RE: The the role of riots, confrontations, violence and disorder in effecting social change. Obviously, they don’t always, or even usually, make things better. They SOMETIMES make things worse. But police violence, racism and radical social inequality are not going to be ended just by voting for the US Democratic Party, or even by ::COUGH:: a black President. It is a cruel irony (and historical FACT) that the promise of democracy is rarely realized in practice. Most of the great political reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were accompanied by massive episodes of civil disobedience, riot, lawbreaking, the disruption of public order, and, at the limit, civil war. Such conflict not only accompanied dramatic political changes but was often absolutely instrumental in bringing them about. Social institutions and elections by themselves, sadly, seem rarely to bring about major changes in the absence of the force afforded by an economic depression or international war. Electoral politics is noted more for its immobility than for facilitating major reforms. So the next time you get on your soapbox or hear some talking head on the TV machine bemoaning the rioting blacks and how little theyre doing their cause, please crack open a history book or either DO something about white supremacy or STFU.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 14:01:18 +0000
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