Riot or Revolution?
Watching the coverage of the London riots over the weekend, and especially reading a lot of the comments on various websites, both from Londoners and not, has pretty much convinced me that an awful lot of people don’t get it. The Tea Partiers sure don’t get it, if they don’t see how what’s happened in London could happen here.
I don’t advocate rioting or violence. But I do seek to understand the whys and wherefores of how such things happen, not just to blame the rioters or label them criminals — even when they’re engaging in criminal behaviors.
I’ve seen plenty of folks commenting that “these people” are just hurting themselves and their neighbors by rioting. People asking, why are they destroying where they live? They’re burning their own neighborhoods! As if it would be better if they were looting the gold out of the Parliament building or Buckingham Palace and burning them to the ground instead.
If you’re asking that, you don’t get it, anymore than Prime Minister David Cameron, who finally got around to returning home from his Italian villa vacation to deal with the situation and then sternly lectured rioters via an interview about how they WILL be cracked down on for their criminal behavior. Well, thanks Dad. But how about maybe looking at what’s underlying the rioting to begin with, really hearing, rather than just giving lip service to, the real concerns that minorities and poor people in London have.
You don’t come into a volatile riot situation where youth and poor people are perhaps staging the beginnings of a revolution and start lecturing like you’re daddy who just came home unexpectedly from vacay and caught your teenagers throwing a kegger for their friends. London blogger Laurie Penny, 24, really nailed it with her scathing piece titled “Panic on the streets of London,” which is one of the most insightful pieces I’ve read on what’s going on there — far more so than most of the news coverage.
This isn’t just about young people engaging in criminal behavior. It’s about the fundamental societal problems caused by a system that allows a small percentage to control most of the world’s wealth. It’s about the need to fix a system where so many live in poverty to begin with, because poverty breeds things like illiteracy and gangs and crime rates. And it’s about people realizing that it is NOT OKAY for you and me to live in comfort and safety and plenty while our neighbors live in shite conditions and struggle to feed their kids.
Britain has 20% unemployment among 16-24 year olds overall — 33% in Hackney (source: To the Point, August 9, 2011). The government is gutting social programs to pay for a deficit largely caused by bailing out banks while the rich folks whose greed fueled screwing things up so badly and tanking the economy are largely still sitting pretty.
What’s been particularly fascinating watching the reaction to the London Riots is how different the response of the (mostly white, middle class) world to this situation is so different from the reactions we saw to the rioting across the Middle East. With those riots — perhaps because we have a different view of the need for change in those regimes? — there seemed to be broad support for the idea that it was the young people of those countries finally rising up and agitating that would bring about a needed change. We embraced revolution when it was happening to “them.”
Is the response to the London riots different because we see London as more like “us” and we (at least, here in the States) fear what would happen if poor, urban youth in our major cities got the same idea? The causes underlying the discontent among the young and poor in London isn’t greatly different from the situations of minority youth in our major cities: poverty, crappy schools, poor living conditions, poverty, high unemployment rates and crime rates, poverty. Are we seeing a theme here? Do people not get it?
These riots are about the need for a fundamental change, and they are also about how disempowered people empower themselves when the pressure has built up enough and a spark ignites their righteous indignation. My maternal grandfather, who was a member of the early Communist party here in the States post-WW2, used to argue that if we don’t change the way wealth is distributed, the poor and oppressed majority will eventually rise up and redistribute wealth, whether we like it or not. And maybe he was right.
I am an ex-Londoner and I now live in Somerset in the UK – what qualifies you to have an opinion? Madam you do not have a clue what you are talking about. What a pretentious numpty, it is nothing to do with people having nothing,it is not a revolution it is about opportunitst thugs stealing. My kids were brought up in poverty but they were given a good work ethic, i.e. if you want better you have to work for it. None of my kids believe that this is the way to behave – nor do most UK inhabitants and it is nothing to do with being middle class. These idiots are second generation full time benefit claimants who see the likes of American gangster rappers as idols and McDonalds as a great diet, they would steal from their grannies if they could. Talk about what is going on in your own country but keep your nose out of something that you are clearly unqualified to comment on. Twit!
Wow, that comment was a pitch-perfect satire of a harrumphing British conservative. Bravo. Or should I say, Well done, chap.
Ha, you couldn’t get further from a Conservative. Again you people are totally clueless about what is going on in the UK. Scavenger, feral kids are killing and thieving from their own, whilst policticians holiday. I lived on a poor estate in 1979 close to Southall when the riots there kicked off, this was brought about because the largely Asian community felt strongly about a cause. There is no reason for this, the catalyst was a thug known to police who was carrying a gun (even if he didn’t use it). Would this situation be different in the States? The Police would not have shot to kill? Of course they would. I just don’t see what a film critic knows about what is going on here and has the cheek to compare it to the Middle East. It is the badly treated working class that is the under-class in the UK!
