martin wrote:

ESOMKnicks wrote:In Russia civilian gun ownership is so restrictive, people are effectively banned from having guns (except smoothbore single- or double-loading guns for hunting).

Yet the murder rate in Russia is almost twice as high as in the US.

Anyone who thinks that banning guns in the US will solve the murder problem or the racism problem is beyond delusional.

one example does not make a case at all, it's poor logic and amounts to relative nothing in this circumstance

It only takes a single black swan to prove that not all swans are white.

TripleThreat wrote:https://streamable.com/301y3y

"Baseball's trying to come up with this solution, saying 'you know what would be super powerful,' -- three of us here, can't leave this room -- they're saying 'you know it'd be really great if you just have em all take the field. Then they leave the field! And then they come back and play at 8:10.'"

"What?! Who said that?"

"Rob. And with Jeff, 'Scheduling is gonna be a nightmare, there's so much at stake!' And I said Jeff, that's not happening. These guys are not playing. They're not playing!"

"They're not dealing with reality!"

"But that's Rob's instinct! And Rob -- exactly what you and I were talking about -- at leadership level he doesn't get it! He just doesn't get it!"

****

Mets and Marlins walked off the field.

This has now bled into baseball. NY teams have just had a rough ****ing year. The Jets have been taking hit after hit. Our beloved Rangers are the exception it seems.

People are going to just turn off games. Not all of them. But this kind of stuff creates some interest in existing fans, but long term, this is damaging to professional sports. Which ripples into all sports. And while people want to say that a game is not bigger than real life ( which is true in many cases), the reality is that sports provides a path way to hope for many. Not even just professional athletes. It could be some kid who has no father figure and no brothers and finds a passion, a surrogate family, a place he can belong and find a path to a better life. Sports has saved many lives. I know sports gave me brothers in blood that I wouldn't have found anywhere else in this life. So the idea of losing fans and losing interest in said sports moves past just money and TV deals and whatnot. Losing fans is always a bad thing.

For a wife beater? I recognize there are other long standing issues. But to galvanize over a wife beater. Jacob Blake's name will now go down in sports lore forever. More than a coach who loved the game. Or an underdog player who beat the odds. People who gave their lives for their sport. But for a ****ing wife beater. Who will likely get a book deal. Get on the talk show circuit. Have a movie made about him. Did he help to cure cancer? Did he help orphan kids? Was he a teacher who spent a career working with youth? No, just a guy who beat the **** out of his wife and apparently sexually assaulted her. Let's destroy all of the sports we grew up with for this mother ****er.

Is the law regarding a justice system written as "except if the accused is black and has a bad looking rap sheet, in which case: blast away!"?. Everyone is entitled to just process. Even if he was a saint, people would make up some sort of other excuse for being hostile to BLM or people protesting against police brutality- we've seen this a zillion times, stop pretending to yourself that your issues are just because of this particular person, I'm not buying it at all (you were against the BLM NBA stuff right from the start of the bubble, I remember arguing with you about it.), it's a tedious and disingenuous game. We all know if tomorrow it was revealed all of the talk about his record were false, you'd just pivot to "think of the business of sports!", and if that was shown to be BS, you'd pivot to something else.

TripleThreat wrote:https://streamable.com/301y3y

"Baseball's trying to come up with this solution, saying 'you know what would be super powerful,' -- three of us here, can't leave this room -- they're saying 'you know it'd be really great if you just have em all take the field. Then they leave the field! And then they come back and play at 8:10.'"

"What?! Who said that?"

"Rob. And with Jeff, 'Scheduling is gonna be a nightmare, there's so much at stake!' And I said Jeff, that's not happening. These guys are not playing. They're not playing!"

"They're not dealing with reality!"

"But that's Rob's instinct! And Rob -- exactly what you and I were talking about -- at leadership level he doesn't get it! He just doesn't get it!"

****

Mets and Marlins walked off the field.

This has now bled into baseball. NY teams have just had a rough ****ing year. The Jets have been taking hit after hit. Our beloved Rangers are the exception it seems.

