Tag: protests

It’s Not “Just Property”: How Looting Destroys Lives And Low-Income Neighborhoods

It’s now become fashionable on the Left to defend looting as a means of redistributing wealth from allegedly unworthy business owners to the more-deserving looters themselves.

“It’s just property!” is the refrain, with the implication being that property owners should not defend their property with coercive means – such as calling in the police or using privately-owned weapons against looters.1

This is the philosophy behind a recent declaration from a Black Lives Matter organizer. As the New York Post reported on August 11 :

“I don’t care if somebody decides to loot a Gucci’s or a Macy’s or a Nike because that makes sure that that person eats. That makes sure that that person has clothes,” [BLM organizer] Ariel Atkins said at a rally outside the South Loop police station Monday, local outlets reported. …“That’s a reparation,” Atkins said.

A more full apologia for looting now comes in the form of a new book titled In Defense of Looting by Vicky Osterweil, who identifies herself as “a writer, editor, and agitator based in Philadelphia.”

In an interview with National Public Radio, Osterweil states :

When I use the word looting, I mean the mass expropriation of property, mass shoplifting during a moment of upheaval or riot …

…It tends to be an attack on a business, a commercial space, maybe a government building—taking those things that would otherwise be commodified and controlled and sharing them for free.

Osterweil then goes on to assert that looting is basically a poverty relief program, and it liberates the looters from having to work for a living:

It gets people what they need for free immediately, which means that they are capable of living and reproducing their lives without having to rely on jobs or a wage…

And most fundamentally of all, looting is an attack on private property itself. If only there were more looting, we could all “have things for free”:

[Looting] attacks the idea of property, and it attacks the idea that in order for someone to have a roof over their head or have a meal ticket, they have to work for a boss, in order to buy things that people just like them somewhere else in the world had to make under the same conditions. It points to the way in which that’s unjust. And the reason that the world is organized that way, obviously, is for the profit of the people who own the stores and the factories. So you get to the heart of that property relation, and demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free…

This sort of thing may seem convincing to those who prefer to live in the realm of pure theory. Big words like “commodify” and “oppression” might strike beginner-level dissidents as impressive. But once we start to look at the real-world details of how looting works, we quickly find that looting your local auto parts store or Nike outlet isn’t going to bring down Wall Street hedge funders any time soon. What it will do is hurt ordinary people who own businesses and work in shops that are targeted by looters. Moreover, once the smoke has cleared, we’ll find that low-income neighborhoods will suffer the most.

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Speaker Threatened Retribution at Weekend Rally in Kenosha

For an event described by the New York Times as a “peaceful protest,” the words are jarring: “[I]f you kill one of us, it’s time for us to kill one of yours,” a speaker thundered toward the end of last weekend’s Justice for Jacob rally in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Several apparently incurious news reports referred to the speaker as an unidentified man who “took the microphone” toward the end of the program. However, through a Facebook post, The Dispatch identified the scheduled speaker as Maruwa Ferrell, president of one of the host organizations of the rally listed on a Facebook page announcing the event: the UNIA-ACL Sir Isaiah Morter Division 401 Chicago, a chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League.

On August 29, Jacob Blake’s family and supporters held the “Justice for Jacob” event in Kenosha, the town where Blake was shot seven times in the back by police during his arrest in mid-August. The Kenosha News reported that most “speakers were more focused on social justice and not physical revenge,” but the newspaper initially headlined its story on the rally with Ferrell’s inflammatory words. Despite the sensational nature of the threatening words, the story did not get much attention until Daniel Thompson, an editor at the newspaper (and according to Thompson, the only black full-time staff member) resigned when the paper refused to change the headline. Thompson asserted that the headline distorted the overall peaceful tone of the rally. (The paper subsequently changed the headline after Thompson’s resignation.)

Maruwa Ferrell was enthusiastically introduced at the rally by Jacob Blake’s uncle Justin Blake (who acted as emcee for the event) only as “my president,” an apparent reference to Ferrell’s position with the Chicago UNIA. Ferrell warned his listeners that his words would not be welcomed by all, and he did not disappoint. Ferrell’s “it’s time for us to kill one of yours” threat was met with a muted reaction by the crowd, but he was permitted to finish his remarks.

Farrell’s group, the UNIA-ACL Sir Isaiah Morter Division 401 Chicago, describes itself as “committed to the economic, political and social liberation of African people.” The organization emphasizes self-sufficiency for people of African descent. The group’s Facebook page posts various memes such as “None of my ancestors died for me so I can vote for the white people that killed them!” and “Them: Black Lives Matter. Me: Race First / Black Power. It’s a Difference!” Other Facebook posts boost black-owned businesses and the UNIA’s charitable endeavors.

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These People Want To Convince Everyone That Looting Is A-Okay

Looting is okay because it’s “reparations”

First, there was the woman who spoke after the Magnificent Mile in Chicago was looted so ferociously that Mayor Lori Lightfoot pulled the drawbridge open to keep people out of the downtown area. I recently wrote:

According to a Black Lives Matter activist and organizer, Ariel Atkins, it was just “reparations.” Atkins believes that anything the looters wish to damage or steal is owed to them. She made the radical statement at a solidarity rally in front of a Chicago police station, where people were gathered to support those who had been arrested.

“I don’t care if somebody decides to loot a Gucci’s or a Macy’s or a Nike because that makes sure that that person eats. That makes sure that that person has clothes,” Ariel Atkins said at a rally outside the South Loop police station Monday, local outlets reported.

“That’s a reparation,” Atkins said. “Anything they want to take, take it because these businesses have insurance.” (source)

At a time when more people than ever in the United States were willing to get on board and protest police brutality and racial violence, entitled statements like the one made by Atkins have served to return us to a place of absolute division. (source)

Atkin’s statement was made at a solidarity rally in front of a Chicago police station where people were gathered to support those who had been arrested for pillaging the Windy City.

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NPR promotes insane book celebrating looting and riots

Vicky Osterweil’s new book, In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action, is a social justice justification for property damage and theft. This book promoting riots is a number one new release on Amazon, a mega-corporation that benefits every time a local shop gets torched.

Osterweil’s book is a celebration of looting in the name of anti-racist action directed at dismantling whiteness and property ownership.

Speaking to NPR’s Natalie Escobar, Osterweil made the point that looting during the course of riots is a redistribution of wealth, not theft, and that property damage, too, is simply a way to reapportion assets which she deems necessary in an unequal society.

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