Deena, you think issues around poverty are confined to borders? That’s got to be the most misinformed, uneducated, and thoughtless comment I’ve had in a long time. I don’t need to live in London to have insight into what drives people to desperation. I’ve been there. Did I steal or riot because of it? No. But that doesn’t mean I can’t empathize, and seek to understand what drives that desperation.
Further, your comment exemplifies the (false) belief that being on welfare — generations aside, because that is irrelevant — has nothing to do with economy, social structure, and a host of other things you either choose to ignore, or simply are ignorant of understanding. The reasons underlying poverty and crime rates are far, far more complicated than you seem to believe.
And that, m’dear, has zero to do with whether I live in the States or in the UK. Poverty doesn’t give a crap about national borders.
Clueless!
Deena, I hear what you’re saying about the working class. I grew up in a blue collar family, watched my dad work his ass off for 40 years, just to have them take away his health insurance two years after he retired. My parents scraped and sacrificed so that my brother and I could get a college education. And I’m not arguing that the social problems in both the UK and the States are limited to those mired in the welfare class; they aren’t.
In fact, I’d argue that here in the States (and perhaps you’d agree that this is the case in the UK as well) we are just as likely to see an uprising among the working class as we are among the very poor, particularly with workers’ rights and unions under attack in several states. We are on the brink of disaster here and with the pack of incompetent boobs we (the collective “we”) voted into the House of Reps, it doesn’t look to get better any time soon.
As for what I know about anything and what right I have to say it: First, I’ve been writing about political issues, social issues, parenting and other topics since long before I also started writing about film. And Film Essent has never been a place where I write solely about film; if anything, I’ve been writing more about social issues, philosophy and politics than film lately, with us being in the slow summer movie season. But at any rate, writing about one thing hardly renders one incapable of thought in other areas.
And lastly, I would argue that every one of us has not just a right, but an obligation, to be thinking hard about what’s going on in the world around us, regardless of our day-to-day occupations. And I value reading intelligent, thoughtful, diverse opinions from smart people who care enough to think and write about them. I have no idea what you do for a living, and I don’t care. What you do to earn a paycheck hardly renders your thoughts on the situation in London irrelevant, so far as I’m concerned. I appreciate you sharing your perspective.
Your statement “poverty breeds things like illiteracy and gangs and crime rates” says it all, unfortunately weak minds like those of the illiterate are easily seduced and manipulated by the more cunning and many cunning minds are at work in the criminal underworld. Ripping off a Tesco shop opportunistically is one thing as part of a roaming gang of marauders but wholesale burglary and pilferage of high value tradeable goods that will make their way to the car boot sales and open stall markets and eBay is something else. This is the criminal underworld feeding a frenzied mob of bored, uneducated yobs.
This will be the end of the western imperialism
The proud UK working class are sick to death of being trampled on by the various Government’s, all of whom adopt a do as I say and not as I do attitude. We pay our taxes and lots of them – they don’t, we get the full arm of the courts stripping assets if we do not, politicians don’t. The average British citizen works hard to provide and hopes to aspire to owning property, a car have a few holidays every now and then for their efforts. They look after their children, send them to school and educate them to be ‘responsible’ citizens. Some who have had the benefit of further education or through grit and determination might own their own business and employ others, they are proud of their achievements. This has resulted in their livelihoods being stripped away by a baying mob who are on a course of complete destruction. The generous benefits system in the UK means that you are financially better off staying at home and doing nothing rather than going out to work, so many make this decision – not as a stop gap whilst they get on the road to employment again, which is was it was intended as. Worse still this has meant that there is a whole generation where many have not had the benefit of a work ethic being instilled in them. Their mothers have been given a free council house for getting pregnant and they have allowed the state to become provider. They see the benefits paid to them as their right, and complain about the amount they get. Worse still there are many travelling here, economic migrants from Europe who also see the benefits system here as a huge bonus – again making demands on an economy that is too far stretched as it is. I don’t feel sorry for those ‘poor’ rioters, I feel utter contempt – are they poor? They swan about with their blackberry phones (£400 ea plus a phone contract)and their designer labels, organising a war on the ordinary hard-working person who lives a few street away. The police have had any power they previously had, stripped away from them and stand helpless watching for fear of losing their jobs. What is happening is far-right extremists are now taking to the streets to deal with the rioters using their race hatred to deal with the youngsters in their path. Is this what should be happening? I say you are not qualified to speak on this issue because you have not researched sufficiently to know what you are talking about. You compare what is going on here to countries where people have had their human rights stripped away, your middle class views are what has got the UK in this mess as it is. I still hold that you do not have the necessary qualifications (and I don’t mean your education) to talk about this issue and you do the UK a complete disservice by standing on your soap box trying to give credence to their ‘fight’!
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts Deena. If you are not one of the people rioting you can not pretend any more than the original writer that you are aware of their motivations.