Reasons for the Riots

Camila Batmanghelidjh: Caring costs – but so do riots (The Independent)

London has woken up to street violence, and the usual narratives have emerged – punish those responsible for the violence because they are “opportunist criminals” and “disgusting thieves”. The slightly more intellectually curious might blame the trouble on poor police relations or lack of policing.

Nina Power: There is a context to London’s riots that can’t be ignored (The Guardian)

Those condemning the events of the past couple of nights in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture: a country in which the richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, according to the OECD, social mobility is worse than any other developed country.

Socialisimo: London Riots

The youth have no jobs, and their are no jobs. Especially if you’re from the Afro-Caribbean community where kids are routinely stopped, you’re more likely to go to jail and there is rampant poverty. Why then should these people care about the places they live? it’s pretty obvious the government, the police and anyone outside London doesn’t give a damn about these people unless they have a backdrop of violence.

Insist police answer for their actions (via Vancouver Sun)

padaviya:

Human rights violations are supposed to occur in other countries, aren’t they? So why do we keep seeing alleged cases of abuse of citizens denied and covered up, only to be exposed by video? This seems to be now routine in Canada. How can it be? Why do we allow this to continue?

Why are those with such power and authority permitted to wield it with virtually no accountability? Why is the official justification believed over that of the women who are treated in this manner? Why do the women, such as Stacy Bonds and Roxanne Carr, have to repeatedly fight to be revictimized by the public display of them being assaulted on video, in order to be believed?

Strip searches are sexual assaults that are sometimes sanctioned by our laws to allow police and correctional authorities to search for contraband or weapons. Although weapons and contraband are far less likely to be found on women, women are much more likely to be strip-searched than are men. We know this is true in prison settings, and the fact that it is also a reality in police lock-ups and detention centres was recently exposed during the trials and investigations into the G20 arrests and detentions.

Sadly, what happened to Stacy Bonds and Roxanne Carr has likely been the fate of many other women in Ottawa.

Potentially triggering details of the sexual assault and abuse by police under the cut.

In 1972, residents of a multi-racial, mixed-class area in West Philadelphia came together and organised to prevent crime in their neighbourhood… CLASP, Citizen’s Local Alliance for a Safer Philadelphia, worked to prevent burglaries with locks, lights, homemade burglar alarms, engraving machines and an awareness of strangers.

They also worked to address street crime through the use of neighbourhood walks. Walks were conducted by a group of at least two unarmed and unmarked neighbourhood residents. When they saw a crime happening, they used flashlights and freon horns to signal other neighbours to come out with their horns.

By 1976, there was 600 organised autonomous blocks throughout the city. People were more comfortable spending time outside, and a CLASP survey showed an average of 75% less crime on organised blocks compared to their respective police districts.

“Alternatives to Police”, a Zine by Rose City Copwatch

fuckyeahradicalliterature: Zine: The Demand for Order and the Birth of Modern Policing

fuckyeahradicalliterature:

Cover of "The Demand for Order and the Birth of Modern Policing" By Kristian Williams

Note: Digital Read

URL: http://www.mediafire.com/?opg167fachei183

Opening: 

“The police become necessary in human society only at that junction in human society where it is split between those who have and those who ain’t got.” -Chairman Omali Yeshitela

Why were the modern police created?

Is is generally assumed, among people who think about it at all, that the police were created to deal with rising levels of crime caused by urbanization and increasing numbers of immigrants. John Schneider describes the typical accounts:

The First studies were legal and administrative in their focus, confined mostly to narrative descriptions of the step-by-step demise of the old constabulary and the stead, but often controversial evolution of the professionals. Scholars seemed preoccupied with the politics of police reforms. IT causes, on the other hand, were considered only in cursory fashion, more often assumed than proved. Cities, it would seem, moved inevitably toward modern policing as a consequence of soaring levels of crime and disorder in an era of phenomenal grown and profound social change.

I will refer to this as the “crime-and-disorder” theory.

Despite its initial plausibility, the idea that the police were invented in response to an epidemic of crime is, to be blunt, exactly wrong. Furthermore, it is not much of an explanation. It assumes that “when crime reaches a certain level, the ‘natural’ social response is to create a uniformed police force. This, of course, is not an explanation but an assertion of natural law for there is little evidence.”

Definitely reading the shit out of this.

