In Detroit and Boston and Cleveland and Watts they fought back with firebombs and guns.
'What's the matter with these n*ggers?' they said. 'They seem to be going wild!
All of this fuss over one incident - a policeman killing a child?
And why are they burning and looting the stores? The merchant has been their friend!
Well, maybe he cheated for a few cents, every now and then.
And what about the tenements they're burning down in the slums?
Some dog they call a slumlord is losing his income!'
What a scare they received when the brothers said, 'No, let's not burn the ghettos down,
We'll break up in groups and firebomb and loot on the opposite side of town!'
So then they called in their army, machine guns, and tanks and ordered them to attack
The people arose together as one and used what they had to fight back
And now that's it happened, the question arise: why all the fury and fuss?
If they look over their past and examine their deeds, they'll know what's the matter with us.
When will the promises be fulfilled that they've made to us over the years?
Where's the pay we have not received for our blood and sweat and tears?
Where's the employment that we need, the decent salary?
The welfare payments will not do to feed a family.
They say conditions are this way because we don't have skills
But instead they offer us extermination pills.
So we sound a warning - they'd better change their tune,
They don't have long to make things right; they better do something soon!
Their law enforcement will not work, whatever they conspire
Will only serve to make us strong - we will fight fire with fire.
No, that was not a riot that they saw down in the slums,
That was a dress rehearsal for things that's yet to come."
- The Last Poets, "Black Soldier"
http://socialistworker.org/2011/08/12/urban-revolts-and-social-change
"Violence allows those who feel powerless to gain a sense of empowerment. Looting allows people who feel betrayed by the system to seize a bit back. A provocation (stories of police killing an innocent child or man from the neighborhood) can unleash a firestorm of protest, and a weak police response can encourage people to indulge their desires to ‘strike back’ against the system, unleashing wave after wave of opportunistic looting and destruction (something similar also occurred in the banlieu riots in the immigrant suburbs of Paris in 2005.)
"Oddly, such destructive riots are more likely in democracies, if people feel they have no chance to gain within the system, or to change it. Where people are fighting to gain democracy (as in the Middle East) they are more likely to act in a way that helps them gain support and appear deserving and capable of self-government. But where people live in a democracy, and feel that democracy is doing nothing for them, or is being manipulated and tilted against, them, they may well rage. And when the ‘state’ in the person of police, which is supposed to protect them, instead kills one of their own, that is just the kind of action that justifies retribution against the existing order.
...
"Today, Harold Myerson reported in the Washington Post that Senate Republican Whip and GOP Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander have 'no appetite for extending either the payroll tax [reduction] or the unemployment benefits.' What that means, even though few people seem to realize it, is that Republicans want to impose a $1 trillion dollar tax increase over the next ten years on EVERY AMERICAN earning $100,000 or less, while continuing $400 billion in tax breaks on American households earning more than $250,000 per year (see my post 'The Republicans’ Trillion Dollar Tax Increase'). AND they want to cut the last supports of long-term unemployment insurance out from under those unable to find jobs....
"At some point, if this continues and Obama is stymied in his efforts to continue payroll tax cuts and extend unemployment benefits, rage at this injustice will grow. It will be directed against those who stopped Obama, but more generally against ‘the system.’ It will break out after some striking provocation, but will continue in a fury of destruction."
http://newpopulationbomb.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/london-is-burning-will-new-york-or-l-a/
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