss of values’. It is as if there did not exist a political and social context.
Anyone attempting to understand why thousands of young people have taken to the streets and rioted needs to begin by locating young people’s anger in the conditions of austerity in which the young – and working people in general - are being made to pay for a crisis that is not of their making. Yet anyone who does attempt to explain the rioting in these terms is accused of justifying looting as if it were a solution to a social crisis that is the consequence of your policies. There is a difference, Prime Minister, between explanation and justification.
Government ministers have been wheeled out to denounce young people and any parallel to the riots of the 1980s has been denied. It is clear, however, that many of the issues, which are now acknowledged about the 1980s riots by these same Government ministers, are the same issues that have fuelled today’s riots. Issues such as unemployment, lack of educational opportunities, police harassment, racism and public spending cuts are at the root of the problem.
In many cases young people feel even more alienated from society than they did 30 years ago. Unemployment for 16-25 year olds has become institutionalised throughout the subsequent period, reaching 1 million today. No less than 75,000 young people are statutorily homeless. No less than 600,000 live in overcrowded homes. There are more black people in our prisons today than are in our universities. Young black people are still disproportionately represented amongst the unemployed, the homeless, the criminalized, and the marginalized and disconnected. Yet you and your ministers speak as if racism is no longer a feature of our society.
There are only 11,000 youth clubs left after the closure programme of the 1980s, and three quarters of 11-16 year olds do not have an access to a youth club. Why do young employees not have a statutory right to paid educational leave, and why do they not have the right of representation on workplace training committees so that they have some sense of control of their destiny? Why is our society driving up the hours that we work instead of having a maximum of a 30-hour week that would allow employment to be spread, offering employment to a larger number of young people. Why are there so few decision-making forums in which young people can be involved?
What has been your government’s response to this? Universities have been allowed to triple tuition fees making it almost impossible for working class people to attend. The Educational Maintenance Allowance, which previously ensured that many were able to attend college, has been abolished. Police powers have been increased leading to more young people being harassed and imprisoned. Unemployment rises inexorably. Now you make the risible suggestion that the consequent disaffection can be overcome through the use of water cannon, plastic bullets, and more draconian sentencing by the courts.
These riots have revealed the issues that need to be addressed urgently if our young people are to feel they have a future. As educationalists and trade unionists we call upon your Government to put significant resources into ensuring that young people have real hope, a hope that matches the opportunities that one of the richest countries in the world should be providing for all its young, and not just for the children of the wealthiest.
We demand that you address this problem seriously, and implement the following policies:
• the restoration of the EMA and the 80% HE funding cut, and scrapping of tuition fees;
• the ending of public spending cuts in general;
• repeal of the stop and search laws;
• that Job Seekers Allowance to be raised to a minimum of £110 per week;
• that an urgent building programme for properly-stafffed Youth Clubs be put in place;
• a reversal of the cuts in schools, Further and Adult Education.
"A recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reveals another piece of the puzzle: Of all the European Union countries, only Portugal is home to greater wealth disparity than Great Britain. These riots are a specifically English problem -- at least for now. But the divide between rich and poor is growing all across Europe, helped along by austerity measures, especially those implemented by the countries worst stricken in the debt crisis, including Greece, Spain and Italy. Not only are social services being slashed, but school budgets and health care services as well."
Via Der Spiegel
Nam, the clickable map at the bottom of that article gives a very good outline of what ails youth in Europe. The best one is the one on Italy, which points out the massive violence among soccer fans. I'm amazed that the London riots took everyone by surprise: that level of violence and sociopathy has always been the hallmark of a certain type of British soccer fan (and not just British). In Italy little is done to address the problem because the "ultras", as they're called, are serious season-ticket-holders and pad the clubs with much money. So you have explosives and bonfires, racist chants, stabbings, beatings and killings....you know, all the things sports should be associated with, and mostly lip service to any solutions to all this. England has had the same thing for years, but now everyone is "shocked" at this violence among the young.
Someone look up the Labour Party in the UK. One explanation is the Party's ideological belief in multi-culturalism without limitations, which in effect due to bad policies in the last decade, led to the erosion of British values and social mores. These policies have a trickle-down effect; riot police severely limited by laws, and therefore inaction to protect businesses and families for fear of playing into the "racism" trap.
Shoplifters of the World Unite, by Slavoj Zizek. London Review of Books.
"We are told again and again that we are living through a debt crisis, and that we all have to share the burden and tighten our belts. All, that is, except the (very) rich. The idea of taxing them more is taboo: if we did, the argument runs, the rich would have no incentive to invest, fewer jobs would be created and we would all suffer. The only way to save ourselves from hard times is for the poor to get poorer and the rich to get richer. What should the poor do? What can they do?
Although the riots in the UK were triggered by the suspicious shooting of Mark Duggan, everyone agrees that they express a deeper unease – but of what kind? As with the car burnings in the Paris banlieues in 2005, the UK rioters had no message to deliver. (There is a clear contrast with the massive student demonstrations in November 2010, which also turned to violence. The students were making clear that they rejected the proposed reforms to higher education.) This is why it is difficult to conceive of the UK rioters in Marxist terms, as an instance of the emergence of the revolutionary subject; they fit much better the Hegelian notion of the ‘rabble’, those outside organised social space, who can express their discontent only through ‘irrational’ outbursts of destructive violence – what Hegel called ‘abstract negativity’."
thanks for the Žižek link...was waiting for his commentary!
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