People are going to just turn off games. Not all of them. But this kind of stuff creates some interest in existing fans, but long term, this is damaging to professional sports. Which ripples into all sports. And while people want to say that a game is not bigger than real life ( which is true in many cases), the reality is that sports provides a path way to hope for many. Not even just professional athletes. It could be some kid who has no father figure and no brothers and finds a passion, a surrogate family, a place he can belong and find a path to a better life. Sports has saved many lives. I know sports gave me brothers in blood that I wouldn't have found anywhere else in this life. So the idea of losing fans and losing interest in said sports moves past just money and TV deals and whatnot. Losing fans is always a bad thing.

For a wife beater? I recognize there are other long standing issues. But to galvanize over a wife beater. Jacob Blake's name will now go down in sports lore forever. More than a coach who loved the game. Or an underdog player who beat the odds. People who gave their lives for their sport. But for a ****ing wife beater. Who will likely get a book deal. Get on the talk show circuit. Have a movie made about him. Did he help to cure cancer? Did he help orphan kids? Was he a teacher who spent a career working with youth? No, just a guy who beat the **** out of his wife and apparently sexually assaulted her. Let's destroy all of the sports we grew up with for this mother ****er.

Just my opinion....i believe people who get upset when they hear BLACK LIVES MATTER.....and the same insensitive racist or people who fear they will lose their white privilege. So they yell All Lives Matter.

There's a fear that runs generational deep since slavery ended that blacks will recognize their power and get revenge. So the system is in place...passed down from slave masters.....to keep their knee on the oppressed neck. Sustemic racism is a mental fence that's designed to control you and make you feel less than. The problem is white people stay in denial, to prelong their privilege. This is also why trump is in office. So its fear that causes whites to turn a blind eye. They know whats going on....

blkexec wrote:

TripleThreat wrote:https://streamable.com/301y3y

"Baseball's trying to come up with this solution, saying 'you know what would be super powerful,' -- three of us here, can't leave this room -- they're saying 'you know it'd be really great if you just have em all take the field. Then they leave the field! And then they come back and play at 8:10.'"

"What?! Who said that?"

"Rob. And with Jeff, 'Scheduling is gonna be a nightmare, there's so much at stake!' And I said Jeff, that's not happening. These guys are not playing. They're not playing!"

"They're not dealing with reality!"

"But that's Rob's instinct! And Rob -- exactly what you and I were talking about -- at leadership level he doesn't get it! He just doesn't get it!"

****

Mets and Marlins walked off the field.

This has now bled into baseball. NY teams have just had a rough ****ing year. The Jets have been taking hit after hit. Our beloved Rangers are the exception it seems.

People are going to just turn off games. Not all of them. But this kind of stuff creates some interest in existing fans, but long term, this is damaging to professional sports. Which ripples into all sports. And while people want to say that a game is not bigger than real life ( which is true in many cases), the reality is that sports provides a path way to hope for many. Not even just professional athletes. It could be some kid who has no father figure and no brothers and finds a passion, a surrogate family, a place he can belong and find a path to a better life. Sports has saved many lives. I know sports gave me brothers in blood that I wouldn't have found anywhere else in this life. So the idea of losing fans and losing interest in said sports moves past just money and TV deals and whatnot. Losing fans is always a bad thing.

For a wife beater? I recognize there are other long standing issues. But to galvanize over a wife beater. Jacob Blake's name will now go down in sports lore forever. More than a coach who loved the game. Or an underdog player who beat the odds. People who gave their lives for their sport. But for a ****ing wife beater. Who will likely get a book deal. Get on the talk show circuit. Have a movie made about him. Did he help to cure cancer? Did he help orphan kids? Was he a teacher who spent a career working with youth? No, just a guy who beat the **** out of his wife and apparently sexually assaulted her. Let's destroy all of the sports we grew up with for this mother ****er.

Just my opinion....i believe people who get upset when they hear BLACK LIVES MATTER.....and the same insensitive racist or people who fear they will lose their white privilege. So they yell All Lives Matter.

There's a fear that runs generational deep since slavery ended that blacks will recognize their power and get revenge. So the system is in place...passed down from slave masters.....to keep their knee on the oppressed neck. Sustemic racism is a mental fence that's designed to control you and make you feel less than. The problem is white people stay in denial, to prelong their privilege. This is also why trump is in office. So its fear that causes whites to turn a blind eye. They know whats going on....

I hope it is fair to be honest here. Maybe it’s my northeast upbringing, but any racial tension in my life is based on a general fear of young men of color. Not of a general uprising with retribution for past suffering. A generalized fear of mischief and mayhem. A fear of random acts of violence.

