Have riots ultimately helped or harmed civil rights?

[Kurska]

There have been many riots over civil rights issues. There are many people here who defend riots, sometimes as just a natural reaction of not listening and in rarer instances as something that needs to be done to show people in power something. I am wondering what your stance on that issue is.

17 votes, 1 pass | Time left: Unlimited
	Overall, riots over civil rights issues have helped advance civil rights.
	4 (24%)
	Overall, riots over civil rights issues have not helped advance civil rights.
	13 (76%)
	Neither
	0 (0%)
	1 DU member did not wish to select any of the options provided.
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[NoJusticeNoPeace]

1. Did this riot help anyone?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War

the word "riot" has racial connotations

BTW

you could call it other things

[Kurska]

2. I think this riot helped some people

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots

And no it doesn't have purely racial connotations. People riot after sports games, they riot over failure to fulfill black friday deals and they riot over civil rights violations.

You're right in that sustained riots can often spiral into revolutions. I am not implying that there is an easy answer to his question.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

15. You bet it did, which is my/your point.

I do think both "thugs" and "riot" are being used by many people, including the AfAm Mayor of Baltimore, inappropriately only because it almost always means black.

I think when your average white privileged american hears the word "riot", depending on their age, will think of MLK death and the riots then or Rodney King, etal.

But I could be wrong.

[Agnosticsherbet]

3. I think what is happening with he police, and he lack of grocerystores and business in places

where riots have happened shows that riots did not help. They appear to entreanch opposition by the majority.

Riots are like fires that burn out.

For real change, sustained pressure must be place on the government for a long period of time.

[sabrina 1]

19. Considering the carnage and brutalization perpetrated by police against minorities, admitted

'torture centers' the racist policy of 'Stop and Frisk' in NYC, the voter suppression, the fear of the police to the point where AA mothers have to try to teach their young boys how to be submissive when harassed by the police, in order to survive, the fear of even College Students to walk to school in case they meet a PO, considering all that, there have been VERY FEW RIOTS/UPRISINGS.

5,000 dead by cop over ten years, how many riots/uprisings?

And that doesn't include those beaten so badly they are disapbled for life, those wrongfully accused and the torture centers where minorities were beaten and tortured etc.

I can only remember two.

People protesting peacefully are not riots. Ferguson Protesters were brutalized by the aptly named Riot Police.

So what should an oppressed people do to change things? No one seems to care about all the activist programs to try to get some justice over the years.

I'd like to hear some suggestions where this outrageous criminal behavior by the police and authorities can get the same kind of attention Baltimore is getting now because of the burning of a store?

I KNOW that AAs would much prefer to have this kind of coverage of all the actions they have taken, all the peaceful protests, all the murders by cop, but most Americans don't even know about them.

I follow the actions for equal rights that are going on every day on twitter and elsewhere. If I was depending on the media, I would have thought that Ferguson was 'over' when that is far from the case.

How do you get from under these terrorist actions against your children by those with the authority to do it without consequences, who do you go to report the crimes?

What IS the solution?

[Agnosticsherbet]

21. In India, South Africa, and the US (60's) long and sustained non-violence eventually led to change

What set these places and times apart form now is that these movements were led by individuals with the force of personality, charisma, stature, and will who could move people to run a program for long term, non-violent solutions. I haven't seen a leader like that emerge.

I will also say that violent revolutions are quite capable of change, but they also take a long time, years, decades, and in the case of Ireland, centuries. If people believe that violence is the only answer, then they should be prepared for decades of intifada style warfare where a lot of innocent people on both sides will die. In that type of warfare, riots do not work.

Riots are expressions of justifiable anger, but the result is almost always to justify the stereotypical views of those they riot against.

After the riots in LA grocery stores and other businesses would move back into the area and economic stagnation intensified the plight of he people who lived there.

[sabrina 1]

22. I think the Civil Rights movement here, still ongoing, has been among the least violent

and still is, of most Civil Rights movements I can think of.

This fight is hundreds of years old, and there ARE 'charismatic' leaders trying to get some justice peacefully. The fact that no one knows them, is proof of how ignored these efforts are.

This should be a daily story on the US Media, because a large segment of this country's population is still without Civil Rights, still living in fear, they way they were in the '50s in far too many places around the country today.

But our media never talks about this enormous issue, busy selling the Karashians and Lindsey Lohan or whoever the latest 'celeb' happens to be.

It's all calculated by Corporations, to keep the people distracted.

As S.African and India, there was plenty of violence in those struggles.

And today's AAs in this country ARE following those examples of peaceful revolution, and like them, every once in a while, people explode out of sheer frustration when they are kept in poverty and have no hope.

To say this and much worse never happened in those places, in Ireland, in India and in S.Africa, and everywhere there was a fight for justice, is to not acknowledge history.

