forthwritten (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
forthwritten) wrote2011-08-10 05:28 pm
forthwritten) wrote2011-08-10 05:28 pm
Entry tags:
the cities are burning
"When you cut facilities, slash jobs, abuse power, discriminate, drive people into deeper poverty and shoot people dead whilst refusing to provide answers or justice, the people will rise up and express their anger and frustration if you refuse to hear their cries. A riot is the language of the unheard." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
So, riots in Nottingham then. I'm glued to twitter for updates; I'm decidedly not glued to facebook.
I find it desperately sad: the small business and shop owners who have seen their livelihood go up in flames, the people who have been killed or injured and their families, the water cannon that the government has sanctioned despite their inappropriateness for fast-moving riots, and the kids and young people who live without hope and dignity or respect, who don't see any future.
Guardian liveblogs
If the rioting was a surprise, people weren't looking
On Saturday, instead of imploding and turning inward and violent among themselves, as they have been doing for the past decade, the youths exploded. The trigger may well have been the killing of Mark Duggan and the insensitive treatment of his family, but this has been brewing for some time. The government cuts – especially the withdrawal of EMA; the new barrier of tuition fees; and rising youth unemployment have all added to their sense of isolation and lack of a stake in society.
Who are the rioters? Young men from poor areas ... but that's not the full story
Kast gave the example of how territorial markers which would usually delineate young people's residential areas – known as 'endz', 'bits' and 'gates' – appear to have melted away.
"On a normal day it wouldn't be allowed – going in to someone else's area. A lot of them, on a normal day, wouldn't know each other and they might be fighting," Kast said.
"Now they can go wherever they want. They're recognising themselves from the people they see on the TV [rioting]. This is bringing them together."
Penny Red: Panic on the streets of London.
Riots are about power, and they are about catharsis. They are not about poor parenting, or youth services being cut, or any of the other snap explanations that media pundits have been trotting out: structural inequalities, as a friend of mine remarked today, are not solved by a few pool tables. People riot because it makes them feel powerful, even if only for a night. People riot because they have spent their whole lives being told that they are good for nothing, and they realise that together they can do anything – literally, anything at all. People to whom respect has never been shown riot because they feel they have little reason to show respect themselves, and it spreads like fire on a warm summer night. And now people have lost their homes, and the country is tearing itself apart.
It is interesting to look at how poverty and desperation fuels the riots - here's a map of the riots superimposed onto a map of deprivation.
Camila Batmanghelidjh: Caring costs – but so do riots
It's not one occasional attack on dignity, it's a repeated humiliation, being continuously dispossessed in a society rich with possession. Young, intelligent citizens of the ghetto seek an explanation for why they are at the receiving end of bleak Britain, condemned to a darkness where their humanity is not even valued enough to be helped. Savagery is a possibility within us all. Some of us have been lucky enough not to have to call upon it for survival; others, exhausted from failure, can justify resorting to it.
London rioters point to poverty and prejudice
He said politicians were the real criminals, and pointed to a 2009 expenses scandal in which several lawmakers were revealed to have cheated the taxpayer out of thousands of pounds.
"The politicians say that we loot and rob. They are the original gangsters. They talk about copycat crimes. They're the ones that's looting, they're the originals," he said.
The UK riots: the psychology of looting
Between these poles is a more pragmatic reading: this is what happens when people don't have anything, when they have their noses constantly rubbed in stuff they can't afford, and they have no reason ever to believe that they will be able to afford it. Hiller takes up this idea: "Consumer society relies on your ability to participate in it. So what we recognise as a consumer now was born out of shorter hours, higher wages and the availability of credit. If you're dealing with a lot of people who don't have the last two, that contract doesn't work. They seem to be targeting the stores selling goods they would normally consume. So perhaps they're rebelling against the system that denies its bounty to them because they can't afford it."
I also note a quote that's going around: "Things got out of hand & we’d had a few drinks. We smashed the place up and Boris set fire to the toilets." [ETA: this quote is satire, but the Bullingdon Club, to which both David Cameron, George Osbourne and Boris Johnson belonged, has a reputation for trashing the restaurants they dine in]. Not a gang of hoodie-clad youths, but our esteemed Prime Minister and his mates. So, Mr Cameron, what's it like to be a young man smashing things up and setting fire to things without fear of the consequences? I bet it's the parents.
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Be careful out there.
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The Bullingdon Club is known for smashing up restaurants, but I don't think there's any evidence that Cameron or Johnson were directly involved in it.
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