This is perpetuated by news, stereotype or personal experience. Whether that’s a fear of someone eyeing my wallet. Whether it’s fear of someone stealing items of worth off my person. Whether it’s a fear of random violence like breaking a broom across my back. Or hitting me and taking my bike as a kid.

All criminal acts against me in my life have been caused by people of color. It doesn’t mean I don’t have a capacity to forgive, but that fear exists whether I want it to or not. I can tell you I feel compelled to cross the street when I see a group of young black men with saggy pants and bravado. It’s a fear I have. I have the same generalized fear around white biker gangs. I am not walking around thinking I am better than these groups. I just don’t think that there is any benefit of physical proximity given the signals they are sending. A certain volatility in outcome that makes me uncertain of how they will act when I come near.

The argument is out there for causality. Slavery bred ingrained racism. Slavery and racism created disparity of wealth, education and opportunity. Disparity of wealth, education and opportunity bred differences in behavior, disenfranchisement, rejection of a flawed system, anger, hatred, and violence. In a microcosm, those acts bred fear and create distance between people. But you have a person like me that is open and willing to effectuate change, but has innate fears of a portion of the same group.

That’s where concepts like “defund the police” create cognitive dissonance. You think there should be no police to protect me from these fears? “Expand community outreach” and “create unity” or “break down the social divide” are one half of the concepts. “End police brutality” is unequivocal.

Meanwhile, peaceful protests that turn violent or damage infrastructure perpetuate those fears. So, you tell me you have a group of young black men that want to boycott a game of basketball and put together a statement of their beliefs? I am all ears and tears. You want to kneel together to raise awareness of the issues. Me is all knees.

EwingsGlass wrote:

BRIGGS wrote:

newyorknewyork wrote:

BRIGGS wrote:There are gonna be people who say to these athletes
Where were you two weeks ago when tgis little boy got **** directky in the face. A crime perhaps 1000x more ruthless than this 1?
https://toofab.com/2020/08/13/five-year-old-cannon-hinnant-shot-dead-cycling-in-neighbors-yard/

Why don’t the bucks talk about gun violence? Why don’t the bucks put a value for n a 5 year old riding his little bike? I think if these athletes took a stronger overall look into gun violence. ANY violence whether from a police officer or regular citizen.

I’ll give u a reality— While I’m personally appalled and shocked once again with a police officer using what I personally deem as excessive force— I mean tgis is a form of attempted murder in my book— it still is going y to o be looked at in different scopes k owing there was a knife abd knowing the man did not adhere to police direction. The victim himself could’ve deescalated. 7 bullets is cut and dry wrong but there are other things leading up to this that could’ve been avoided on both sides.
But the little kid who was riding his bike simply got a gun stuck in his face and had his head blown off while his 7-8 yo siblings watched.I did not hear LeBron tweet about that one. And lastly I think the use of the phrase”one of our own” is adherently racist. This is a police compliant issue and everyone despite creed or color need to get on the same page.

There isn't a history or trend of cases to go on that matches the circumstances of Cannon Hinnant to make this comparable. The person who did so was also captured, and will be charged to the full extent of the law. Protest work towards people or entities that rely on credibility for their image/income. There is no protest that is going to reach a person like the person that shot Cannon Hinnant in the head. Which is why that talking point brought up is more ignorance trying to get filtered into real conversation.

Taking a "stronger look into gun violence or any violence" goes hand in hand with attempting re-allocate funds towards social programs and education aka "Defund the police". Looking to build stronger more educated communities which in turn will reduce violent crime and gun violence. Because its targeting the root and not only criminalizing people after the fact which is a business in itself. The voting campaign that has been established as well has those same principals in mind. The overall effect will attack gun violence and violence in general.

In the 90s the media was big on capturing any black person that committed a crime. This has not lead to reduced crime rates and violence due to "awareness".

I’m not talking about race New York — I’m talking strictly gun violence— gun violence doesn’t just occur by police — in fact that is a very low %. The protest should be about gun violence in general. These are gun crimes whether it was Jacob the little boy— almost all these incidents are predicated on gun violence. Gun violence is an equal opportunity circumstance— it’s not white black or yellow— it’s it’s own evil mechanism.