Egyptian Army: Maintaining security means showing restraint in the use of force, but also in taking appropriate action against those who are using violence. Restraint does not mean failing to protect when there are violent attacks against peaceful protestors - or allowing in men on horses and camels. Heba Morayef is Human Rights Watch’s Egypt researcher, who has been reporting an audio diary of her experience in Cairo’s Tahrir Square over the past few days. It is of vital importance to know the experience of someone on the ground, and this is a diary devoid of the agenda of the mainstream media. It is intensely focused on reporting the Egyptian situation. “It’s very secure because the military is checking IDs at the entrance to the square. I asked one of them why and he said it’s to stop the police coming in,” she says. “People really feel they can completely express themselves on the street in Egypt.” Such scenes reflect those captured in these images, and really cast some elements of the situation in a positive light. The military protect the protest from convicted criminals and the corrupt police’s pro-Mubarak agenda, Christians protect Muslims as they pray and, as Heba Morayef puts it, “they’ve also created a separate entrance for the women so that women so that women are protected from harassment.” Which, she adds, “is a very big concern in any place in Egypt.” On Day 9 of her diary, Heba notices that NDP members are being mobbed and handed over to the military. When she asked how they were known to be members of Mubarak’s ruling party, she was told that they had been going around telling people not to protest and to go home. “These are tactics that are employed around elections,” she explains. “A man was offering 50 [Egyptian] pounds for people to go and say that protesters should go home.” These are the desperate and deceptive tactics Mubarak’s party appear to have been employing on the streets of Egypt. Eyewitnesses have told the German Press Agency that molotov cocktails and teargas were being used by the pro-Mubarak side, while plain-clothed officers are known to be shooting protesters. As in the opening quote, Heba is also concerned that the military is showing too much restraint, failing to prevent violence against the protesters. Despite the violence and corruption that surrounds the protest, Heba remains optimistic: I keep talking about the safe space, and how exciting and how empowering it was to be just there, in the midst of all these happy people, who have hope that for once they can change the country, change the way things are and have their demands listened to. This is certainly a frightening period for Egypt, but one where even the bereaved remain fearless in fighting for their rights. LISTEN TO HEBA’S AUDIO DIARY HERE.
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Egyptian Army: Maintaining security means showing restraint in the use of force, but also in taking appropriate action against those who are using violence. Restraint does not mean failing to protect when there are violent attacks against peaceful protestors - or allowing in men on horses and camels.

Heba Morayef is Human Rights Watch’s Egypt researcher, who has been reporting an audio diary of her experience in Cairo’s Tahrir Square over the past few days. It is of vital importance to know the experience of someone on the ground, and this is a diary devoid of the agenda of the mainstream media. It is intensely focused on reporting the Egyptian situation.

“It’s very secure because the military is checking IDs at the entrance to the square. I asked one of them why and he said it’s to stop the police coming in,” she says. “People really feel they can completely express themselves on the street in Egypt.” Such scenes reflect those captured in these images, and really cast some elements of the situation in a positive light.

The military protect the protest from convicted criminals and the corrupt police’s pro-Mubarak agenda, Christians protect Muslims as they pray and, as Heba Morayef puts it, “they’ve also created a separate entrance for the women so that women so that women are protected from harassment.” Which, she adds, “is a very big concern in any place in Egypt.”

On Day 9 of her diary, Heba notices that NDP members are being mobbed and handed over to the military. When she asked how they were known to be members of Mubarak’s ruling party, she was told that they had been going around telling people not to protest and to go home. “These are tactics that are employed around elections,” she explains. “A man was offering 50 [Egyptian] pounds for people to go and say that protesters should go home.”

These are the desperate and deceptive tactics Mubarak’s party appear to have been employing on the streets of Egypt. Eyewitnesses have told the German Press Agency that molotov cocktails and teargas were being used by the pro-Mubarak side, while plain-clothed officers are known to be shooting protesters. As in the opening quote, Heba is also concerned that the military is showing too much restraint, failing to prevent violence against the protesters.

Despite the violence and corruption that surrounds the protest, Heba remains optimistic:

I keep talking about the safe space, and how exciting and how empowering it was to be just there, in the midst of all these happy people, who have hope that for once they can change the country, change the way things are and have their demands listened to.

This is certainly a frightening period for Egypt, but one where even the bereaved remain fearless in fighting for their rights.

LISTEN TO HEBA’S AUDIO DIARY HERE.

Source: hrw.org