[Agnosticsherbet]

23. Violence was comitted against those in non-violent movments.

The leadership were able to hold people together against that violence and ultimately change things.

I did not say that violence was not committed. A non-violent movement works by refusing to answer the violence done against them with violence, using wide spread grassroots principled noncompliance with unjust laws.

A militant movement in Bengal preceded Gandhi. There were other movements in those places that were not non-violent. Gandhi's non-violent movement was not adopted until the 20's.

But violent revolutions are not fought with riots.

[sabrina 1]

24. I'm sorry, but I disagree. While the leaders of the non-violent movements adhered to their

principles of non-violence, often, though they respected them, others were of a different opinion. In S. Africa eg, Mandella was often frustrated, though he understood, when some of his own followers, see his wife eg, engaged in violence themselves. Not everyone has the strength to take the brutality without eventually doing what they see as standing up for themselves.

And I have often wondered if it takes both, because in almost all these fights for justice, there HAS been both.

In Ireland, eg there were hundreds of violent uprisings throughout the eight hundred year history of its struggle for Justice. See the 1916 Revolution which was the eventual cause of Ireland's final liberation. Without that, it would still be a colony of the British Empire. And in the north, it wasn't until the violence erupted, AFTER the long, struggle through peaceful means, that they finally got the attention of the world, and succeeded in getting the recognition needed to finally get some Civil Rights in their own land.

I have been torn about it, but I can't think of any place where there was not a combination of both where justice was finally achieved.

[Orsino]

4. People maimed and killed in riots are robbed of their rights...

...and yet riots always increase the awareness that leads to change.

I prefer to think of change as inevitable, and of rioting as an indicator that change is being handled poorly.

[closeupready]

5. It's way more complicated than this. Not really an answerable question.

[Kurska]

7. I think riots can help and harm, it is question of whether you think riots forcivil rights have been

a net positive or negative.

That doesn't mean that any individual riot is good or bad. What matters is the question of whether this, on principle and in totality, is a strategy that works.

[closeupready]

10. Well with respect to Baltimore, there were absolutely precipitating acts.

One of which was the arrest and killing of Freddy Gray. So to refer to this (implicitly) as a kind of strategy is not really what I think is happening.

But okay, to play along here, I think rioting/civil unrest most hurts those who are rioting, but may end up improving an unjust set of circumstances for future generations. So perhaps this is a kind of martyrdom, i.e., 'you can take us down, but you can be damn sure we're taking you with us.'

Does that makes sense?

[geek tragedy]

6. the one that happened where I live (Crown Heights) sure as shit didn't help

anyone or anything. It helped elect Rudy Giuliani while Crown Heights itself remained violent and depressed

[Hoyt]

8. Right wingers are going to hate Minorities no matter what they do.

[gollygee]

9. False dichotomy n/t

[Kurska]

12. I asked you this exact question and you responded you didn't have an opinion.

How is it a false dichotomy?

[gollygee]

13. Have they helped or harmed . . .

It isn't an either/or issue. Maybe they've helped in some cases, and harmed in others. Maybe they've helped in some ways and harmed in other ways at the same time. Maybe they've done neither - maybe it's been neutral. It isn't a question of either/or, therefore it's a false dichotomy.

Also, I didn't say I don't have an opinion. I said I am not an expert - I'm not a historian or a sociologist - so my opinion isn't necessarily based on fact. I also said my opinion is that they're probably exercises in futility. I don't think they make much difference one way or the other as far as social change goes. I just recognise that I'm not an expert and I might be wrong.

[Kurska]

14. That is why I said overall

Individual riots could have helped or harmed, but there overall the effect should be either in one direction, in the other or in neither direction to a significant extent.

I don't think it is false dichotomy.

[951-Riverside]

11. That all depends on how an oppressor defines a "riot"

[ibegurpard]

16. riots aren't a tactic

they are an organic response to a build-up of anger.

[Oktober]

17. These are the same morons who think...

... That blocking traffic to deny people access to jobs, commerce and medical care is a boon to their pet cause because now they are 'thinking about it'

Idiots...

[Gormy Cuss]

20. Yeah, like the morons who walk picket lines.

[phil89]

26. You seriously don't see the difference?

Unbelievable.

[Gormy Cuss]

27. You seem not to see the similarity. n/t

[NuclearDem]

28. September 2014...

MIRT, that's not 30 minutes or less!

[TheSarcastinator]

18. I think the Stonewall Riot is a positive example

among others. So yes.

[lumberjack_jeff]

25. It makes those with cooler heads look like serious people

rather than simply complainers.

I'm inclined to think that it tends to promote civil rights, but it's a net negative for the people who live in the neighborhood.