Briggs, the problem is that this is changing the subject. We know that the brutality witnessed again and again doesn’t require a gun. Kneeling on necks isn’t gun violence. It’s not always resulting in death either. It’s based on a systemic racism and a series of micro-aggressions that create a different existence, a different set of outcomes for Black Americans.

Take every instance we see and try to imagine the same scenario happening on Wall Street. Or to a white cheerleader. Or a white man wearing khakis and a polo. This isn’t about gun violence. This instance of police brutality just happened to use a gun. Seven times. In the back of an unarmed black man.

We can talk about gun violence too. We can talk about kids killed needlessly. But until people who want to help and care to listen step back and realize it’s not about gun violence. It’s about systemic racism. That means you are just changing the subject to a different systemic issue.

And people pointing out a murder involving a white victim are just confused. Most white people ?myself included) are confused. Lost in some emotional defense mechanism yelling things like all lives matter. Or what about the toddler that got killed. But all of that is just to make yourself sleep better at night. Sleep better thinking that systemic racism isn’t still prevalent today.

These emotional defense mechanisms can be overcome. By simply taking a step back and asking, what is it about who and what I am that makes me defensive about acknowledging systemic racism? Maybe you grew up poor. Or you were the victim of a crime. Maybe you were born rich and feel entitled to what you had cause your family worked hard for it. Maybe you thought your education or occupation is the product of a balanced meritocracy instead of your lot in life. And maybe you are different and for some reason you should be blind to systemic racism. Maybe someone is just dumb as hell and thinks racism is just good judgment. Cause Jesus was white.

The thing is, these defense mechanisms kick in to preserve the identity we’ve created for ourselves. Who we think we are. Why we are okay with ourselves. There are emotional barriers to accepting outside facts as true to the extent they challenge our own perception of our identity.

For me, it’s that I grew up poor, parents died when I was young and worked my ass off to put myself through school. to raise a family and buy a big house. So, I get defensive if folks use the word privilege. Certainly didn’t feel privileged growing up on Long Island, an hour from the greatest city isn’t the world, in the richest state in the richest country in the world at a time where technology blossomed. All I know is that I had to work two jobs to put myself through college and law school. Haven’t been out of work since I was 14.

But I had to take a step back. Not apologetically or patronizingly. But to say, how would my life have been different if I were black instead of white. How would my speeding ticket stops have taken place differently. My poor white neighborhood was still in a good school district. I learned math and reading. Would I have gotten the same mortgage. Would I have gotten off so easily when the police broke up a party at my house in college? Would I have gotten stopped and frisked on the way to work? After 9/11, the police apologized to me for looking in my bag as I went to work, sorry for the inconvenience.

Point is simple. None of this “what about that kid” or “we should stop gun violence”. They are valid points but distracting from the point being made. We need to all take a step back and ask ourselves why we are willing to look blindly on the systemic racism that pervades our system. Start by asking why you need to point out the black on white violence or the pervasiveness of gun violence instead of simply saying: the way we are treating Black people is wrong. Cause it’s wrong.

I don’t have any answers for exactly how to fix the problem. Starting point for me is to admit my blindnesses and see if I can get more folks like me to open their eyes a bit more too. Might be idealistic, but gotta start somewhere.

I like this, thanks

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/27/white-supremacists-militias-infiltrate-us-police-report?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

White supremacist groups have infiltrated US law enforcement agencies in every region of the country over the last two decades, according to a new report about the ties between police and far-right vigilante groups.

In a timely new analysis, Michael German, a former FBI special agent who has written extensively on the ways that US law enforcement have failed to respond to far-right domestic terror threats, concludes that US law enforcement officials have been tied to racist militant activities in more than a dozen states since 2000, and hundreds of police officers have been caught posting racist and bigoted social media content.

Far-right leader and Washington officers face civil rights lawsuit over violent incident
Read more
The report notes that over the years, police links to militias and white supremacist groups have been uncovered in states including Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.

Advertisement
Police in Sacramento, California, in 2018 worked with neo-Nazis to pursue charges against anti-racist activists, including some who had been stabbed, according to records.

Attorneys for Buckley's family said they have personally interviewed three witnesses, including a young woman who identified herself as the last person Buckley asked for money before the shooting. The woman said Buckley followed her and her roommate to their car and she heard someone shout at him to leave them alone as she was getting into the vehicle. Seconds later, she heard a gunshot.

