He had spent money at stores in his community, Ted told her, but when he himself was low on cash, he had no one to turn to. A man she calls “Ted” said he didn’t care about the looting of the store, especially if it had insurance.
One of her interview subjects saw the looting of a QuikTrip convenience store as retribution for the economic exploitation of black communities. Boyles found when she interviewed dozens of people during the Ferguson unrest for her book You Can’t Stop the Revolution. This is part of what the sociologist Andrea S. It is a “bid for the redistribution of property.” “Widespread looting, then, may perhaps be interpreted as a kind of mass protest against our dominant conceptions of property,” Dynes and Quarantelli wrote. In this way, some of the looting is a lashing-out against capitalism, the police, and other forces that are seen as perpetuating racism. In their 1968 study, Dynes and Quarantelli note that vandalism during protests focuses on objects and buildings that are “symbolic of other values.” For example, people are more likely to attack symbols of authority-such as the CNN building or police cars-than apartment buildings.
Those in the looting group also have varied motivations. I’m going to now start looting,” she told me. “I’ve never seen somebody come in who’s peaceful and then it’s like, Hey, they just broke that window over there. People flock to the sites of protests with different motivations, and those who want peace tend to stay peaceful. Dana Fisher, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, has studied protests for 20 years, and she says it’s rare for peaceful protesters to start stealing and setting fires at random. But interviews with a half-dozen experts on protests and social movements provide some insights into looters’ motivations.įor one thing, looters and peaceful protesters aren’t typically the same people. Relying on a half-century-old study is less than ideal, but necessary: Few sociologists study looting specifically. Read: Don’t fall for the ‘chaos theory’ of the protests The sentiment in some corners seems to be, If only they would just march peacefully, and not loot, we’d be fine with this. Quarantelli wrote in their seminal study on looting in 1968, another year in which protests resulted in widespread property damage and death. Still, “the looting that takes place in these situations is usually interpreted as evidence of human depravity,” the sociologists Russell Dynes and E. Most race scholars argue that unprovoked police violence against both black people and peaceful protesters is the larger societal problem, and no amount of stolen merchandise will ever equal the loss of even a single human life. Earlier, looters destroyed a Minneapolis Target and swept designer jeans out of boutiques in Los Angeles.Īny time large groups of angry people gather spontaneously, property damage is common. Sunday night, a group of people cleaned out stores across Lower Manhattan, stuffing shoes and electronics into garbage bags. Police leaders generally agree that only a small percentage of the protesters are looting, but the practice is still undeniably widespread.
#BURN LOOT MURDER FULL#
But the breaking of windows, burning of property, and stealing of goods that have accompanied peaceful demonstrations make some people hesitant to throw their full support behind the protesters. Over the past week, thousands of people have taken to the streets in cities across the United States to denounce institutional racism and police violence after a Minneapolis man named George Floyd died when a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. For many Americans watching the country erupt in protests, the looting is the rub.
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