Does looting tarnish the message of protesting?


In an article posted by the Inquiry in 2014, the writer discusses a lot of the issues we are seeing today with protesting. The article was published in August of 2014. The focus was on the protestors for Black Lives Matter and the unjust murder of Michael Brown Jr. While reading the article there are so many parallels discussed that people are currently discussing now. Mass protests are occurring, along with groups of people looting and starting riots. In 2014 what started as conversation of justice, moved to people discussing looting and whether that is the right thing to do. There have been debates time and time again in defense of the looting, and others who strongly oppose it. There is also the issue of when the media begins to focus solely on the looting, and steers away from the bigger picture. These discussions are what I am seeing a lot of today through social media and the news. I myself saw myself only thinking of the looting because that was all I was seeing through my feed and on the news. I think it is important to try and separate the two, in order to remind ourselves on why this is happening in the first place. Black men and women have continously been murdered and abused by police officers unjustly. What is happening now is I believe the last straw. As a non-black person of color I don't think I have ever seen the movement this strong and with so much support from people of every ethnicity and country. I hope this strength continues in order to bring change. I also hope people acknowledge that this change we seek will in no way happen over night, or even in a year, I feel that for real change to happen we need to reconstruct our whole system. It has proven that the current system does not accomadate for the whole. Especially when we look back into history as to where things have rooted from. I suggest reading this article and for people to continue to sign petitions if they hope for a difference.

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