"I never felt threatened by Mr. Buckley in any way," she wrote on Twitter, noting she could only speak to her own perceptions. Panhandling, she wrote, "should not be a death sentence."

Attorneys for Buckley's family claim the shooting constitutes a hate crime.

Buckley was Black and Boyd is White. The attorneys questioned whether police would have handled the case differently if a young Black man shot an older White man in the same Perkins Road shopping center, which contains several other upscale retail stores and restaurants in addition to the Trader Joe's market.

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://twitter.com/IanBegley/status/1299392595139989504

EwingsGlass wrote:

blkexec wrote:

TripleThreat wrote:https://streamable.com/301y3y

"Baseball's trying to come up with this solution, saying 'you know what would be super powerful,' -- three of us here, can't leave this room -- they're saying 'you know it'd be really great if you just have em all take the field. Then they leave the field! And then they come back and play at 8:10.'"

"What?! Who said that?"

"Rob. And with Jeff, 'Scheduling is gonna be a nightmare, there's so much at stake!' And I said Jeff, that's not happening. These guys are not playing. They're not playing!"

"They're not dealing with reality!"

"But that's Rob's instinct! And Rob -- exactly what you and I were talking about -- at leadership level he doesn't get it! He just doesn't get it!"

****

Mets and Marlins walked off the field.

This has now bled into baseball. NY teams have just had a rough ****ing year. The Jets have been taking hit after hit. Our beloved Rangers are the exception it seems.

People are going to just turn off games. Not all of them. But this kind of stuff creates some interest in existing fans, but long term, this is damaging to professional sports. Which ripples into all sports. And while people want to say that a game is not bigger than real life ( which is true in many cases), the reality is that sports provides a path way to hope for many. Not even just professional athletes. It could be some kid who has no father figure and no brothers and finds a passion, a surrogate family, a place he can belong and find a path to a better life. Sports has saved many lives. I know sports gave me brothers in blood that I wouldn't have found anywhere else in this life. So the idea of losing fans and losing interest in said sports moves past just money and TV deals and whatnot. Losing fans is always a bad thing.

For a wife beater? I recognize there are other long standing issues. But to galvanize over a wife beater. Jacob Blake's name will now go down in sports lore forever. More than a coach who loved the game. Or an underdog player who beat the odds. People who gave their lives for their sport. But for a ****ing wife beater. Who will likely get a book deal. Get on the talk show circuit. Have a movie made about him. Did he help to cure cancer? Did he help orphan kids? Was he a teacher who spent a career working with youth? No, just a guy who beat the **** out of his wife and apparently sexually assaulted her. Let's destroy all of the sports we grew up with for this mother ****er.

Just my opinion....i believe people who get upset when they hear BLACK LIVES MATTER.....and the same insensitive racist or people who fear they will lose their white privilege. So they yell All Lives Matter.

There's a fear that runs generational deep since slavery ended that blacks will recognize their power and get revenge. So the system is in place...passed down from slave masters.....to keep their knee on the oppressed neck. Sustemic racism is a mental fence that's designed to control you and make you feel less than. The problem is white people stay in denial, to prelong their privilege. This is also why trump is in office. So its fear that causes whites to turn a blind eye. They know whats going on....

I hope it is fair to be honest here. Maybe it’s my northeast upbringing, but any racial tension in my life is based on a general fear of young men of color. Not of a general uprising with retribution for past suffering. A generalized fear of mischief and mayhem. A fear of random acts of violence.

This is perpetuated by news, stereotype or personal experience. Whether that’s a fear of someone eyeing my wallet. Whether it’s fear of someone stealing items of worth off my person. Whether it’s a fear of random violence like breaking a broom across my back. Or hitting me and taking my bike as a kid.

All criminal acts against me in my life have been caused by people of color. It doesn’t mean I don’t have a capacity to forgive, but that fear exists whether I want it to or not. I can tell you I feel compelled to cross the street when I see a group of young black men with saggy pants and bravado. It’s a fear I have. I have the same generalized fear around white biker gangs. I am not walking around thinking I am better than these groups. I just don’t think that there is any benefit of physical proximity given the signals they are sending. A certain volatility in outcome that makes me uncertain of how they will act when I come near.

