A black man killed by police. Mobs of looters. Cities charred and shaken. The riots in London mirror some of the worst uprisings in modern US history.
And there are more parallels: Stubborn poverty and high unemployment, services slashed due to recessionary budget cuts, a breakdown of social values, social media that bring people together for good or bad at the speed of the Internet. Finally, there are a handful of actual attacks, isolated and hard to explain, by bands of youths in US cities.
A natural question arises: Could the flames and violence that erupted in Britain scar the US, too?
Photo: Reuters
Police, elected officials, activists and regular citizens offer varied answers, reflecting the unsettled mix of race, class, lawlessness and the chasm between haves and have-nots that may lie behind the unrest.
“History shows that the social tinder for such eruptions of massive violence and looting is usually widespread poverty without hope, and the spark is typically an incident of police brutality in the absence of a culture of police accountability,” National Association for the Advancement of Colored People CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous said.
“Such conditions exist in almost every major American city,” he said.
Others, like British Prime Minister David Cameron, blame “criminality, pure and simple.”
That echoes descriptions of some recent episodes of mob behavior in places like Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Chicago and Ohio. Stores have been pillaged, passers-by robbed and random victims brutally attacked by dozens or occasionally hundreds of youths summoned through tools like Facebook and Twitter.
Philadelphia has responded by tightening youth curfews, and the Cleveland City Council passed a bill (later vetoed by the mayor) making it illegal to use social media to organize a violent mob.
“What we’re seeing on the streets in Britain right now is something we may be starting to see here,” columnist Peggy Noonan wrote in Friday’s Wall Street Journal.
“The cause was not injustice ... [it was] greed, selfishness, a respect and even lust for violence, and a lack of moral grounding,” she wrote.
In Milwaukee, where there have been two cases of large group attacks, Bob Donovan, an alderman, said a “terrible disrespect for the police” has convinced him that what happened in London could definitely take place in the US.
However, Michael Coard, a black lawyer and self-proclaimed “agitator” in Philadelphia, sees no possibility of rioting there.
“In the United States, and certainly in Philadelphia, there is a buffer. We have a lot of black police officers, a black police commissioner, black city council members, a black mayor and ultimately a black president,” Coard said.
“I don’t have to burn this building down, I can go and talk to the mayor ... When our parents and grandparents fought for black political representation, this is essentially what they were fighting for,” he said.
Philadelphia also has a black district attorney, Seth Williams. He said that unlike the youths in London, many who engage in mob violence in the City of Brotherly Love simply think it is fun to hurt people. He is prosecuting those who have been caught.
In the 20 years since Los Angeles tore itself apart after four white police officers were acquitted in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King, the city has elected mayors who are Latino and black, and the police force has been overhauled.
Los Angeles police Captain Jon Peters said he’s not overly concerned about riots, “knowing how well this organization is prepared to deal with any sort of crowd situation.”
Jervey Tervalon, a writer who grew up in Los Angeles, said: “I don’t think we’re going to have another riot, because I see much more understanding, more interaction with other cultures.”
The tension Tervalon senses today comes from mainly people who cannot find work or support their families.
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