The argument is out there for causality. Slavery bred ingrained racism. Slavery and racism created disparity of wealth, education and opportunity. Disparity of wealth, education and opportunity bred differences in behavior, disenfranchisement, rejection of a flawed system, anger, hatred, and violence. In a microcosm, those acts bred fear and create distance between people. But you have a person like me that is open and willing to effectuate change, but has innate fears of a portion of the same group.

That’s where concepts like “defund the police” create cognitive dissonance. You think there should be no police to protect me from these fears? “Expand community outreach” and “create unity” or “break down the social divide” are one half of the concepts. “End police brutality” is unequivocal.

Meanwhile, peaceful protests that turn violent or damage infrastructure perpetuate those fears. So, you tell me you have a group of young black men that want to boycott a game of basketball and put together a statement of their beliefs? I am all ears and tears. You want to kneel together to raise awareness of the issues. Me is all knees.

Thanks for being transparent and honest.

smackeddog wrote:Zzzzz... You seem to care more about store stock getting damaged and windows getting broken than actual human beings getting shot and killed, why is that?

Many American cities experienced some form of violent upheaval over the weekend. In Minnesota’s Twin Cities, at least 270 businesses were vandalized, looted or damaged. Miami, Eugene, Oregon, Los Angeles and Santa Monica, California, all suffered instances of looting and destruction. Communities take a long time to heal from these kinds of events.

Anthony’s Pipe & Cigar Lounge is on West Lake Street in Minneapolis. Tom Harlan runs it, and he’s been doing business there for 35 years.

“They broke all my cabinets. Everything was shattered. They broke my humidor. They broke into the office, broke my safe [and] blew up one of my security cameras,” Harlan said. “They even took the plywood off the barbershop across the street and broke the glass and went in there.”

He said the whole area is boarded up and sprinkled with graffiti now.

“Last night, I was just shaking,” Harlan continued. “I was on my patio trying to drink a beer, and I was just trying to gather my thoughts and see how I can regroup.”

In Santa Monica, Jane Walker is manager of a sweater store called Texture. Her store was boarded up and survived unscathed, but other businesses near her did not.

“Here you are, coming back from COVID, and now with this,” Walker said. “I mean, to recuperate from this is going to be a very long haul.”

History might agree.

Victor Matheson, professor of economics at College of the Holy Cross, looked back at the Rodney King riots, which happened in L.A. in 1992.

“Economic activity in the areas affected didn’t return for at least 10 years,” Matheson said. At least not to previous levels. He said those riots cost almost $5 billion in economic activity measured in lost sales over 10 years. “If people don’t feel safe where their businesses are, then they don’t feel a need to rebuild.”

Though the millions of protesters taking to the streets in recent weeks to protest George Floyd's death have been largely peaceful, the pockets of unrest that broke out have led to fires, broken windows, and theft. For business owners, the good news is that the insurance industry is poised to pay for most of the losses—a different outcome than what resulted from coronavirus shutdowns, which saw many merchants denied coverage because of exclusions in their policies.

But whether stores and restaurants can recoup losses caused by looting and vandalism depends, of course, on their having adequate insurance coverage in the first place. And not all of them do.

In South Minneapolis, Bridget Schoffman started a GoFundMe page to help four immigrant-run small businesses that had been badly damaged by arson and looting. The businesses—a nursery service, an ice cream parlor, a grocer, and a wireless shop—are tenants in a building owned by her parents and had bare-bones insurance or none at all.

"The windows were broken, the doors were broken, their merchandise was stolen and looted. This is devastating for all of them and their families," said Schoffman, calling special attention to Luis Tamay, the grocer who had opened his shop only weeks before and lost most of his inventory after vandals damaged his fridges and freezers.

The destruction of such businesses is obviously devastating for the owners but also for the communities they serve. When the likes of Target and Starbucks are hit by vandalism, they typically reopen days later—in part thanks to insurance—whereas inner-city businesses in low-income areas damaged during the same unrest may never open their doors again. The result is blight and a lack of services for communities that are often struggling already.

So why do businesses like Tamay's lack insurance in the first place? While failing to purchase insurance does reflect a risk calculation by business owners, there are also larger economic and historical forces that have made it hard for those in underprivileged communities to obtain coverage in the first place.

Those forces were apparent in the aftermath of the riots that destroyed parts of Los Angeles following the police beating of motorist Rodney King in 1992. A contemporary news report recounted how, in impoverished neighborhoods, some businesses had obtained policies from fly-by-night operations based in the Caribbean that did not pay claims. And according to Robert Hunter, a former commissioner of insurance for the State of Texas, 45% had no coverage at all.

But here are 6 ways looting most harms the poorest people.

1. It deprives poor and minority communities of essential services. As violent crowds pilfer products and do property damage, the stores close, temporarily or otherwise. Looting grocery stores in Chicago created new “food deserts.” Chicago’s CBS 2 reported that it saw Bronzeville “seniors taking buses, walking miles with only what their hands could carry.” Chicago Alderman David Moore said his district did not “have a pharmacy left.” Another alderman noted, “Our elderly, our vulnerable populations … aren’t going to be able to get food, get supplies, get their drugs.” Their concerns reverberated in New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, “These looters destroyed businesses that were essential to the community and the very people we are trying to help.” Their cry is embodied in the Minneapolis woman who tearfully told TV cameras, “I have nowhere to go now.” These riots underscore how businesses serve, rather than exploit, America's neediest citizens.

2. It drives away businesses and jobs. Businesses do not invest in riot-prone cities for the same reason developers don’t build homes on the San Andreas Fault. They know destruction is inevitable. Those who took a chance are unlikely to return. “I've been on calls and text messages with people all day who fought hard to bring economic development to areas of the city, only to see the Walgreens, the CVS, the grocery store, everything vanish in an eye blink,” said Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in a May 30 conference call with city aldermen. “It's going to take a Herculean effort on the part of all of us to convince businesses not to disappear, to come back.”

So far, the effort has been Sisyphean. Walmart and Target have not confirmed they will reopen their looted locations.

This is compounded when metropolitan police are ordered to stand down and let the looting proceed apace. One firm that’s not on the fence is 7-Sigma Inc., which decided to leave Minneapolis after 33 years and take more than 50 jobs with it. “They didn’t protect our people. We were all on our own,” owner Kris Wyrobek told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “The fire engine was just sitting there, but they wouldn’t do anything.”

3. It leads to a population drain. To see what the future holds, look to Detroit after the 1960s riots. The number of people fleeing the Motor City nearly quadrupled between 1964 and 1968. Since a city’s greatest asset is its people, economic contraction follows. “In the years after 1967, Detroit completed its gradual transformation from a city that was white, Catholic and largely prosperous to one that was increasingly black, Protestant and poor, because of the flight of wealth that accompanied the departure of upper- and middle-class whites,” reported the Detroit Free Press. The city’s median income fell by 35% between 1970 and 2006.

4. It erodes the tax base. Only one group consistently fails to flee violent neighborhoods: people who are too poor to leave. As median incomes and property values drop, the city’s tax base shrinks. That leaves urban centers with a population in greater need of government services and fewer resources to pay for them.

5. It causes long-term economic damage. There is strong evidence the economic harm of this riot will persist for decades, as it did following the riots of the late 1960s. The authors of a National Bureau of Economic Research study:

find a relative decline in median black family income of approximately 9 percent in cities that experienced severe riots relative to those that did not, controlling for several other relevant city characteristics. There is also some evidence of an adverse effect on adult male employment rates, particularly in the 1970s. Between 1960 and 1980, severe riot cities had relative declines in male employment rates of 4 to 7 percentage points. Individual-level data for the 1970s suggests that this decline was especially large for men under the age of 30.

6. It makes the church’s job harder. Pastor Corey Brooks of New Beginnings Church of Chicago works to give urban poor the skills to start over. He writes in The American Conservative that his ministry’s “work has paid off, and we have witnessed the power of a changed life. I have seen the excitement of young men who have turned away from violent gangs … for their new jobs.”

“The riots of this past week, however, have set us back in our ministry work and have done incalculable damage to our community,” he continues.

The young men he works with have been denied the meager employment opportunities they once had, and his church much pour its resources into helping the needy access essential services:

All of the CVS and Walgreens buildings were looted. The result is that we no longer have a pharmacy in our neighborhood. Church members are shuttling members of our community out to the suburbs to get their prescriptions and basic goods.

The grocery stores were also looted, leaving us without options to purchase local food.

The question lingers on many of our minds: Will these stores and pharmacies—so essential for daily living here—ever come back?

And as night fell on Minneapolis, the heart of widening protests set off by the death of an African-American man in police custody there, business owners stood outside their doors and pleaded with agitators to spare the enterprises that many said they had spent their life savings to build.

“I was outside saying, ‘Please, I don’t have insurance!’” said Hussein Aloshani, an immigrant from Iraq, waving his arms in frustration as he recounted the scene Friday night outside the deli his family owns.

In some places, demonstrators scrawled graffiti on storefronts decrying police brutality against African-Americans, or echoing some of Mr. Floyd’s final words: “I can’t breathe.”

In others, they hurled crowbars and hammers at windows, and used gasoline to burn buildings to the ground.

Regardless of who the perpetrators were, many store owners said they felt like the victims of misplaced aggression. They said their businesses, already ailing from an outbreak of the coronavirus that has been particularly devastating to small and minority-owned businesses, may not recover.

“A lot of people don’t know the blood, sweat and tears that go into being a business owner and the type of sacrifices we had to go through to be where we’re at right now,” said Kris Shelby, who woke around 1 a.m. Saturday to the sound of gunfire outside his North Atlanta apartment, which overlooks the luxury clothing store he manages.

Mr. Shelby and his business partner opened Attom in 2016 with the goal of bringing luxury brands more widely available in New York and Los Angeles to their city. They have drawn in celebrity clients such as the musicians Migos and Justin Bieber and supplied clothing for the movie “Black Panther.” The store has also been a welcoming space for a diverse group of Atlanta residents, Mr. Shelby said.

But when he returned to the store at around 5 a.m. Saturday, Mr. Shelby found that all of his merchandise was gone. He watched videos posted on social media of masked young people of all races swarming through the smashed front windows and leaving with pieces of clothing and accessories worth hundreds of dollars each.

Mr. Shelby said he shared the pain of people protesting Mr. Floyd’s death but did not believe that stealing would stop such incidents from happening in the future.

“It hurt. It seriously hurt,” Mr. Shelby said of Mr. Floyd’s death. “But as a black man, and this is a black-owned business, it’s just sad. It really leaves a bad taste in our mouths, to be honest.”

Ricardo Hernandez spent the weekend sleeping in a van outside the Mexican ice cream shop he runs with his wife in South Minneapolis. He negotiated with protesters by handing over ice cream and Popsicles so they would leave the shop intact.

“Just looking at this is terrible,” he said of the rubble and broken glass strewn across the neighborhood. “It’s unreal.”
...

Maya Santamaria was at the gathering but said she planned to stay home that night because she had nothing left to protect. The building she previously owned — where she had once employed Mr. Floyd as a nightclub security guard, and where her new business venture, a Spanish language radio station, was also housed — had burned down Friday night.

Ms. Santamaria blamed the police for Mr. Floyd’s death and said they had not done enough to protect businesses in the aftermath.

“We were calling 911 and we were calling the Police Department and there was no response,” she said. She did not want officers to resort to violence against protesters, she said, but “they can’t just not come and leave us to burn, either.”
/quote]

There are things that have been sensationalized

People are not dying in the streets

Half my family was taken to concentration camps. Tortured starved then gassed. Only my grandpa escaping with his brother— only reason I’m here. 5 of his other brothers and sisters zapped.
Millions of people killed slaughtered.
We don’t have that here— it’s a disgrace to even compare.
We do NOT need looting and anarchy
We need to progressively work through issues—we’ve come a long way to the positive.
We need reasonable reforms
But this sensationalism is too much.
Whether white black chibese Spanish Russian middle eastern
We just need to work it through peacefully. I’m sick of hard line trump supporters. I’m sick of the elitist other side trying to dictate as well. I was hoping for a guy like Mark Cuban to come in— that was my hope cuz he’s got fair common sense both ways.
We just need common sense
This isn’t nazi Germany like its depicted— that’s a gross offensive comparison
You are free in the Us in any color or creed to become President to become a billionaire to go and do what u want.
In many countries these protests would not happen. They’d all be dead. You can do it here but now it’s going beyond reason— it’s criminal
I don’t like radical positions. It’s not fair and it’s not 50-50. We need 50-50 and reasonable minds coming together